Finding and using your “authentic brand voice” is easier said than done. Doing some quick & easy foundational work to uncover and document your brand’s TONE will help you maintain a consistent brand voice throughout all areas of your online presence—your website, your social media captions, your email marketing—that your audience will appreciate.
Listen now!
Brand Voice & Tone: Consistency Is Key!
In Consistency & Surviving The Dip, we discussed the struggle to be consistent in life.
We all hit “the dip” which is when we, for whatever reason, struggle to keep on keepin’ on. But if you DO keep on keepin’ on, the idea is that you’re going to be highly rewarded with success – even if it takes some time.
So that’s one way “struggling with consistency” can show up in your life, as a brand builder — a.k.a. someone putting their brand out there online.
Another is consistency with messaging.
Finding an Authentic Brand Voice Can Be Difficult
Being 1000% authentic, especially online when we can EDIT–when we can pick and choose what we want people to see and create a carefully crafted and curated presentation–it’s hard enough to show up authentically online.
Some people are prone to imitating a voice that is not their own…whether they are doing it consciously or subconsciously. But of course, it is practically impossible to be consistent with a voice that isn’t your own, which can lead to confusion for your audience. Your audience isn’t dumb. They’re gonna be able to suss you out if you are trying to be someone you’re not.
Setting guidelines for your TONE can help you in this regard. You can do a quick check any time you’re about to hit “publish” to make sure the tone is consistent with what you have already established.
And then there are also cases when you may need to convey your tone to others.
Hiring a virtual assistant who is going to be responding to emails on your behalf? Or writing social media captions? Don’t leave them to their own devices when crafting YOUR BRAND’S messaging – communicate exactly what tone of voice you expect them to use. Because even though it may be obvious to YOU what vibe you want to put out – others may not have that awareness.
What Is Brand Tone?
Where do you show up online?
Do you have a website?
Social media accounts?
We can even consider email.
All of these are tools that enables you to connect and have a conversation with your audience.
Thus, every word you put out there is an opportunity to speak directly to your people: the people who will make or break your business by either paying you for your really awesome product or service or determining that it or you are not for them.
Tone goes BEYOND just the collection of words that you choose to put out there on a page, or in an Instagram caption.
Tone dives into how we show people how WE feel about our own message…which, in turn, affects and influences how THEY will feel about our message, too.
Most of the resources you find online about writing your website copy will tell you the standard: “Be authentic! Be true to you! Be unique!”
I agree wholeheartedly with that advice, but it’s a little vague, right? It’s easier said than done, right?
As we mentioned earlier, establishing your tone of voice can help in this regard because it’s more specific and applicable than just “be authentic.”
4 Dimensions Of Brand Tone
The folks at Nielsen Norman Group, who have been researching user experience in the digital world for over two decades, thought so too. And so they worked to develop a framework made up of four different dimensions that can be used to plan the tone of voice a website will use.
Here are the four dimensions they outlined:
- Funny vs serious
- Formal vs casual
- Respectful vs irreverent: Nielsen Normal Group reminds us that most of the time, this irreverent tone is about the subject matter – copy writers aren’t usually trying to be intentionally offensive to the reader.
- Enthusiastic vs matter-of-fact
Every piece of writing has four of these characteristics.
Brand Tone Dimensions In Use:
Back during the heart of the pandemic, and especially around the holidays, shipping delays were AWFUL.
A lot of brands that did business online — which, of course, is pretty much all of them these days! — addressed these shipping delays on their website, usually at the top of the page in the form of a banner, or maybe on the FAQ or checkout page.
A common message you may have seen read something like this:
“USPS is experiencing unprecedented delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Thinking about the four dimensions we just talked about, where does this message fall?
Well, it’s SERIOUS, not funny.
It’s FORMAL, not casual.
It’s RESPECTFUL, not irreverent or saucy.
It’s MATTER OF FACT, not enthusiastic.
Let’s alter the tone:
Now, we can modify the way that message sounds — but still relay the same info — by altering one of those dimensions.
Let’s make the message just a little more casual.
“USPS is experiencing major delays due to COVID-19. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.”
This message is still pretty serious, respectful, and matter of fact. But it’s a little more casual: we change “unprecedented” to “major”, which just sounds less stuffy, and we modified “we apologize” to “we’re sorry” which also is less formal.
Let’s alter the tone again:
Let’s make it more enthusiastic than matter of fact.
“Ugh! We’re sorry for the inconvenience – due to the pandemic, USPS is experiencing major delays!”
Same message, but more emotion-driven.
Let’s change the tone one last time.
And finally, if we take the same message and make it more irreverent than respectful, we could write:
“Guldarnit! Due to the pandemic, the post office is slow again! It’s not our fault but we’re sorry anyway.”
Four separate versions, all relaying the same message.
All are fine to use, but only ONE fits your brand’s style of messaging.
So…which one would you choose for your brand?
Your Brand Tone Should Be In ALIGNMENT
Whichever tone you choose, you need to make sure that the tone is in alignment with your brand’s overall personality, as well as what your audience is wanting to hear.
It’s very offputting when brands do not maintain a consistent tone, or don’t factor in which tone to use at all.
Take, for instance, a “luxury brand” with a very woo woo personality. Let’s call them “The Luxury Brand.” Real creative.
The Luxury Brand sells products with clean ingredients and is geared toward women with disposable income who do yoga every morning and drink kombucha every afternoon. (Nothing wrong with that, by the way. Just trying to paint you a picture.)
The Luxury Brand uses a tone for their product descriptions and homepage that is serious, casual, very respectful, and matter of fact. And this tone works for them: it helps create a serene, tranquil digital atmosphere.
But then, you click into The Luxury Brand’s blog and their tone drastically changes.
The blog posts are written in a tone that is still casual, but funny, enthusiastic (with multiple exclamation points), and irreverent. Lots of f-bombs. Lots of making fun of the industry they are in. It’s not a bad tone, on its own. It’s just COMPLETELY different from the tone used throughout the rest of the website. Plus, it’s off-brand and quite frankly, doesn’t work for the product or the audience.
And because of that — because of the two completely different tones — The Luxury Brand loses something. Its identity gets lost and is not as strong as it could be if the tone had been on point the entire time.
Your Messaging May Be Interpreted Differently Than You Intended
You are not the same as your audience.
Your interpretation of your tone could maybe be different than the interpretation your audience has when they’re reading your stuff.
For example, with The Luxury Brand – I am sure when whoever was writing the blog posts, they thought they were being real, witty, and funny — but to me, the reader, I was honestly a little taken aback because it was just not what I was expecting (and again, this vibe didn’t feel in alignment with their products). I wasn’t offended, personally, it was just weird.
Take Extra Care With Humor
With humor in particular, you have to be careful because it can get in the way of connecting with your audience because when your joke doesn’t land, you annoy people and push them away.
It’s kind of the same thing with trying to be clever. Have you ever read the words on someone’s website and while it sounds good, you have to read through it five times to understand what they’re actually trying to say because they’re trying to be too cute?
Yep! That can be very off-putting to readers!
I don’t want to scare you away from attempting to use humor, though. If humor feels authentic to you, by all means, try to inject some in. Just don’t go overboard. You don’t need a joke every 3 sentences. And remember that it’s very likely that not EVERYONE is going to “get” your joke.
Consider Where Readers Are At Emotionally
It’s all about that bedside manner! You absolutely will want to change your tone to some degree to better fit the situation.
If you’re reading through someone’s return policy because you aren’t happy with your purchase, would you rather have the message be something like:
“Ahh man!! You didn’t like your order??? That’s too bad LOL just kidding, send your crap back to us within 14 days and we’ll see what we can do!!”
Or would you rather hear something like…
“We’re so sorry you are thinking of returning this item! Please ship your item back to us within 14 days for a full refund.”
The personality is still there, but the latter gives people the info in a way that isn’t going to annoy them.
That being said, do make sure your tone of voice is MOSTLY consistent and carries over to all areas where you interact with your audience.
Listen To Feedback
You may think you’re using a casual, enthusiastic tone, when in reality, to 9 of 10 other people, it comes across as overly stuffy and matter-of-fact.
Pay attention and listen to feedback from LOTS of people to better understand how people are interpreting your message and if it’s landing with the right people.
And just like you’re gonna run into the occasional person who will LOVE an unexpected use of tone — like they’ll love the cheeky return policy messaging, even though most people won’t — you’re also going to have someone now and again who won’t like the tone you use at all.
In some cases – you may need to re-evaluate if the tone you’re using is really the correct one for your brand.
In other cases – you may just have to accept that not everyone is gonna love you, and that’s ok. You don’t need to “be” for everyone.
Identifying Your Own Brand’s Tone:
Go back to the four tone of voice dimensions and establish where your tone falls.
- Is it funny or serious?
- Is it formal or casual?
- Is it respectful or irreverent?
- Is it enthusiastic or matter of fact?
Important to note: it’s a sliding scale. You don’t have to be ALL funny or ALL serious. You can be somewhere in the middle. I would just try to not be neutral on all of them, or you won’t have much to work with.
If you want a fancy name for this, you can call it your “Tone Of Voice Profile.”
Elaborating On Your Tone Of Voice Profile
Write down more about WHY you have chosen that tone of voice profile to add in context.
For example:
We’re a meditation studio and we should be serious because we are working with people going through major life transitions, getting to the root of heavy emotional turmoil.
Or, maybe:
Or we should be enthusiastic because we know working with us will bring about such a profound change, we want to convey those positive emotions in our words.
Identify Any Other Words That Properly Describe Your Tone
If there are any other words that properly describe your tone, feel free to add those as well.
For example:
- We’re gruff but not scary
- We’re informative while still being empathetic
You Can ALWAYS Edit Your Messaging For Tone!
The wonderful thing about words is they’re FREE! If you find your tone of voice needs to be modified, you can just go back through and edit! That’s why I’m such a big proponent of not spending big bucks on a copywriter and writing your own words. Once you have a solid foundation built, you’re free to fly and write your website words whenever you want.
A lot of people are under the impression that they’re just not good writers so they’re incapable of writing the copy for their website. I wholeheartedly believe that is NOT true.
The problem is a lot of people go into writing their website words cold, with nothing to rely on except what they learned in 10th grade English class.
The truth is, writing online is a whole new ball game, so a lot of what we learned in 10th grade English class doesn’t apply anyway. Now, that may seem scary, but it’s actually a whole new opportunity to learn some knowledge and apply that in a way that can really move the mark for your business!
Just by establishing your tone of voice profile, you picked up some super helpful tips to help you establish your foundation. This is going to pay off big time when you sit down and open up Microsoft Word or Google Docs or whatever you prefer to use.
Do remember, though, that TONE is only one part of your brand’s foundation. Figuring this out will help, but it’s not EVERYTHING. If you haven’t, it’s worth going back to basics and establishing some strong brand foundations.