Your content is at odds with the brand's tone. How can you align your storytelling in content marketing?

Often, this is where company brand standards fall down. Why? Because getting it right can be difficult, and it takes more time to achieve consistency and contextual tone. Having too many hands in the content pot doesn't help either, even when the brand guidelines are clear. This is where copy editors shine. They ensure that content is readable and memorable, aligned with brand guidelines, and supports the content's goals and target audience. Copy editing is a critical step in a good content lifecycle process. It is a specific, professional skill that is commonly given to someone who is not trained in the discipline if it is done at all. And before you ask - no, you cannot copy edit your own work.

A clash between content and brand tone is harmful to a brand's identity - which is why it's essential to bridge this gap to ensure a cohesive and impactful brand narrative. For that, you need to follow some practice to ensure your content sounds like your brand. These are: Know your brand - Understand its personality, values, and target audience. Match your words: Use common language and style that fits your brand's voice, and avoid technical jargon and complex words. Stay consistent: Keep the same tone across all your content from top to bottom. Listen to your audience: Ensure your content establishes connectivity with them effortlessly. Keep learning: Adapt your content as your brand evolves.

Understand the 'WHY': Immerse yourself in the brand's personality, voice, and values to understand its essence. Grasp the core purpose behind the brand and what it stands for. Know Your Audience (KYA): Identify the primary target audience, their interests, communication style, and what they care about. Tailor your storytelling: Adapt your content to resonate with the audience’s needs, pain points, and aspirations while staying true to the brand’s tone. Review and adjust: Regularly compare your content to successful past campaigns to ensure it resonates with the audience. Build trust: Focus on creating authentic content that not only aligns with the brand’s tone but also strengthens the brand’s identity and builds trust with the audience

To align your storytelling with the brand's tone: 1. Review the brand's guidelines and tone documents. 2. Understand the target audience and their preferences. 3. Analyze existing content for tone inconsistencies. 4. Develop a content style guide to ensure consistency. 5. Use language and messaging that resonates with the brand. 6. Create content that embodies the brand's values and personality. 7. Test and refine tone through audience feedback and analytics. By aligning your storytelling with the brand's tone, you can create a cohesive and authentic content marketing strategy that resonates with your audience.

Understanding your brand's tone is the first step to alignment. Envision your brand as a person—what language would they use? Are they formal or casual? Humorous or serious? Analyze your brand's mission, values, and target audience to pinpoint the exact tone. Then, audit your existing content to see if it sounds like it's coming from the same 'person.' If not, it's time for changes. Use the brand's tone as a filter for every piece of content you create or revise, ensuring consistency across all platforms.

Engaging with your audience is more than just talking at them; it's about listening and adapting to their feedback. Monitor comments, reviews, and social media interactions to gauge how your audience perceives your brand's tone. If there's a disconnect between their expectations and your content's tone, take note. Use this feedback to fine-tune your content's voice, ensuring it not only aligns with your brand but also resonates with your audience. Remember, effective storytelling is a two-way street.

Editing. Learning how to kill your darlings is essential. We've all written something we thought was amazing, but just didn't fit for the brand, the audience, or product. Distinctive, creative writing within the context of writing for a brand is still possible, but sometimes you have to find another home for an idea that just doesn't land right.

Engaging with your audience isn’t just about delivering a message—it's about truly listening and responding to their needs. Pay close attention to comments, reviews, and social media interactions. These are invaluable insights into how your audience perceives your brand’s tone. If you notice a gap between what they expect and what you’re delivering, it's time to recalibrate. Use their feedback to fine-tune your brand’s voice, ensuring that it not only stays true to your identity but also resonates deeply with your audience. Effective storytelling is a two-way street—listening is as important as speaking.

Aligning your content with your brand's tone is crucial for maintaining a strong connection with your audience. Some actionable tips: Active Listening: Use social media listening tools and review trackers to gather audience feedback on your brand’s tone. Direct Engagement: Run polls or surveys to directly ask your audience about how they visualize your brand. Adjust Content: - Experiment with tweaks in tone (e.g., more conversational or formal). - Measure the impact on engagement through metrics like click-through rates and conversions. Test and Iterate: Regularly A/B test different tones and refine your strategy based on results. Team Alignment: Provide your content team with updated tone guidelines and regular training.

By listening to customer feedback, you open up opportunities to enhance the customer experience, boost satisfaction, strengthen loyalty, improve your products and services, reduce churn, and much more.

Want to create a style guide for the content team? Get started with these simple tips: Create templates for different types of content (eg, blog posts, social media updates, email newsletters). Templates ensure consistent structure and style and make it easier for content creators to follow guidelines. You can provide specific examples of your brand's voice and tone in different contexts. This can include sample sentences, phrases to use or avoid, and scenarios that demonstrate appropriate tone. Keep the style guide up to date with regular reviews and updates. As your brand evolves, your style guide should reflect any changes in tone, voice, or content strategy.

Ensure that the content playbook or style guide includes a deep dive into what works for each platform. A detailed strategy document helps curate content that not just sticks to the brand tone but also capitalizes on what works on each platform with different content formats.

You need to revisit & clarify the brand's tone guidelines. These guidelines should clearly define the voice, style, & messaging that reflect the brand’s values & personality. Conduct a content audit to identify where inconsistencies exist. This involves reviewing past content across all platforms—blogs, social media, videos, & emails—to pinpoint deviations from the desired tone. Once identified, categorize these issues & prioritize them for revision. To ensure content cohesion moving forward, implement a content calendar that aligns with the brand’s tone & storytelling goals. Foster close collaboration between content creators & brand strategists, ensuring everyone involved in content production is aligned with the tone guidelines.

A style guide is essential for ensuring all content creators are on the same page. This cohesive approach enhances brand recognition and trust.

Content is only as strong as the network it builds and leverages. Ensure your content is interlinked and forms part of an overall funnel strategy. Simply creating content for SEO sake is no longer justifiable unless you can bring the ROI back through interlinking and funnel mechanics. Each piece should add, like a score, to the intent created in your buyers mind, with each piece getting them closer to a ‘Yes’.

A brand's Tone of Voice is not always easy to grasp from a guideline document, it often takes some trial and error to get it right and making all the different contributors speak in unison is not easy. My suggestion is to get multiple people to write a brief post about the same topic and see how multiple types of writing can still resonate with the ToV, and check which ones don't. Often, your team ends up learning more from the content that is "off" for one reason or another than the spot-on one.

To truly embody your brand's voice, it's crucial to foster a culture of continuous learning within your content team. Regular workshops and feedback sessions can empower team members to experiment with tone, ensuring that their content resonates authentically with your audience. For instance, a B2B agency might analyze successful LinkedIn posts to extract key elements of voice & style that align with their brand. Moreover, as your brand evolves, so should your tone. Encourage your team to stay attuned to industry trends & audience preferences, allowing them to adapt while maintaining brand integrity. This adaptability not only enhances storytelling but also strengthens audience connection, ensuring your content remains relevant & engaging.

This is the trickiest part. Identify which team members best suit each project. 1.- How well do they understand and define the audience? 2.- Do they naturally apply the appropriate style and tone of communication after a couple weeks or several attempts? 3.- Are they interested by the product / service? 4.- Have they been given resources like client reviews, feedback surveys, demographic data, etc.? Every month you should test them by making them pitch the product/service to you. We’re not a one size fits all, don’t make people work on a project they din’t get. Help them understand it and engage it or choose somebody else. Simple.

Crie um guia de estilo completo e compartilhe-o com toda a equipe. Ele será fundamental para unificar a identidade visual e a linguagem da sua marca, garantindo que todos os materiais de comunica??o sigam o mesmo padr?o. Comece apresentando os objetivos da marca e a importancia de uma comunica??o consistente. Em seguida, detalhe todos os elementos visuais – logotipo, paleta de cores, tipografia e imagens – com exemplos claros. Defina o tom de voz da marca e ilustre com exemplos práticos. Por fim, mostre como aplicar esses elementos em diferentes plataformas, como site, redes sociais e materiais impressos. Um guia de estilo bem elaborado é a chave para uma comunica??o mais eficaz e memorável.

Aligning storytelling with brand tone starts with a shared understanding. Training your team on the brand's voice, values, and personality is crucial. This involves clear guidelines, examples, and ongoing reinforcement. By equipping your team with the necessary tools, you can ensure consistency across all content.

Brands evolve, and so should your content. However, drastic changes can alienate your audience. It's essential to evolve your storytelling gradually while maintaining brand authenticity. Start by identifying core brand elements that resonate with your audience and build upon them. This approach allows for growth without compromising brand identity.

Brand loyalty is when consumers consistently choose one brand over others due to deep trust and satisfaction, not just habit. Recent studies show that 81% of consumers say brand loyalty is important to their buying decisions. As brands evolve, their tone should adapt carefully. For example, 70% of companies that managed tone changes effectively saw increased customer engagement. When changing your tone due to rebranding or audience shifts, introduce new styles gradually and explain the changes clearly. This thoughtful approach helps maintain audience loyalty.

Cuando un cambio de tono es necesario, ya sea por un rebranding o un cambio demográfico, es crucial planificar la transición cuidadosamente. Introducir nuevos lenguajes y estilos de forma gradual permite a la audiencia adaptarse sin sentirse desconectada. Además, comunicar claramente las razones detrás del cambio y cómo este refleja el crecimiento de la marca ayuda a mantener la confianza y la lealtad del público, garantizando una evolución exitosa y bien recibida.

One thing I have found helpful with developing contents daily on LinkedIn is actually the fact that you're able to rate your contents according to best performing content using the LinkedIn analysis tool. This has helped me develop contents that resonates with my target audience and also keep them glued to my page. I don't create content because I love them, rather I create contents my target audience love.

Customer loyalty is a a question of trust and identification of existing customers with your brand. Product or Service performance plays a vital role in this game. While customer lifetime becomes an issue new target audiences and new products will get into the focus. The content strategy will have to adress this issue as well as the total brand strategy. How far communication can be streched to be relevant to new and old customers , keeping the old one`s loyal and the new one`s attracted. You will have to test and to analyse how far you can go with special target communication while still keeping the overall brand impression together.

Performance Metrics: Track how your content resonates with the audience. Use analytics to identify what works and what doesn't. Iterative Improvement: Content is a living document. Be ready to adjust your approach based on audience feedback and performance data.

Data is your guide. Analyze your existing content to identify inconsistencies with the brand tone. Use analytics to understand how your audience responds to different styles. By understanding what works and what doesn't, you can make informed adjustments to your content strategy. Continuously monitor and refine your approach to ensure ongoing alignment.

Agreed. Conduct content audits to identify brand inconsistencies and make necessary adjustments. You can do this by getting input from your audience to ensure your content resonates with them while staying true to your brand.