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Find Your Voice, Maximize Your Message: Five Tips for Finding Your Brand Voice

I'm an avid fan of American Idol and this season I'm rooting for Lazaro Arbos, a contestant who struggles to communicate while speaking. Often stuttering during interviews, Lazaro is able to overcome his speech impediment while he sings. His recent rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was spellbinding and in song, he finds his voice and a deep connection with the audience (as evidenced by his top ten ranking). Yay, go Lazaro!

Like Idol's Lazaro, many businesses struggle to communicate their brand messages to their target audiences. Often stumbling over their words, especially in the social media realm where it can be tricky figuring out how to speak to your audience and how to find the right voice for your business, their messages tend to be mixed and confusing. Here are five top tips for finding your brand voice.

1. Know Yourself. If you are a brand looking to promote your business or service on social media channels, it's important to first consider who you are as a brand. Knowing who you are (what is at the heart of your brand and what your purpose and promise is) will greatly help you in developing your brand voice.

2. Know Your Audience. Be clear on who you are trying to connect with. If you're looking to connect with diverse audiences, be sure to pair each social media platform with the audience that it best suits and plan your social media mix based on reaching the largest segments and optimizing your messages for each platform's audience.

3. Establish Vibe, Tone. Your brand's voice should be a clear representation of its personality and character and its vibe and tone should reflect that personality. Is your brand serious or quirky? Is your vibe professional or friendly and casual? Consistency is key and while it's perfectly okay to establish a more serious tone with your brand messaging, coming across as human and approachable is essential. The language you use in your messaging sets the tone for your brand voice, so take the time to create a list of words, phrases, and adjectives that reflect your brand's core and share this list with your social media manager or team. This tone may change across platforms (your tone on LinkedIn will more than likely differ from your Twitter tone), so you will need to evaluate each platform you engage on and set the tone for each.

4. Social Media Policy. A well thought-out and transparent social media policy that outlines your strategy, language and tone, and that specifies who is responsible for managing your posts will provide your business the structure to be consistent and effective with its messaging. If possible, appoint one person to be responsible for managing your social media posts, content creation, and curation. If you're a large organization with multiple divisions engaging on your behalf, it's even more important to establish your brand's social media policy to outline who will be responding for what and your policies for responding to negative comments, customer service issues, and general questions. It's important to note that it's absolutely okay to delete a comment or block anyone leaving harassing messages or using foul language on your social sites and having a policy in place to address these issues will be a great guide for your team in dealing with them as they arise. Not responding to customer's negative comments is not ideal, however, so having a policy in place is crucial to providing the very best customer service.

5. Credibility. By far, the most important concept to consider in finding your voice is building trust and credibility with your audience. Be authentic, honest and transparent; respond in real time to comments (both good and bad) and post regularly with quality content that your audience will find interesting, entertaining, and helpful. Do this and it will go a long way in boosting your credibility.

Remember, keeping your audience engaged is key so pay attention to what your audience is talking about, what they are interested in, and which posts get the most engagement.

April Neill Public Relations is passionate about working with small businesses to increase their brand awareness and help them find their voice. We offer a complimentary 30-minute in-person or phone consultation. Email AprilNeill@gmail.com to make your appointment today or call (815) 651-0656 for more information. Visit us online at http://www.AprilNeillPR.com or follow us on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/AprilNeillPR.

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