Creating a Personal Voice Plan

A Personal Voice Plan, cultivates intentionality, and helps align our social media use with purpose and intended impact. It applies familiar practices used for brands and corporate communication to individuals.

Who needs a Personal Voice Plan?

A personal voice plan is helpful for those involved in organizational leadership who may have to consider additional factors when using social media, such as "How might my voice impact my organization & those i work with?" and "What might the absence of my voice signal?"

Organizational leaders, often need to put aside their personal preferences. They may want to steer clear of social media and believe that their organizations social media presence suffices. However, this misses a clear general preference – people prefer following individuals over organizations; Tesla has 12m followers, Elon Musk has 66m, the Liberal Party of Canada has less than 400k followers, Justin Trudeau, its leader, has close to 6m.

Social media can be necessary for effectively working with and engaging stakeholders. It can also be overwhelming, soul sucking, a distraction from more important work and an unmitigated, often unintentional disaster even when done well. It's natural to feel anxious, to question the value of adding your voice to the noise, and be unsure of how to drive practical benefit from social media.

Many workplaces have social media policies that focus on what not to do, these are useful tools to mitigate risk, but they don't help you figure out what you should do.

A personal voice plan is about understanding your voice and using it effectively; it's not a tool for maximizing followers or a path to becoming an influencer.

Key Elements of a Personal Voice Plan

A personal voice plan breaks down how to use your voice into a few bite size sections that make it easy to understand and plan your social media use.

a. Intention+Impact

1. What do you want to use social media for?
2. What's your purpose?

One of the first lessons i learned as a young Muslim kid is that "Actions are judged by their intention." Intention, isn't a word we often associate with social media, but i posit that its essential to getting use, rather than getting used by social media.

Be specific with your intentions. I'm incredibly fortunate to be working with a purpose driven org, Islamic Family. Our mission question is "How can we support the whole person flourish in our community?" This guides my presence on social media. How can i advance the mission through my voice? How can i support and build confidence in the organization i serve? How do i embody our values — for our team and others? Before, i post, share or like something i try to bring it back to these questions, our mission and our values.

b. Audience Segments

1. Who do you want to reach?

Unlike public speaking social media can feel like shouting in the middle of Times Square and speaking to a panel of experts?– simultaneously. My advice, is don't try to speak to everyone – zero in on your audience.

Knowing who you're speaking to, will make it much easier for you to figure out what you're going to say. The audience i want to speak to are collaborators, supporters & future talent. My key segments include: non-profit leadership, effective altruists, philanthropic technologists, et al.

c. Focus Areas

1. What are the high-level subject areas you want to discuss (in public)?

Once you know your why & your who, it'll become much clearer to determine what you want to say. Focus areas are high-level subject areas you feel compelled to opine about. For this present quarter my focus areas are: non-profit innovation, client focussed care, kaizen DEI, & reconciliation/settler identity (see links for examples). These focuses can shift from quarter to quarter, but there should be consistent high-level alignment with strategy.

d. Channels

1. What's your purpose on each chanel you intend to use?

Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram each have their own cadence and style. Cross posting the same content across multiple platforms is likely to make nobody happy. Instead, map out what you think each channel is good for and what your purpose is on each.

I use Twitter for political/generative discourse, Instagram for celebrating team members/ connecting more personally, and LinkedIn for posts like this one where i want to connect professionally.

e. Tonality + Attributes

1. What do you like, dislike about different people on social media?
2. If Serious & Fun were at the two ends of a spectrum where would you fall?
3. What are the different attributes you care about? How much do you want to embody each attribute?

Before i get dressed i ask myself what kind of day am i expecting? Do i need to convey seriousness, look casual, or be fun? What should my appearance convey to others? On social media we make similar decisions. Do we want to be the quick to post, or weigh in only after thoughtful deliberation? Identifying the attributes, and tonality that's important to you can help you to be more selective, consistent and clear.

f. Potential Topics

1. What are some specific topics you want to write about?
2. What are the topics that you're uniquely positioned to discuss?

g. Inspiration

1. Who's inspiring you on the different channels you follow? Why?

Identifying who you like and why, helps you refine your own voice and set goals.

Case Study: Inclusive Holidays

Our team is working on some really exciting advocacy work with our local school board. How can i support the team? Should i wade in? What approach/tone should i take?

The personal voice plan helped me focus the message. The tweets i wrote didn't need to attract thousands of followers, or go viral; they needed to reach decision makers. The plan helped me to identify the approach i wanted to take: cordial, informed, focused and persistent. This helped the team expand their reach, connect with media and engage influencers in a strategic way that helped advance our objectives. (See Inclusive Holidays).

A few things to keep in mind…

1. It's going to require vulnerability.?
2. It's a work in progress. Sharing and getting feedback is important.?
3. Mistakes will be made.?

Sample Personal Voice Plan

My Personal Voice Plan (Google Docs)

Template Personal Voice Plan (Google Doc) –?Customize and tweak this version to fit your needs.

Connect with me on social: @somaryaqub

You can find me on Twitter & LinkedIn.

Thanks

Special thanks to Dr Nouman Ashraf, Taouba Khelifa & Dustin Craun for support with this. Inspiration for this came from Aaron Hurts Personal User Manual.