By Katy Howell | March 1, 2022
When it comes to social media, tone of voice is everything. Not only is it a way to communicate your brand’s personality and purpose, but it also sets you apart from others and helps you stand out in the busy social landscape.
TOV is something that requires thought, consideration and most importantly collaboration between key stakeholders. We’d recommend building out a messaging framework in a collective format that aims to address the following:
- Brand persona – ask yourself who your brand would be if it was a real person or fictional character. The idea here is to pull out specific attributes that fit your brand. Determine this by running activities that compare characters, eliminating those that don’t identify with your brand and adding those that do. Think of conversation driving questions to prompt conversation: If your brand was a drink, what you it be? What cartoon character would you be? What job would your brand have?
- Tone – what is the general vibe of your brand? Is it humble? Honest? Clinical? Direct? Think of the adjectives that represent the way your brand should be known for.
- Language – what kind of language do you want to be using? Are you communicating in a simple or detailed way? What kind of words should your brand be utilising? Pulling examples and then categorising them under “more like this” and “less like this” is a great first step to determining language.
- Purpose – what is your ‘why’. What do you want your brand to be known for and why do you do what you do? All your activities should be rooted in the ‘why’, so it’s important to determine it from the outset.
There are plenty of exercises that can be run to surface brand persona, tone, language, and purpose. If your brand needs help doing just that, drop us a note.