Who is Your Brand's Voice?

Have you ever met someone and found it challenging to hold a conversation? Someone who's not engaging, tells stories badly, and is a bit like a wet blanket?

At best, you walk away from that first interaction thinking, “Glad that’s over.”

Now imagine someone interested in your organization checking out your website or social media accounts and thinking, “This is boring. Glad that’s over.”

Tragic, right? So how do you prevent someone, on first glance, from thinking your website is boring?

It all starts with your brand voice, or your organization’s personality. Sometimes you’ll find details about a brand voice in style guides. But for many of our clients, a brand voice has never been discussed or documented.

Woolf Strategy can change all of this for your organization.

Discovering your brand voice

At Woolf Strategy, our discovery process changes a little bit from client to client. But we always use our creative questionnaire to discover who you think you are and who your ideal audience thinks you are.

With this process, we start to uncover the organization or individual’s voice through targeted questions designed to add style and flavor to everything we will write. Some of my favorite items on the questionnaire are questions like:

• Who or what is the voice of the brand?

• What keywords, adjectives, or phrases would describe your voice?

• What other organizations have content you enjoy?

As a writer first and foremost, this is where I have the most fun in marketing! It’s also an opportunity for you to set yourselves apart.

We even do this for our own team. In our articles, we ask each member of the Pack to write their articles in their own voice. That’s an intentional choice we’ve made as an organization because we believe it makes our work together more inviting and inclusive. We bring our whole selves to work as much as possible — and that includes writing articles for Woolf Writes.

But that may not be the right choice for your brand. We can figure it out together when you start our discovery process as a new client!

Brand voices in action

Now that we’re all using the same definitions (key to ensuring stellar partnerships!), what does a brand voice look like?

Whether for an organization or for a political candidate, brand voices can sound like just about anyone you know. Your brand voice depends on how you want your customers, advocates, or voters to relate to your work.

Compare these two statements:

“We’re heating up! Keep up the fundraising work so we can hit our goal!”

vs.

“We’re cooking with grease! Every dollar you contribute keeps our fire going!”

We’re using the same message here — fundraising is going well, but keep it up! — and yet the two versions have different impacts.

It all comes down to voice. You need to speak to your constituents consistently, with the same tone and word choices. Build brand trust. Ensure your writing targets your audience. Become easily identifiable.

All of this comes down to brand voice — a true specialty here at Woolf Strategy.

Uncover your brand voice

Do you work with one of the organizations without a documented brand voice? Are you worried it comes through in your social media posts and email fundraising? Do you think you’re at risk of losing trust or credibility?

Reach out to the Woolf Pack today. We can help you document your brand voice and style guide, and we can jump into copywriting in under two weeks of working with you.

Just give us a howl and let us know you’re looking for help!