A tone of voice depicts how an organization communicates with the market audience. It covers the choice of words, sequence and tempo used to portray a brand’s values and personality. In a business setting, the tone of voice refers more to written communication than spoken words.
This applies to all types of content created from emails, websites, packaging to social media posts. In different organizations, the tone of voice in writing may differ depending on the media used, target audience or organization goals. However, it should remain consistent in all the content that you share.
Why Does your Brand Need a Tone of Voice in Writing?
A brand tone of voice sets you apart from your competitors. By remaining consistent in your content creation, your audience may find it easier to connect with your organization. That means that even without your logo or name, your content may manage to make a presence in the competitive market.
In the process, the impact may enhance trust with your audience leading to brand loyalty. Also, a brand tone encourages the audience to interact more. As a result, it allows your brand to give solutions while improving on the shortfalls.
There is no precise procedure for defining the tone of voice in an organization and implementing it. In most cases, brands put one individual in charge of creating organization contents. Some may involve the services of a creative director, editor, writer, brand strategist or an external consultant.
All in all, whoever the organization settles for, he/she should understand the brand culture and is ready to bring together an efficient company’s language. Additionally, they should have good analytical expertise and excellent writing skills.
Coming up with correct words that present your brand is not an easy feat. Based on a report in SEMRush, more than 65% of clients connect with brands that write helpful content to their needs.
There are various ways of achieving that. Nonetheless, you should ensure that the writer incorporates your brand personality with acceptable language and customer engagement
Examples of Brand Tone of Voice
One way of standing out among your competitors is to focus on cultivating a unique approach from others. A good example of a company that uses this approach is LaCroix Sparkling Water. From their choice of words, imagery (flowers) and colors, the brand cultivates a persona that gives valuable content to the consumers. This friendly approach results in a solid relationship with the audience.
Dove company display an empowering brand tone of voice through their ads campaigns. This gets portrayed by their motivating approach of using a different calibre of models on their billboards. The non-discriminative strategy may pull people to the brand and anything associated with it.
Creating tech content is not a walk in the park. In most cases, there are a lot of terminologies that a company has to put forward for the audience to understand. Yet, CloudSmartz Company makes it enjoyable by using a professional and committed tone. In the process, they manage to define the cloud’s possibilities and benefits to the users.
Then there is Skittles with their weird ads and brand personality. This wacky tone of voice has remained relevant for ages. Consequently, the brand has managed to keep uniformity leading to an enhanced connection with the audience.
Developing a tone of voice is essential for your content strategy. This strategy remains one of the unutilized branding options in most companies. Mainly, due to a lack of understanding of the potential it holds, companies spend billions of money on other extensive marketing strategies.
Yet, if utilized well, it is one of the easiest of increasing business ranking and attracting more traffic. Note that when working on your organization tone, the perspective, attitude and emotions displayed in your content set the foundation for a definite brand presence in the market. All said and done, how do you decide the tone of the content for your brand?
Let’s make it easier by breaking it down into nine purposeful tone of voice in writing to use an organization.
- Joyful
Writers use this tone to focus on positive emotions experienced through specific action. For instance, if you sell wine, your content may portray joyful individuals enjoying a glass of wine. That explains a reciprocal connection between a brand and consumer where each satisfies a particular need. In the process, a joyful tone creates a strong relationship-building experience for all.
- Analytical
Logic reasoning helps writers to demonstrate, invent and prove arguments. It is an important tone to incorporate for a successful debate with your rivals.
- Fear
Also referred to as horror emotion, it explains threatening situations in people’s lives. For an instant, a writer may open up about specific horrors in their lives and how they pulled through. The main focus is to send a message of encouragement and hope for victims to confront their fears.
In the process, the brand may get an opportunity to sell out a solution to the audience.
- Sadness
If a writer manages to implement a sad brand tone of voice well, it may result in the readers developing compassionate feelings for the author or characters. As your writing continues to keep a connection with your audience, it may result in more visits to your sites and enhanced business leads.
Always ensure that your brand ambassador manages to catch the audience attention with captivating empathetic content. This gives your brand to share valuable content with an available market audience.
- Tentative tone
This is a cautious or hesitant language when interpreting a claim. It is a perfect tone to use when you do not have to factual claims on your content.
- Confident
An effective, confident tone in content writing may enhance the chances of brand loyalty. One way to achieve this is by sharing certain and knowledgeable information. In most cases, clients want to associate with a self-assured organization.
If you use this approach well, it makes it easier for the audience to settle on your brand.
- Neutral tone
This tone allows a content creator to share information without displaying any feelings. On a impartial tone, the writing may involve an objective style without using pronouns like ‘you’ or ‘I’. That way, one it enables one to give information without a personal connection to them.
- Angry
While an angry brand of voice may keep your audience away, you can use if when facing out with a competitor. Even in such situations, keep in mind your brand personality and the impact if you use vengeful remarks on others.
Tips to Develop your Tone of Voice in Writing
Depending on the content you wish to share, your brand may settle on any tone. The bottom line is to use an option that uniquely passes the message and meets the customer’s expectations. Here are three valuable tips you need to consider.
- Stay consistent Across Your Channels
Ensure that your content message remains constant in all your mediums. For instance, if you post an encouraging note in your blog post, you should replicate the same in your website or Twitter. That way, your audience may develop familiarity with your brand and result in business prospects.
- Set Brand Guidelines or Standards
Simplify the tone of the writing process by creating a standardized course of action. You can discuss as a team and expound on the benefit of using a particular style to enhance your brand personality. Most importantly, ensure that the tone you settle for communicates your brand values in the best way possible.
- Compare with Competitors
While your industry may define the best tone to use, your business rival may play a role too. By going through your competitor’s sites, you may take a cue of various ideas and strategies they use. From there, you may either incorporate some of them in your content or adopt a new approach to stand out in the market.
Importance of Audience Research in Content Writing
This is an approach used to assess the uptake, reachability and impact of activities in an organization. The main advantage of audience research is that it guides an organization on the precise target audience. There are various ways that guide an organization on the target audience. Some of the popular ones include Search Engine Results Page (SERP) analysis, Keyword research and conduct survey.
By conducting a survey, you use a series of queries to find out more information about people. To garner the right information, categorize your questions according to demographic, geographic and psychographic details.
SERP analysis is the best method to use to analyze search engine results. Through the process, it enables companies to scrutinize the top-ranking sites from specific topics or keywords. BiQ Keyword Intelligence is an ultimate platform that can guide you on that.
From more than 102,030 influential keywords, BiQ ensures that an organization creates content with the potential of a high SEO ranking. Additionally, it puts you in a better position to create content that may please your client’s needs.
Create a Tone and Voice Style Guideline
Creating a tone and voice for your brand is a collaborative exercise within the organization. Yet, it requires one person to become the brand’s ‘owner’ of tone and voice. By giving the position ownership, it ensures uniformity and accountability on content created.
The process may differ from one organization to another, but you should incorporate the brand language, word choice, tone and attributes. While most content creators keep off from jargons, some brands are incorporating some in their writing.
If they convey a deeper message or connect with your target audience, you can reconsider including them in your brand tone. Besides, you can also include some humorous phrases or words depending on your audience and what you wish to achieve out of it all.
Settle on the Variation in a Tone of Voice
The tone of voice in writing is never the same in every content created. So, companies should use tone variations based on mood, audience and medium. Mood variations may change throughout the buying process. For instance, an organization may use a breezy tone when introducing a new product to a more formal one when closing the deal.
Your main goal is to communicate to different people at the same time through your content. For example, in an online children book store, you can create content kids based content and also something informative to the parents.
Another important strategy is message architecture. Also known as a messaging framework, it simplifies the process of conveying important information to the audience. The platform works by using a small set of phrases, statements or words set in a hierarchical arrangement for a company’s messaging priorities.
Be Authentic and Consistent Across Channels
A consistent tone of voice is critical in introducing familiarity to your products. If your content gets convincing enough, it can help your brand to build trust with the targeted audience. Trust is the basis of a long and fulfilling relationship with your customers.
A well-done brand voice allows you to display your human values, each time you interact with them. Some of these values include trustworthy, sincerity, compassion, happiness and many others. At BiQ Content Intelligence, you can confirm your content’s SEO performance at no cost.
This enables businesses to identify the pitfalls that block them from performing better on the rankings. Here are simple steps to follow on that;
Step 1: Add your keyword and content URL
Step 2: Your results get displayed. Here you get your content’s performance overview based on the search engines and site visitors.
Step 3: Optimize your content based on the proposals given by Content Intelligence.
Differentiate Yourself from your Competitor
One helpful way of differentiating yourself from your competitors is by niche marketing. When you specialize in a product, audience or service, you can offer superior services compared to others. Besides, this may lead to more customer satisfaction leading to a better brand personality.
Audit your Content and Communication
Content auditing checks on the effectiveness of communications tools used. This is achievable by weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each one of them. The good thing is that the strategy recommends ideal measurements for a better impact.
In the long run, with solutions at hand, auditing may help to build a better relationship within an organization, customers and the audience. When you combine it with an organized content framework, it helps your brand to make an enhanced presence in the market compared to your competitors.
Final Thoughts
The tone of voice in writing gives back what you invest. If you manage to implement it well, it may reciprocate with fulfilling rewards for your brand. The process starts by identifying the correct tone for your brand.
While the technique may differ depending on your audience and the message you want to pass, it is wise to remain consistent through the process. This makes it easier for your customers to identify with your brand for a better buying experience.
