Tone of voice. Why it matters.

Learnings from creating a content style guide.

Websites. Blogs. Tweets. Videos. Brochures. What do they all have in common? They’re all channels that represent your brand’s tone of voice and personality. Allowing it to shine.

The 7%, 38%, 55% rule

Albert Mehrabian discovered that the art of successful communication can be broken down into 3 simple areas:

• 7% is made up of the words you use
• 38% is your tone of voice
• 55% is body language

With that in mind now has never been a better time to further embed your brand’s tone of voice within your design process. Especially as brands are moving further and further into the realms of an online digital experience.

“Words are the key to connecting the online member experience.” — Erika Hall, Conversational Design

Yes, your tone may shift slightly depending on your audience, format or channel. But ultimately, you want to craft content that has a consistent tone of voice that’s easy to understand.

“Good writing is like witchcraft.” — Joscelin, Google design

Why is tone of voice important?

Apart from bringing your brand personality to life. Your brand’s tone of voice can help with:

• Making you stand out
  Today you have 15 seconds to make an impression on your audience. So be clear on “what” you want to say. Think about “how” you say it. This is what will set you apart from the competition.
• Building trust and loyalty
  Your brand’s tone of voice goes a long way towards making your customers feel welcome. Get it right, and you’ll win their trust and loyalty. Get it wrong, and they’ll look elsewhere, and you’ll lose credibility.
• Selling, persuasion and guidance
  Today your content has to do a lot of work. It has to “sell” without selling. Inform your customers and even guide them. Even microcopy, such as a call to action should have a right balance of tone.

As champions of your brand, you want to embed a trustworthy tone into every piece of content that you create. You want your content to provide a good experience through the customer journey. Because “how” you speak to them and can make them “feel” goes a long way.

“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design. It’s decoration.” — Jeffrey Zeldman

Alas, it can be a challenge. Getting consistency across all your channels is no easy task. No doubt you’ll have lots of content wizards that sit across multiple departments. But an inconsistent tone will build an inconsistent picture of your brand. Which can lead to distrust and unsatisfied customers, harming your brand identity.

How to find your brand’s voice

So now you can see the importance of tone of voice. But how do you find it? Well, start by asking yourself 4 simple questions.

#1 What makes your brand unique?
Write a short overview of your brand. And highlight the keywords that would best describe your brand.

#2 What would your brand look like if they were a person?
How would you best describe them? How would they communicate your brand’s personality?

#3 What best describes your brand?
List the traits that make your brand stand out. It’s also good to list the characteristics that you want to avoid.

#4 If your brand could talk, what would it say?
Describe how your brand would speak. List out key features of your brand’s voice. And how it might change in various situations.

At giffgaff we ran a workshop similar to this with all creators, UX and Design, and developed a tone of voice matrix where we plotted key pages of the site to see where our tone of voice could be dialed up or down.

We’ve now started using this matrix when crafting user journeys to stop the opportunity to dial up the giffgaff brand’s tone of voice.

Your voice needs emotion

Your content is a joyful part of the customer journey. And it’s also a functional part of the design. You should encourage and guide the customer, showing them what they need to do and how.

If you positively support and encourage your customers through their journey, they’ll be more likely to complete the task.

There are 3 pillars to consider when adding emotion to your brand’s tone of voice.

#1 Emotive
Make sure your content is consistent and correct. Provide your customers with easy-to-read content. Your customers shouldn’t have any problems understanding “what” you say.

#2 Reflective
Be clear and straightforward. Be helpful and make your customers feel good. You want your customers to think fondly of you and recommend your brand to their friends.

#3 Behavioural
Be informative. Guide your customers to where they need to go. If your website isn’t helpful, then your customers won’t know what to do.

Your content isn’t working if it’s aggravating the customer. Preventing them from doing what they need to do or blaming them.

Crafting your style

You’ve found your voice and explored “where” and “how” you can be emotive. But, how do you make sure that you maintain and continue to build a consistent brand identity?

Well, a good place to start is by creating style guidelines that’ll educate other content wizards to write good branded content. After all, you don’t want to lose all the hard work you’ve done.

• A, B, C. It’s easy as…
  Create a brand dictionary. List out the words that your brand uses and how they’re used. It can help establish consistency. But make it crystal clear what’s expected.
• Excuse me? Does this sounds like us
  Similar to the A to Z. Create a pool of words and phrases that sound similar to your brand. These are words of expression that make you sound unique.
• How do I look?
  Don’t let your content just become words on a page. Think about formatting. Make your content part of the design process. And collaborate with your UXers and Designers.
• Can I get some help?
  Develop guides on how to use your brand’s tone of voice. Your tone of voice is likely to change across different channels. Tell them and show them when and where they’ll need to dial-up or down the tone.
• Who else has access
  Make your content style guide available for all to see. Add it to your design system. It’s a great way to get third party content creators to help champion your brand tone of voice.

Don’t stop now

Your brand tone of voice is everywhere, making it an essential part of your brand. Start reviewing your existing content and seek out any positive and negative examples of copy that can be rewritten.

A/B test these changes to see the impact it can have on conversion and retention. It will help you sell the value of content and showcase its importance.

Your brand’s tone of voice is a living breathing thing. It will evolve over time. Keeping your style guide updated can help maintain consistency.

The fun has only just begun.