Your brand voice exists to help build relationships with potential clients or customers and to maintain the relationships you already have. But should you use the same voice for all of your audiences?
Your Brand Voice and Your Blog
You use your brand voice on your website and in your advertising 100% of the time. It should always be consistent in those arenas. But your blog can be a little bit trickier. Since your blog gives deeper insight into your knowledge and expertise, you may need to appeal to a broader group than just your ideal client. Let me explain further.
Your blog readership is most likely composed of current clients (friends), potential clients (acquaintances) and the interested public (strangers). If you are using your blog to keep up with your friends and further engage your acquaintances, you may want to adapt your brand voice to reach those acquaintances. Think of being in a room with a group: some you know well, some you want to know better. Do you alienate the ones you want to know better by only talking in lingo your friends know? Probably not – you hopefully try to accommodate your acquaintances, too.
Example: Brand Voice 2.0
The first brand voice character we ever made for a client is one of our favorites. The brand voice character’s name is Elizabeth, and she’s someone we aspire to be some day. She is a great spokesperson for the brand and the client has done a great job incorporating Elizabeth in her branding efforts. The client is about to start a blog, though, and Elizabeth will be no longer only be speaking to people just like her – she needs to know how to speak to people who can one day become her. She needs to know how to speak to Elizabeth 2.0.
For example, Elizabeth may tell her friends (current customers) how to do something. Elizabeth 2.0 (potential customer) needs more information – starting with a basic explanation of what they’re going to do, why they should do it, and THEN how to do it. Elizabeth has to make sure Elizabeth 2.0 is brought up to speed in order to get the message across.
The important thing to remember when adapting your brand voice is to make it sound like the same character is speaking – they are just adjusting their language or their cadence to accommodate a broader audience.
In two weeks we’ll talk about adapting your brand voice for social media. Next week: Brands We Love!
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[…] Your Brand Voice for Social Media Two weeks ago, we talked about adapting your brand voice for your blog. Along that same vein (but slightly different) is considering your brand voice when talking for […]