Finding Your Brand’s Voice
How to define your company’s written identity.
Branding is the glue that holds all your company communications together. It unites your company’s mission, written content and visual design.
But because people talk a lot about the importance of “branding,” it can be tough to sift through the buzzy articles out there and extract some real, impactful advice.
In the 7 days before publishing this post, #branding was used more than 90,000 times on Twitter.
So here are some short, straightforward steps to defining a voice that best represents your brand.
First
Imagine your company is a person. Choose 3 adjectives that would define your company’s personality. These should be simple, one-word answers.
If we were completing this exercise for Quinn, the answers could be:
- Knowledgeable
- Honest
- Helpful
Next
Qualify each of the words that you chose with a “but not.”
For Quinn, the answers would be:
- Knowledgeable, but not arrogant
- Honest, but not blunt
- Helpful, but not condescending
There are many connotations that each adjective carries. Qualifying each characteristic helps to really nail down the tone you’re going for.
Check it
You should now have 3 rules to begin guiding your content. But, to make sure these are the best descriptors possible, you should definitely check your work.
Your Users
People turn to products and companies that they understand and relate to. Therefore, your company’s voice should not be too far removed from the tone of your customers.
After you define what you think your company’s voice should be, check social media and the messages sent to your customer service: Do your users speak formally or casually? Are they humorous or serious?
If your tone is drastically different from what you see, you should consider reworking your brand guidelines or expanding your user base to target new, relevant demographics.
Your Competitors
Speaking of customers, your company’s voice should also differentiate you as you compete for users’ attention.
Thus, it’s important to know how your brand differs from your competitors. To figure this out, identify your competitors and how your differ from each one.
For example:
- More trustworthy than Company X
- More personable than Company Y
- Less bold than Company Z
The comparisons you come up with should make sense alongside and help specify your own voice guidelines.
If you are having trouble identifying how your brand is different, you should redefine your company’s voice to differentiate it.
Translate it
Brand guidelines are of little use if they don’t actually guide the content you produce.
Along with the points you’ve already written out, you should also consider how written content can reflect these guidelines.
How can the following reinforce your brand identity?
- Sentence type (short and direct, or elaborate and flowery)
- Word choice (direct and forceful, or passive and polite)
- Fonts (bold and new, or familiar and traditional)
- Punctuation (exclamation points or periods)
You can develop these further in your company’s style guide.
