Making sure that there is a consistent brand voice across all of your social media content is one of the key elements to creating a solid and reputable brand online.
The right brand voice can make your company appear more memorable, approachable and help you to reach your marketing goals. However, choosing and implementing the right voice is easier said than done.
Every brand’s tone is different and you will find a huge variance online from the deadly serious to the super laid back and humorous. To help you come to the right decision about what will work for your brand, we’ve created some handy, practical advice.
So if you need some assistance finding your brand voice in the wide world of social media, then keep on reading.
Mimic your customers
A great tip to help you when deciding on the right tone of voice for your brand is to simply mirror your clients. Remember, when choosing how you want to come across to potential customers, the best way to engage is to speak to them the way that they speak to each other. In the vast world of social media, people like to feel part of a smaller community and feel truly involved. If you mimic the voice of your customers, you increase your chances of creating that sought after loyal community around your brand. People will feel more comfortable interacting with you and you will come across as more approachable. From this you will achieve better engagement levels and a higher follower count. And what does all of this mean? More sales! Easy, right?!
Make a decision and stick to it!
You need to ensure that you make a decision between the quirky, the fun and the serious tones. And once you have made this decision you must stick with it! It may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but an inconsistent brand voice can have a seriously detrimental effect on your brands’ following and ultimately your sales and profits. Think about it this way: if your business’ content was put out there without any of your branding, would people be able to tell it was you? If there was no logo attached and no contact details, could someone see that various different pieces of your content all belonged to the same brand? If not, you still have some more work to do. Establish how you want to come across and…stick with it!
Check out the competition
If you’re having trouble with knowing where to place yourself in the online arena branding and tone of voice wise, a little market research never goes amiss. Just as you would research consumer trends in order to find out the most popular items that are trending right now, look into what other, similar brands are doing with their tone of voice. More specifically, look at what other successful brands are doing. Now, of course, it’s not a one size fits all scenario here, but if you can see that your competitors are doing especially well using a certain brand voice that would also tie in well with your brand image – then absolutely use that information to your advantage!
Don’t be afraid to test it out
As well as doing a little market research, another helpful way to make sure you have made the right decision when it comes to picking your brand voice is to give it a test run. In the same way that you would never put a product into production without some preliminary testing, make sure that you trial your newfound brand voice among some select customers. Gather a group together to trial your chosen brand voice and ask them for honest, constructive feedback on some example pieces of social content. You know what we’re going to say next, don’t you? Yup, take that feedback on board! After all, no-one knows what works for your customers more than your customers.
Deciding on your brand voice is not something that should be taken lightly. You need to consider a variety of options before choosing what suits your brand best. Think about what your customers want, how they interact with each other and of course, see what others in your industry have had success with. The team at 99social can help you to perfect your brand voice and offer expert, affordable social media assistance, so get in touch with us today.