What is Your Social Media Voice?

Branding is not all about your logo, your avatar, your design etc. Although it’s important to think about that, remember that every single thing you choose to post on social media is building your brand! What you post, and the way you post it, is ultimately going to stick in people’s minds more than your design or tagline!

What Makes Your Business Unique?

To start thinking about your social media voice, think about what makes your business unique. You might be doing a similar thing to many other people/ businesses out there, but there must be something in your history or your story that makes you different.

For example, is it your commitment to donate $X amount of your profits to charity? Is it the fact that you started an online business to claw your way out of thousands of dollars worth of debt? Is it that you want to help people with families like yours spend more time with their kids?
It doesn’t have to be something huge, but think of something and note it down in your social media planning sheet.

Who Is Posting?

The second step in figuring out your social media voice is determining who will be posting. For most small businesses that means you’ll be doing it yourself. This makes discovering your voice a little easier, as you can think about the way you tend to interact with people in the real world, and continue that on social media.
If you have a team or a social media manager posting for you then you’ll have to discuss this with them. All it means is that you’ll need to give them a few examples of the tone in which you’d prefer them to post, and ask them to be consistent about it (see below about ground rules).

Think About Your Tone

How do you want your posts to come across? Are you the kind of person/ business who likes to cause controversy? Do you want to be seen as kind and helpful? Or will you differentiate yourself by bringing some humor to the industry?
You can, of course, use a mix of all different tones of voice, but you’ll find that one becomes more common and works best for you. Whatever you do, don’t chop and change all the time between sarcasm and serious topics – it’ll totally confuse your followers!

Create Some Ground Rules

To make things easier for yourself and/ or your social media team, create a list of ground rules. Here are some examples:

• Never mention politics (or always mention politics if you want to be controversial!)
• Don’t be afraid to share funny memes,
• Never use slang spelling,
• Don’t be afraid of posting funny, nonsensical posts,
• Have fun sharing unrelated photos,
• Always post in an informative tone,
• Post lots of inspirational quotes,
• Make an effort to tweet followers when they mention your brand,
• Use “geek speak”,
• Don’t be afraid of being rude/ sarcastic.

You get the idea! Remember that these rules will keep evolving over time. Eventually, your social media followers will come to expect a certain style from you, and it’ll be one of the main reasons why they continue to follow you.

Coming up in my next post:  Social Media Branding Rule #3: Know Your Audience

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