BRAND VOICE

Entrepreneurship, in my experience, is basically just an incredibly public way to get to know yourself.

And in that process, developing your distinct brand voice is a key that opens innumerable doors to greatness.

Now, while this ‘develop’ phase is arguably the one that gets talked about the most in marketing circles… it’s also the one I see the most BS around.

For the most part, when it comes to developing our brand, we’re told to simply “be ourselves!” or “be authentic!”

And yet, there’s VERY little guidance on how to develop a voice as yourself, or – more importantly – any conversation about the nuance around what “being yourself” even means within the context of your business!

Personally, I have many different voices I use in my life, and they all depend on one very important thing: CONTEXT.

This is why, for me, I stray away from the hard yet nebulous line of authenticity, and instead focus on building brand voice personas (ie. developing the voice that works for you in the context of your business).

In this development process, not only will we discover what makes your brand brilliant, we’ll also discover more about YOU, which ultimately, is what this is all about.

**The Brand Voice Identity service listed above is all about this stage!**

I think of documenting your brand voice in the same way I think about charting in my role as a nurse.

The rule in nursing is: if you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen.

And the rule in brand voice is: if it isn’t documented, you’ll drive yourself nuts.

Now, in the world of marketing, this frustration is often brushed over, discounted as a necessary evil given the illusive, intuitive nature of brand voice.

Developing a brand voice? Sure, they’ll talk about clarity, identity, mastering your messaging.

But DOCUMENTING it? Pfft. It’s all intuition baby, you just gotta *feel* if it’s right.

And that, as it turns out, is complete bullshit.

You CAN measure and document your brand voice.

You just have to know what to look for.

In my case, that means documenting your Words, Tone, Cadence, and Style – the 4 key elements of every voice.

And the beauty of it is, documenting your voice means you never have to worry about something sounding “off” – either something you’ve written, or that AI produced, or that you hired a writer for.

Documenting your voice takes the mind-reading out of the equation, and gives you a concrete, down-in-writing profile of your brand voice persona.

**I cover this stage in the Comprehensive Voice Guide service listed above*

For most brands, the absolute hardest part of hiring a copywriter is finding one who “gets” the brand voice.

They’re either left doing endless edits (to the point where it would have been easier to do it themselves), or they manage to find maybe ONE writer who intuitively understands the voice, but who still can’t articulate it to a larger team.

And all this because most branding ‘experts’ deliver half-assed brand ‘guides’ that include barely more than a list of 5 adjectives (helpful, professional, friendly, etc.) and a link to the APA style guide.

The thing is, delegation ought to be the culmination of both the develop and the document phase.

And when one or both of those phases are skipped or mishandled, delegation is almost inevitably a disaster.

If you’ve documented your brand voice WELL, though, you’ll be amazed how easy (and scalable!) delegation can be.

Done right, delegating your voice frees you up to focus on your favourite parts of the business – whatever that may be.

And that, my friend, is a thing of beauty.

**For this stage, check out the Delegation Support service listed above*

The words you use in your brand voice - your specific choice of vocabulary – is one of the biggest ways to set your brand apart.

For example, a brand that sells “hot chocolate” is not the same as a brand that offers “hot drinking cacao”.

By word choice alone, they’re letting you know what to expect.

As a more personal example, I say “toque” instead of “beanie”.

I spell colour with a U.

I’m not opposed to cursing in my brand, but when I do, I’ll use a f*cking asterisk.

And if by that you concluded that I’m a somewhat irreverent Canadian… you’d be correct!

All that to say, word choice matters!

Every brand voice has a tone, a vibe, a feel to it.

And I don’t just mean “friendly and professional.” 🤪

Done right, tone goes much, MUCH deeper than that.

Nuance in tone is the difference between jubilant or jovial, confident or condescending.

It changes the personality.

It changes the voice.

In fact, in my Brand Voice VIP service, the reason we start with honing in on tone is because it informs each of the other elements.

Get the tone right, and the rest falls into place.

The cadence is your sentence length, your paragraph length, your use of variation or consistency – whether every sentence is the same or you mix it up.

The rhythm or cadence of a brand’s voice is something that’s almost instantly recognized by the reader… but usually only on a subconscious level.

Interestingly, when something feels “off” in your voice, the cadence is the culprit more often than not.

(this very bullet, for example, has a longer cadence than the ones about Words, Tone, or Style. And you can *see* the difference, even before I tell you the average sentence length for this one is 17 words per sentences… whereas for the ‘Tone’ one, for example, it’s only 9.)

As famed brand voice ventriloquist Justin Blackman says, “Everyone has a style, even if they don’t know it.”

Style is where we notice (and document!) all the little quirks of your brand’s voice – how you use punctuation and embellishments to communicate.

Basically, it’s the things you likely find yourself editing over and over again!

Things like the Oxford comma (yay or nay), whether you bold important words, or italicize them, or do ALL CAPS!

It’s how and where you use dashes.

It’s whether you use emojis (or parentheses!).

It’s how often you use the ever-popular ellipses…

Your style can be minimalistic. Or effusive. Or somewhere in between.

But whatever it is, it’s your style.