Abhishek
- Oct 29, 2020
- 3 min read

How to find your Social Media Voice and Why it matters!

How to find your Social Media Voice and Why it matters

So Social Media Voice comprises of three basic factors: Tone, Personality & Goal. Having a strong social voice can give you high ROI in the long and some times even in the short run. So, having a strong social voice matters regardless of the microphone of your choosing.

Okay, so you have a social media account for your brand. Great. Now what?

So, one of the biggest challenges faced by brands is maintaining a strong presence online. So yes you can sell a lot of products and services using social media, sure, but that's not enough to establish your social authority. People are on social media, to connect with their friends and family and keep tabs on the topics and people that they care about. At least that's the traditional thinking. So a full on hardcore salesman attitude might not be the best on a social platform.

So to convince people to buy your products, you need to have a strong voice, when you're connecting with your fans/customers. They need to relate to your brand and your brand's views, personality, attitude, goals and approach. So you need to figure out the hows, whens and whys of social media interactions. One thing I like to do is the 'Always and Never' exercise.

Make a list of things that your brand will 'always' do, no matter what & things that your brand will never do. For eg, your brand will always be friendly to people, and your brand will never be insensitive. So write down a list and try to come up with a list of things. That'll help you in establishing a few basic principles to build on.

Tone

So let's talk about tone. Remember when your mom tells you to watch your tone? Well you should do that every single time you post on social media. Be consistent with your language. So what you can do to figure that out is to think of your brand as an individual. So how would that person talk to people? Will they be funny, sarcastic, sincere, authentic, straightforward or formal? People love brands that they can relate to. They also love brands who are consistent, not just when it comes to content but also in terms of their approach and overall image. Make sure that your posts are consistent and represent the tone of your brand online.

Personality

So just like your tone, your brands personality will decide if your audience can relate to it or not. Tone and Personality go hand in hand. One has to match the other. The whole 'thinking about your brand as a person' will work great for building a personality for your brand online. Again, the principles that you develop in the 'always and never' exercise will apply to your personality. Build your brand's personality on some core ideas and principles. If you are aiming towards being funny, then make sure your posts fall within the realm of comedy. Stay consistent.

Goals

So your social voice should be ideally aligned with your business goals. You should help move your brand in the direction of your financial goals. At the end of the day, if you're a brand and if you're not making profit, then what's the point of anything right? So it makes sense that you should talk to the other departments in your organization and see how social can help them achieve their goals. So your goals will have a role to play in defining your social voice.

You should also analyse the areas in which you need to make improvements. If the most common complaints are regarding your support, then make sure your response time is shorter on social media and engage in constructive conversations with your consumers. Also, you need to be consistent and again make sure that your customers can relate to your tone and personality. A better customer ranking will obviously help in building your social authority and image.

Tackling sticky situations & mitigating social firestorms

Also, before jumping head first into a political issue or commenting on the latest news story, make sure you do your research on it first. Stay away from controversial situations as much as possible generally but if you absolutely need to comment on something then put up your points calmly and be prepared to get opposite opinions. Give a heads up to the rest of the people in your team and discuss situations with them. Remember, there is a difference between having a discussion with your customers and having an argument. Define your approach based on your social voice and plan out how you're going to deal with the situation.