Find your brand’s social media voice

The concept sounds simple, but then you start to write a post and get stuck. Follow these writing tips for developing your social media tone of voice for your business, organization or personal account.

1. Define your personality, language, tone and purpose.

Just like you and your brand, your social media presence should exhibit a personality that is consistent and speaks to your target audience. Whether you stick to your brand voice in every post will depend on how well you identified it in the first place.

• Personality – Whom do you sound like? Create an identity with specific characteristics that fit your brand. It should be unique.
• Tone – What is the main essence of your brand?
• Language – What kinds of words and adjectives will you use in posts and conversations? Make a list.
• Purpose – Why are you on social media? What purpose will each one of your social media platforms serve? What value will you bring to your followers?

You can think about these adjectives for each category suggested by Stephanie Schwab, writing for Social Media Explorer:

When deciding on your personality and tone, consider this behavior chart from Sprout Social:

2. Be direct and personal.

Social media gives you the opportunity to engage directly with your audience. Generic messaging will not resonate with your audience or start a conversation. Instead, make your followers feel as if you are talking directly to them.

3. Research your audience’s interests, lifestyle and values.

To be able to gain new followers and keep current fans, you have to think about why they are following you in the first place, as well as research their demographics and interests. Using this information, you can create posts that are more meaningful to them.

4. Be short and casual, and adjust your tone for each social media platform.

Just because you have 240 characters on Twitter to use, only use all of them if you have to. Posts with only 40 characters on Facebook perform the best. Be powerful with your words. Use just enough to get your followers interested. No one wants to read an unnecessarily long post that will take up their time.

And, make sure to adjust your tone for each platform. For example, you do not have the same network of followers on both Twitter and Instagram, and each platform should serve a slightly different purpose. Use more links on Twitter, fewer hashtags on Facebook, and create clever captions on Instagram.

5. Include a call to action.

Such as “read more,” “share your favorite …” or “tell us about your …”.

There are a lot of creative ways to encourage your followers to engage while sticking to your brand persona. Don’t be annoying. You don’t need three exclamation points!!!

Need help finding your voice? Let’s talk.

Leah Brown

Social Media Specialist

LeahBrown@sacommunications.com