Tone of voice: What is it and why does it matter?

Tone of voice is the way you express yourself as a business – it’s the persona you create for your brand and how you communicate that to your audience in spoken and written words. Tone of voice helps consumers understand what your business is about and how you want to be perceived, through the characterisation of your brand. It’s less about what you say, and more about how you say it.

Developing a tone of voice for your brand is important for many reasons. Not least because it helps to give focus to your communication; using tone of voice consistently also helps to get across to users, what your business is and what it stands for. It can also help you to refine who your audience is by making your business more or less appealing to certain consumers, depending on who you target with your tone of voice.

Focus

One benefit to establishing a tone of voice for your brand is that it helps determine how you’re going to communicate to your audience. If your audience is mostly affluent professionals, you may want to apply a more serious tone and use more complex language in your communication.

A business with a less serious function may adopt a fun and cheeky tone of voice, using emojis and colourful language to engage with its audience. Think of the tone of voice as the personality of your business - and in most businesses, there are many employees all with different individual personalities. This can make it hard to produce a consistent string of messaging when so many people are creating content. With one tone of voice, you and your colleagues can focus each of your business messages to convey the business ‘personality’.

Consistency

Sticking to your tone of voice helps build up consistency across your brand and avoids giving mixed messages to your audience. You should have a consistent tone of voice across your communications on social media, newsletters and even your staff in customer services.

That’s not to say you can’t ever be serious or fun in certain circumstances if your tone of voice is usually the opposite, but your communications across platforms should be joined up in terms of the impression they create on your audience.

Direction

Developing a tone of voice lets you set the direction for your business and keeps you and your colleagues on the same page. If your business has a mission, for example to create less waste in the world, then you might have a friendly but educational tone of voice to let consumers know that your business is environmentally friendly.

From there, every time you plan a newsletter or post content on social media you can cross reference your tone of voice to ensure your message is on point with your brand mission.

Distinction

Your tone of voice helps to distinguish you from your competitors and helps users to identify your brand from others. In a busy marketplace, tone of voice becomes increasingly important because it might be one of the few things that makes you different from that other café, shop or service provider.

If you want to generate new or repeat business, brand tone of voice helps to make your business memorable and therefore makes it easier to recall.

Identity

As well as being distinctive, tone of voice gives your brand an identity. It should be obvious from your messaging and communication, just what your brand persona is. Tone of voice can bridge the gap between you and your users, making your brand feel familiar to your customers.

Creating an identity through tone of voice takes some effort, but when you get it right it could be the best thing for your business. Many successful businesses thrive off their identity, more so than being known for the items they sell or services they provide.

Like what you see? Sign up for the sshare.media newsletter to receive more news straight to your inbox