When you start a business, one of the first things you need to do is establish your brand. You need to pick colors, a logo, a mascot, mission and vision statements, style, vibe, and personality. Yes - brands can and should have personalities. Brands are often thought of as living, breathing entities, so it needs to be "someone" that your potential customers will want to hang out with. Your brand's personality is a mixture of all of its elements , but your brand voice and tone are what can communicate its personality effectively. Is your brand flirty and fun? Serious and dignified? Trendy and popular? That's up to you. You have to choose a tone and voice that matches your brand's style, mission, and goals. We've seen lots of clients struggle to personify their brand correctly, so we're here to offer some helpful tips and tricks.

Voice is the unique expression of your brand through words. Brand voice is overarching and should be consistent across all forms of communication. Your brand voice should convey personality, pace, and vocabulary of a brand. For example, you must decide whether or not your brand will use complex words with deep meanings or keep it simple. Tone is a little bit different. Usually known as tone of voice, tone is the attitude behind your brand. Is it sassy or sarcastic? Maybe it's informative and regimented. Whatever the case, tone can change across channels while voice must stay the same. Maybe your blogs have a casual and joking tone but your emails are more formal and serious. Tone comes into play to make the audience feel something in each piece of communication whereas brand voice is what you want to say.

Examples of Brand Voice

There is a huge variety of brand voices to choose from. There are so many that there's no way we can go over them all in one blog. To help you get the idea of brand voice, we've described a few of the most popular.

Authentic: Brands that want to have an authentic voice are the ones that people can relate to. It's a "been there, done that'' type of brand whose content makes it clear that they understand what people deal with in the real-world. There's no fluff, no drama, and no fakeness. Authentic brands are like those friends who will tell you the truth and won't tell you life is rainbows and unicorns because they know it isn't. Consumers love authentic brands. When a company becomes more relatable, customers can form an attachment to them, and BAM! More engagement, more followers, and more customers.

Passionate: A brand with a passionate voice always makes it clear that they are 150% in love with their message, their product, and what they're doing. Think about your most passionate friend who loves music so much that when they start talking about it they just can't stop. That's what a passionate voice is. Passionate brands have a figurative gleam in their eyes whenever they post because they just can't get enough of what they love. A passionate voice can rally support and encourage like-minded individuals to follow your company's pages on social media.

Sophisticated: If you're in a high-end market, or simply want to put your company on a taller pedestal than the competitors, opt for a sophisticated brand voice. Your content won't typically be as "fun", but they will be accurate, impressive, and respected. Your brand will place focus on proper grammar and won't beat around the bush with unnecessary filler. You can expect to find impressive vocabulary, maybe even with some foreign words tossed in here and there for flourish. This is one voice that doesn't make sense for every brand, so take that into account before you set your heart of being sophisticated.

Examples of Tone of Voice

If there are a lot of voices to choose from there's an endless amount of tones. Tone of voice adds some complexity to your brand, helping customers to detect the emotion behind different posts. If I said "I love green" to you, the message is that I love green, right? Not necessarily. In most cases, yes, but maybe I'm using a sarcastic tone? Suddenly you don't know if I do love green or if I'm lying. That's what tone does for a brand as well. It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

We're going to assume that you can relate these tones of voice to conversations you have everyday, so we'll skip the definitions and stick to the tones themselves.

= Serious     =Funny     =Sarcastic   = Formal

= Sympathetic  =Cheerful   =Joking     = Inspiring

= Apologetic   =Strong   =Bold      = Angry

Simple enough, right? Tones of voice can change between channels, content, and posts to appropriately match how you want viewers to feel after reading/seeing/hearing your message. Try not to jump around too much though, as it can become confusing for customers.

How Do You Choose Your Brand Voice and Tone?

Now that you have a better understanding of what tone and voice are, it's time to work on choosing them for your brand. This is actually a lot harder than most people think. We always recommend brand personification to make the process easier. Brand personification is looking at the elements of your brand, your desired audience, your market, and other factors and finding a famous person that fits the bill. For example, BusySeed is outgoing, creative, and tech-savvy, so we know we have a "young brand." Because of our colors, shapes, and fonts, we think the brand is a male. We want to express that we are fun and energetic but also driven to get results, so we would look for influential young men who are doing great things and making a difference. Who would you say we resemble if we were a famous person?

Keep in mind that the point of this is not to choose your favorite celebrity. Just because you like someone doesn't mean that they are good representations of your brand. We all love Megan Fox but we know for a fact that she would not be what BusySeed is as a person, you know? So here's our advice to you….consider these questions (and anything else you feel is relevant), and think about a famous person who you feel embodies your brand.

• Their gender, age, height, etc.

• Their physical appearance

• How they hold themselves

• Where they live

• What they like to do

• What their goals are

Once you answer these questions and complete the brand personification, take a look at why that person represents your brand. From there, you can decide how your chosen person speaks and what their attitude is, and try to reflect that in your brand. You can also look at your target audience, locations you wish to be prevalent it, and the industry you're in. Your brand's personality, voice, and tone should be an accurate representation of what the brand stands for and promotes. So if you're a computer company and you come up with Betty White as your famous person doppelganger, you probably need to re-evaluate.

Why You Need To Know Your Voice and Tone

You need to have a consistent way of speaking on behalf of your brand so that consumers can begin to relate to and remember you. No one wants to hang out with the kid who is sweet one day and yelling the next. They won't want to hang out with your brand either! Having a set-in-stone brand voice and tone is especially usual if you have managed social media. Our team has worked with many clients who do not fully understand their own brand, so it's impossible for us to! Managed social media puts distance between yourself and your brand's online image so you want to have all of the guidelines in place for the social media agency to follow. Clients can get frustrated when their managed social media posts don't give off the right vibe, but if they can't articulate why, it's a hard problem to fix. So do yourself and your agency a favor and work on brand personification and identifying tone and voice before signing a contract.

We hope you've found these tips useful. Brand personification is one of the best ways to pick your brand voice and tone of voice. With the right effort and dedication, you will have a very clear brand voice that you can use consistently. With every post, you'll gain popularity and followers because customers will get to know and love your brand's personality. If you need help with anything we've discussed, give us a call. The BusySeed team has worked with hundreds of brands and have helped to identify their personalities. We can work with you to figure out how you want your brand to be perceived and create a full brand-guide to keep everyone on the same page. Give us a call at 888- 353-1484 to get started!