{"id":1830,"date":"2016-10-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenmedia.go4wordpress.com\/2016\/10\/20\/5-steps-developing-outstanding-brand-voice-social-media\/"},"modified":"2020-10-16T10:31:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T10:31:45","slug":"5-steps-developing-outstanding-brand-voice-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenmedia.com\/blog\/5-steps-developing-outstanding-brand-voice-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Steps to Developing an Outstanding Brand Voice on Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your social media posts say a lot about your brand. But are they saying the right thing? <\/span><\/p>\n

Because <\/span>social media has become such a vital part of digital marketing<\/span><\/a>, many businesses have found themselves creating hasty profiles on three or four social media platforms, and posting what they can when they can – sometimes, simply just to maintain a presence on the channel.<\/span><\/p>\n

While this is a fairly common situation, even among large enterprises with lots of resources, it\u2019s hardly ideal. The problem is that you\u2019re not telling a unified story. You\u2019re not speaking with a defined, recognizable brand voice. And that means that you\u2019re missing out on a major opportunity to connect with your customers.<\/p>\n

How do you go from having a haphazard social media presence to one that clearly identifies what your brand is all about? The key is developing your brand voice. Follow these five steps to get started.<\/p>\n

1. Delve into your company\u2019s culture<\/b>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Your brand voice is really an expression of your company culture, so a good place to start is to spend some time defining that culture. Is your company youthful and on-trend, like PopSugar? Or is it established and traditional, like Farmers Insurance Co.? Do you embrace risk, or avoid it? Is the culture lively, academic, warm, intellectual…you get the picture.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve come up with a few adjectives to describe your general company culture, you\u2019ve got a basic blueprint for your brand\u2019s voice – a persona. But a basic blueprint isn\u2019t quite enough. You want to be able to fill in the details, too.<\/p>\n

To do that, start thinking about how you and your colleagues talk about your brand. How do you talk about it with each other? How do you talk about it with your clients? Are there specific topics that are important to your brand\u2019s mission?<\/p>\n

The answers to all of these questions will come into play <\/span>as you develop your brand voice<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example:<\/b><\/p>\n

Dove Beauty Care is one of the greatest examples of how a brand can develop an authentic and important social media voice. If you\u2019re not familiar with Dove and its social mission, all you have to do is<\/span> take a look at their Twitter profile<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

With just a single glance, you can tell what Dove is about: women, girls, beauty, and self-esteem. As you read through their tweets, you see posts on topics like body-shaming, negativity online, and how to talk to your daughter about self-esteem. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dove\u2019s brand voice, we see, is empowering, uplifting, and inspirational. The company has honed this voice to perfection, and it\u2019s kept up along all their social media channels. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that you need to have an explicit social message the way that Dove does, because that\u2019s not right for every company. However, your brand voice does need to go deeper than your product or service – it needs to express what your company is all about.<\/p>\n

2. Establish your tone (or tones) by identifying your customers.<\/b><\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve gotten a handle on your brand\u2019s voice by looking inward, to your company, it\u2019s time to develop your tone. To do that, you have to start looking outward.<\/p>\n

Tone is, in essence, a subset of voice. While you have one brand voice, you can have several different tones that you use for different audiences or different situations.<\/p>\n

Your customer personas will give you some guidance here. If you\u2019re a large enterprise with <\/span>many products aimed at different types of consumers <\/span><\/a>– think Johnson & Johnson, which makes both medical devices and consumer baby products, for example – then you may have separate social media profiles for each product group, each with its own tone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take a look here at the Johnson\u2019s Baby Twitter account, versus the corporate Johnson & Johnson (JNJCares) Twitter account:<\/p>\n

\"johnson's<\/p>\n

via @johnsonsbaby<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n

\"johnsons<\/p>\n

via JNJCares<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Each profile offers different types of information in a different tone – Johnson\u2019s Baby is more personal, while Johnson & Johnson is rather formal, focused more on facts and figures. But both convey a consistent brand voice, which is responsible, knowledgeable, and caring.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a great graphic <\/span>by Stephanie Schwab of Social Media Explorer<\/span><\/a> that explains how tone plays into your brand voice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"brand<\/p>\n

via Social Media Explorer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Just as the tone is an element of brand voice, so too are your persona (as mentioned earlier), language, and purpose. Language means, simply enough, the words you choose to speak to your customers, while Purpose refers to why you\u2019re speaking to them at all. That could be to educate them on a specific product or topic, to engage them in a discussion of a particular issue, to entertain them with silly GIFs every Friday, etc.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re dealing with multiple social media profiles or multiple customer groups, your tone and purpose may change; however, in general, your persona and language will stay roughly the same.<\/p>\n

3. Cultivate authenticity.<\/b><\/p>\n

No matter what your brand voice is like, it\u2019s got to be authentic if it\u2019s going to be effective. Social media is about conversing and engaging with your supporters, not disseminating product specs (although it can be used for that as well, if done sparingly and carefully).<\/p>\n

A good brand voice will sound like a person, not a faceless company. Take <\/span>Thrillist, a men\u2019s lifestyle newsletter<\/span><\/a> that\u2019s aimed at young urban professionals. Their social media voice is irreverent, funny, and a bit snarky – kind of like the best bro-friend in every male comedy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"thrillist<\/p>\n

via @Thrillist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Having a clearly defined brand voice will go a long way toward helping you achieve this authenticity. Why? Because when the people who are posting for your brand know what that voice is, they\u2019re freer to be themselves – within those specific guidelines, of course.<\/p>\n

4. Think before you post.<\/b><\/p>\n

This goes without saying, but it still bears repeating. It\u2019s important to have a consistent presence on social media, yes – but you don\u2019t want to post simply for the sake of posting. Doing this makes it more likely that you\u2019ll post something that\u2019s out of sync with your brand voice. And trust us: your followers will notice.<\/p>\n

A good rule of thumb when you post as your brand is to ask yourself these two questions:<\/p>\n