Setting the tone

Why does it matter?

It’s not what you say about yourself, it’s how you say it. That’s why it’s crucial to get your tone of voice spot on from the onset and throughout. Your tone of voice both embodies and expresses your brand’s personality and values. Working in tandem with your imagery and supporting brand world, it will reflect all about you and the people who make your business.

If we spun these two around, subconsciously we’d know straight away that something just wasn’t right. For large brands their unique tone of voice is so successfully intertwined with their brand, it becomes pretty much indistinguishable. Even if your brand’s not a peacock you’ll still want to stand out from the crowd, and tone of voice can be key to differentiating your brand from the rest. It should be distinctive, recognisable and unique.

Using values to define your tone

This is the biggie. From your logo and strapline to your website and marketing materials, your unique brand values should inform everything you do – tone of voice is no different. All the above should be intrinsically linked, and in the case of tone it will be consistent throughout your brand touchpoints. Simply put;

Consistency is key

Once your tone has been defined by your brand values, ensuring consistency is perhaps the biggest challenge facing many businesses. Particular challenges arise for medium to large-scale companies, when a large number of people start producing content and messages for the outside world.

Internal brand guidelines should be in place outlining your defined tone of voice, but often the challenge lies in ensuring this is followed even when lines may be blurred. In this case you need to trust your team and make sure they both understand your brand values and tone of voice and are comfortable executing them.

While evolution and variation will naturally take place, always remaining true to who you are and your overarching brand values is pivotal.

Tone and style for social

The discussion around tone and style for social could be a whole blog post on its own, so we’ll leave the nitty gritty for a different day. Instead we’ll try to cover some of the basic dos and don’ts.

It’s not the 80s anymore; most of us don’t wear suits to work, we don’t have fax machines and we don’t use bricks for phones. And with access to social media, the internet and emails 24 hours a day, the lines between work and home life are becoming ever more blurred. While that may not necessarily be a good thing, it inevitably impacts on how and when we communicate.

But we’re straying too close to the lines of content here (which definitely is another blog post for another day). Let’s move back to tone of voice.

When it comes to complaints, grievances or negative comments, again carefully consider your strategy. Finding the balance is key. No one likes a know it all or being talked down to, but then again you need to have confidence in your product or service. Know when to accept you’re in the wrong but also know went to have some fun, stand your ground or defend your corner. For some organisations in the B2B world, a big stumbling block can be a lack of personal approach or human face. And while it’s true that such B2B conversations and engagements can be awkward and clunky, it doesn’t always have to be. At the end of the day you’re speaking to the people behind the face of a business, so treat them like that. That’s not to say you should be ‘matey’ or talking like you do in texts; you should still present a unified and professional voice, just a little less formal than usual. ## Humour and quirkiness Humour and quirkiness can be two great tools for improving your communications and nailing your tone of voice. But be careful – make sure any humour is relevant, suitable and most of all relatable to your target audience. We don’t mean tell jokes every five seconds on your social channels or newsletters. We mean subtly going about things and even laughing at yourself from time to time.

This brings a certain humility and down to earth feel to your brand that customers can truly relate to and value. Some brands will want to stay well clear of humour and that’s fine too. As with your wider tone of voice, your brand values will give a good indication of whether you should press ahead or give humour a wide berth.

A final word: variation and when to keep things simple

This post has mainly covered customer interaction, lead communication and general tone of voice; more formal documents and corporate copy will inevitably be different. When it comes to such instances you may still want to add some unique brand flavour but this will largely depend on the circumstances and situation.

Do your utmost to avoid dating your copy. While colloquial or slang terms can be great, make sure it’s relevant and isn’t going to look drastically out of date or cringey in six months time. Vocabulary is sometimes like fashion – what can be on trend now can be out of date in just a few weeks time.

Keeping things timeless, consistent, simple and natural is nearly always the best route.