Tone of voice is all about how you come across to an audience, whether that’s a digital audience with social media posts and ad campaigns or communicating with customers in person.

Your brand most likely has a tone of voice already, even if you don’t realize it.

Understanding Tone of Voice

Oftentimes, tone can be treated like an ethereal idea for writers to create, but when you are writing for a brand, the tone is very real and can be defined and adapted logically to improve brand messaging. Research on tone of voice shows us that consumers are more likely to resonate with a human tone that ‘transmits more emotions’ than a dry corporate tone. The same research shows that consistent and relatable messaging helps build trust and meets customers’ expectations.

Tips and Tricks for Tone of Voice in Branding

Whether you are trying to build a young brand, revamp an established one, or grow an emerging brand, adjusting the tone is a great place to start implementing changes.

Any writer, whether they're a communications specialist, copywriter, or budding journalist studying for a journalism degree online, will tell you the importance of your tone of voice. The tone they create can make all the difference in building an audience, creating trust, and encouraging brand loyalty and interest.

According to the recently disbanded 18F Digital Services Agency, some key tips and tricks can make all the difference:

1. Learn to Distinguish Voice and Tone

   Voice is your brand's personality, and tone is the emotional tone of your communication. If you understand the difference between voice and tone, you can maintain a consistent voice while varying the tone for varying situations and individuals.

2. Be Approachable and Friendly

   A warm and friendly tone makes your content more engaging and personal. Use a conversational tone, contractions, a friendly, inviting style, and plenty of creativity to connect with your audience on a personal level.

3. Be Authoritative and Clear

   Aside from being friendly, it's also important to be clear and authoritative. Your tone should reflect confidence and expertise so your audience feels confident in the information you're presenting.

4. Tone to Context

   Different contexts call for different tones. For example, a serious tone is used for dealing with serious issues, and a cheerful tone is used for happy announcements. Changing your tone based on context helps your message resonate with your audience.

5. Consistency is Key

   Tone consistency across all channels of communication creates brand recognition and trust. Develop a tone of voice guide and make all employees adhere to it, hence developing a uniform and reliable brand personality.

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Engaging Your Audience with Tone of Voice

By speaking directly to your audience, you have a chance to use their language, attend to their needs, and make them feel important—the best way to do this—a captivating tone of voice.

By using case studies, stories, audience-resonant testimonials, storytelling strategies, and all of the other techniques good writers understand, you can make content more memorable and relatable.

To improve the connection with your brand, you can use a more human tone that resonates with people because it elicits feelings like laughter, empathy, or excitement through humor, contradiction, or just witty writing.

By posing queries, soliciting comments, and producing interesting content like surveys or tests, you can use your tone to promote interactions that keep people coming back for more.

Perhaps most importantly, you can use your tone to create a unified brand experience and establish trust, but remember, consistency is key, so make sure your tone is the same across all channels, from social media to customer support.

Implementing and Maintaining Your Tone of Voice

Now that you have an idea of what to look for, it's time to start planning out a tone for your brand. A great way to start, especially if you have multiple writers and content creators, is by creating a detailed guide. A guide can help you brainstorm and set down ideas; it doesn’t have to be set in stone, but a document everyone can access makes sure the tone is consistent and voices are heard. Regular training sessions help keep everyone on the same page and provide an opportunity for new ideas to be heard.

Having a system or person who can regularly monitor and evaluate brand consistency helps to make sure the right tone is kept and consistent across larger companies. Having a person in charge of brand tone also means there is someone writers can go to with new ideas, suggestions, and feedback.

Tone Tracking Tech

Using new tools and technology is a great way to keep your tone of voice consistent. All brand assets are centralized by content management systems (CMS) such as Brandfolder, guaranteeing that everyone has access to the most recent resources. In addition to good grammar, style checkers like Grammarly now have built-in tone-detection capabilities that offer real-time recommendations to match material with the voice of your business. CoSchedule and other collaboration systems make it easy for teams to work together, enabling several authors to evaluate content before it is published and follow tone rules.

At the same time, AI-powered solutions such as Phrasee and Persado can provide language that is consistent with the voice of your business, allowing you to scale content production without compromising quality. Together, these technologies support the upkeep of a consistent and trustworthy brand identity across all media.

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Consistency Really is Key

Yes, we have mentioned consistency, but it cannot be understated how important consistency is. Making a comprehensive guide, having training sessions, opportunities for feedback, and content management systems are all excellent but if consistency starts to falter, then tone of voice can lose its impact and potential.

All of the aforementioned tips, tricks, and tools are great ways to establish and maintain consistency, but at the end of the day, it takes skilled and motivated staff to stick to the desired tone while maintaining their sense of humor and individual style–which is really what makes writing readable and content relatable.

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