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Defining your brand voice can be a tricky part of your business. A good brand voice will be able to connect with your customers on a deeper level.
But what exactly is your brand voice? Well, it’s not any audio aspects to your brand. It’s not your theme song or your podcast intro.
By definition, your brand voice is your style of communication to your customer, through copywriting and tone.
Your brand voice will be used in every touch point of your business from your blog, to your social media posts and advertising. It will also be used to help you stand out from the crowd because we all know how blogging and social media can sometimes feel like a screaming match to see who is the loudest!
Therefore, it’s crucial to learn how to define your brand voice so you start standing out naturally and authentically and it stops feeling like a screaming match!
A successful brand voice will invite your readers in and make them feel like they belong – and when someone feels like they belong to your brand, they will be more likely to convert to loyal customers.
Developing a voice from your business can be difficult, but these tips will help get you started. As a bonus, I have a quiz you can take at the end of this post to help you figure out what your brand voice currently is.
Read A Lot
Seeing what other people are doing will help you to form your own voice. When you read a blog what do you like? What don’t you like? I know some bloggers who take a totally relaxed approach to blogging that I just love. Others are more polished and professional and I tend to get bored reading blogs like that.
It wasn’t until I started reading blogs, however, that I started to figure out which voices stood out to me!
Know Basic Grammar
Grammar is no fun, but having a blog that doesn’t flow or isn’t written properly will make your readers leave instantly. In order to develop a brand voice, you first need to know the basic rules of grammar.
A good place to start when learning about grammar is to create a style guide for your blog. A style guide is a set of rules that your writing will follow every time you write. For example, are you going to write your blog titles in all capitals, capitalize the first letter of every word or just capitalize the first letter of important words?
Your style guide will lay all those rules out for you. A style guide is a great piece of content to have on hand if you decide to allow guest contributes to your blog, so you can ensure their posts still flow well with the rest of your work.
Write About What You Know
I don’t know about you, but it’s quite obvious when I don’t know what I’m talking about! Have you ever tried to fake your way through a conversation when you know hardly anything about the topic? Your words don’t flow and your sentences are short and choppy while you try to figure out what to say next.
Writing is the same way. Don’t start writing on a subject until you know exactly what you are going to write. You may need to do some research on your topic before beginning, or draft up an outline to help you figure out how you want your piece to flow.
When you’re writing about something you don’t know, you’ll find yourself starting and stopping and will begin to feel like you have writers block.
A blog outline doesn’t need to take up a lot of time either – you can have one finished in 10 minutes.
See How Your Audience Speaks
If your audience is a group of highly educated professionals, they may not like to be spoken to with slang and a relaxed-type of brand voice.
A good indicator of how your audience wants to be spoken to is by checking out what your competition is doing, how they are interacting with your audience and how your audience is responding back.
Incorporate Your Own Voice Into Your Brand Voice
When you’ve figured out the type of brand voice your audience reacts well with, you can start to develop your own voice. Having a brand voice doesn’t mean that you need to totally disregard your own personal voice, however, and incorporating your own voice into your brand voice is going to make you stand out and be more recognizable.
Understand Not everybody will like your brand voice
I recently joined a Facebook group that was geared towards bloggers, and shortly after I joined, they asked if there was anyone who wanted to be one of the moderators of the group. The moderators occasionally get to promote their own content within the group (which is not allowed for members), and I decided that I would contact the current owner of the group to let him know I was interested in being a moderator.
He replied back, basically telling me that my blog was below par. Now at the time I was hurt – but I shouldn’t have been. I know my blog isn’t below par, but my blog isn’t geared towards the person I was speaking with. He sent me a copy of his blog and told me mine should be more like his.
Our two voices were totally different, our audiences are very different, therefore, although our blogs were within the same niche, they both had a totally different approach to them.
Neither one was better than the other!
It just goes to show how one person’s voice can really resonate with someone while totally putting someone else off – and you can’t (and don’t want to) appeal to everybody anyways!
So what’s your brand voice? Take the quiz below to see where you currently stand! Please note you will need to enter your email address to view your results. Your email address will sign you up for my newsletter where I send out freebies and tips, and you can unsubscribe at anytime!
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Dana Nicole is an award-winning freelance writer for MarTech/SaaS who was rated one of the best SaaS writers by Software World. She specializes in writing engaging content that ranks high in search engines and has been featured in publications like Semrush, ConvertKit, and Hotjar.
Dana holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and has over 15 years of experience working alongside national brands in their marketing departments.
When Dana’s not working, you can find her dancing en pointe, cooking up new recipes, and exploring the great outdoors with her two big dogs.
What a neat test. And I would have to say it was very accurate. Thanks for sharing this wonder tool. Nicely done.
Thank you Keith! I’m happy you found it accurate and useful!
I love this test. It was very accurate. ~ Megan Style & Wanderlust
I’m happy to hear you found it accurate, Megan!