Start Crafting Your Brand Voice by Answering These 15 Questions
A strong, consistent brand voice is absolutely essential to setting your business (or yourself!) apart from your competition. Whether you’re crafting your own personal brand or building a reputation for your company, the way you speak to your target market can make all the difference in their eyes.
The language you choose sends very specific signals to your audience, subconsciously painting a picture of you in their minds. When you post on social media, update your website, or send out an email, you’ll want that picture to be consistent and true to your organization. Therefore, it is key to get that language and voice right.
Here are some questions I’d recommend exploring while crafting your brand voice:
Questions About Your Target Audience
The first step is to define and analyze your target audience – the people you’ll be speaking to. This will help you to cement your objectives and better understand the personalities you want to attract with your communications. Understanding them means better understanding the message you need to send in order to convert them into customers or followers.
Start by asking:
Who are you speaking to?
What action do you want them to take?
What do you want them to think of you?
How do they speak?
Questions About Your Business
Once you have a solid understanding of your target market, it’s time to look inward. You need to nail down your own personal goals and/or those of your organization and determine how that translates into a brand persona. You’ll want to think both practically and emotionally, as most people make decisions based on both logic and feelings.
Think about:
What product, service, or idea are you selling?
If you’ve already named your business (or decided on a social media handle), does the name inspire those target emotions? What does it reflect?
Do you have a clear mission and vision?
What sets you apart from your competition?
What emotions do you want your business/persona to inspire?
If your business were a person, what would they be like? If this is your personal brand voice, what qualities are you trying to exhibit?
Questions About Bridging That Gap
With a clear idea of your audience and your own brand in mind, it’s now time to connect the two and determine how you will interact with that target market. Figuring out how you speak to each other is the key to finding your brand voice.
Some brands are very focused on fostering an emotionally driven, empathetic relationship with their customers, so their voice is kind, caring, and thoughtful. On the other end of the spectrum, some brands like to be a bit more playful or even poke fun at their competition (and even their audience), which certainly gets people’s attention and entertains them. This more “unhinged” brand voice creates buzz and differentiates your organization, as we can see from the effectiveness social media strategies implemented by Wendy’s and Duolingo.
Now, I don’t necessarily think every brand should go right for the jugular and start roasting their competition on TikTok or X. There’s a right balance for everyone, and you’ll likely find success somewhere between the extremes with a layered and multi-faceted approach. You can figure out what that looks like by considering these factors:
Does your business need to inspire, educate, or persuade that target audience?
Think about the person you’re targeting and the persona you’re crafting for your business or yourself. What would their relationship be? (i.e. peers/friends, parent/child, student/teacher, mentor/mentee, etc.)
How would those two people speak to each other?
Is there certain language you want to stay away from? Alternatively, is there any language/slang you want to embrace?
Do you want to push any boundaries? In other words, how risky do you want to be?
This is just a starting point. You will need to hone that voice over time, until you hear it as clearly as your own.
Also bear in mind that with content and social media, authenticity matters. If you’re posting content that solely exists to follow a trend or mimic another successful brand, people will know. So, don’t cut any corners and work on that genuine brand voice until it accurately reflects you/your organization and resonates in the way you want it to.
If you need some help tailoring your brand and content strategy, I am always happy to assist. Please reach out to me for a preliminary conversation today.
