Social is Social: The Importance of Brand Voice When Communicating on Social Media
May 4, 2022
With companies flooding social media, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of social selling. To help you distinguish yourself from competitors using social media, you have to perfect your brand voice.
When interacting with users on social media, creating a personal connection with consumers is key. The intimate nature of social media allows you to connect with audiences on a more personal level. Without a clear brand voice, there’s a risk that your brand communications are disjointed. This can negatively impact your social media marketing campaigns: an inability to nurture a bond with customers can alienate them.
What is Brand Voice?
Brand voice is a distinct aspect of your branding and can be seen in your brand communications. It refers to the flow of your words, the language used, and the personality conveyed by your brand voice. This voice is applied across channels, wherever your brand speaks. Whether it’s on social media posts, newsletters, internal communications, or PR announcements, your brand voice should remain uniform. Doing so helps consumers recognize your brand, ultimately enhancing your social selling prospects.
The Importance of Brand Voice
By using a unique brand voice in your social media marketing campaigns, you can stand out from the noise. Additionally, a personable brand voice humanizes your brand, allowing you to take part in social media-based conversations naturally. This can help you drive online sales. Delighting your customers with a carefully curated brand voice can lead to positive word of mouth (WOM). This WOM can reach (prospective) customers, ultimately helping you deliver your brand message through social selling.
Tips on Defining your Brand Voice
- Know your audience
To help formulate your brand voice, research your audience is. You’ll want your language to depend on your audience’s demographics, values, and lifestyle preferences. Using language that doesn’t appeal to your target consumers will only distance you from your consumers.
To align your brand voice to your target audience, list out your audience’s traits and vocabulary that you’d want to adopt. This can help you connect with customers on a personal level. For example, if your business is localized, you may want to use regional slang.
- Understand your Competiton
Being different from competitors is key to making your social media marketing stand out. To do this, you have to gather intel on your competitors’ voices. You can obtain insight into your competitors by researching messages from their various channels. Doing so will help you identify their strengths and weaknesses. This can help you improve your branding by capitalizing on opportunities for differentiation. Taking on these ventures can help distinguish your company’s social media branding, potentially leading to an increase in online sales.
- Look Internally
Deep diving into your company culture can help you generate ideas for curating your brand voice. Understanding your brand is just as important as understanding your audience. To do this, start by dissecting your brand’s strategy. What does your brand vision entail? What are your brand’s values? How do you differentiate yourself from competitors? Understanding these strategic pillars can help you improve your brand voice.
Once you understand your environment, you can formulate your brand voice guidelines. This guideline will help you maintain consistency throughout your social media communications.
Conclusion
Creating an effective brand voice is all about setting a tone that consumers can resonate and connect with. With a personal, honest, and trustworthy brand voice, you can keep your customer base happy. As such, a well-crafted brand voice can be a useful tool to enhance customer loyalty and, over time, grow online sales.
