Content Marketing 101: How to Develop Your Brand’s Tone of Voice (TOV)

When developing a brand’s voice, I am often reminded of Judge Potter Stewart’s famous statement about obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” It’s easy to see when a company has a clear, effective tone of voice (TOV). Their channels are consistent and their customers are engaged.?

Tiffany & Co. is a perfect example of a brand with a distinct TOV: everything from their product descriptions to their social media copy is timeless, elevated, and straightforward. They achieve a fine balance of being always understated and easy to read, yet occupying the rarified air of the most premium American heritage luxury brands. Everyone from the street sweeper to the C-suite knows and covets Tiffany pieces.?

In essence, they let the sparkle speak for itself. ??

But how does a start-up find its own tone of voice, let alone implement it in a global marketplace? In my experience, it’s a 4-part process of Discovery, Distillation, Synthesis, and Execution. Here’s how to do it:

DISCOVERY: Find Your Brand’s Tone of Voice

The first step, Discovery, is all about throwing caution to the wind. A great mentor once taught me never to edit while I’m in the middle of creating; they are simply two different processes and they should not occupy the same time.?

Start by creating a collection of your favorite copywriting – this can be from brands you love and already follow, a particularly inspired post from a thought leader you admire, an online product description, a billboard, or even the back of a cereal box. Inspiration needn’t come in the form of companies you consider your upcoming competition, though it can! The sky’s the limit here, so anytime you see a phrase or sentence that catches your eye, snag it and save it.

For the sake of time, I typically ask clients to populate a spreadsheet with social media posts. If you’re the more visually inspired type and have a bunch of photos in your phone’s folder, be sure to collect them into a folder where they can be easily accessed. ??

Give yourself two weeks to accomplish this task. As a founder, this can be one of those to-do’s running in the background while you do other things: just keep your eyes peeled for when inspiration hits, and be sure to save the link in your spreadsheet immediately. Trust me, you won’t remember it later.

Aim to save 15-20 pieces of content that feel right for your brand.?

DISTILLATION: Drill Down Your Brand’s Tone of Voice

The second step, Distillation, is exactly what it seems: we’re going to identify the essential style and attitude of each piece of content you saved. Just like step 1, this is not a time for editing. This is all about first impressions and off-the-cuff associations.?

On your spreadsheet, develop a second column called TOV Notes. You should now have something that looks a bit like this:

The TOV Notes column is all about simply noticing. We’re not at the judging part yet—that’s for our third step, Synthesis.?

Observe the whole first, then analyze its parts.

Observe everything you can about each piece of copywriting that you’ve saved: is the text short or long? Does the brand use a lot of emojis, a small sprinkling of emojis, or none at all? Are they using perfectly correct spelling and grammar, or R deY hAvIn $uM fUn?! Do they describe their product in a straightforward way, or are they storytelling? Is it elegant or casual? Premium or mass? Did they ask their customers to engage in some way (like, share, comment), and if so, are people actually doing what they asked?

Distillation should be your fastest step—don’t spend too long observing or you’ll get a headache. Just jot down your immediate feelings and perceptions and move on.?

Why? Because that’s exactly what your customers are going to do, too. They’re not going to sit around for even 10 seconds and ask themselves, Well, what does it mean? Their train is late, their kid is hungry, and oops, they just stepped in dog ??. Time’s up.?

SYNTHESIS: Weave Together Your Brand’s TOV

Now for everyone’s favorite part: judging! Based on your observations in the second step, identify what you did and didn’t like about each brand’s tone of voice.?

Loved the emojis? Great, not only will emojis in and of themselves become part of your brand’s lexicon, but you can also go a step further and consider exactly which ones, ultimately adding them to your brand bible. For example, is orange an important pop of color in your logo? The orange heart ?? might be a sweet way to sign off your posts. I worked with a client that had the word “mango” in their company name and yes, we started using the ?? emoji on their social channels.

Perhaps you loved the storytelling element, but don’t care for long-text social posts. That’s an important observation, too. That suggests your company could use a longer format channel, like a newsletter or blog. That should be part of your organic content marketing strategy from the start—though that’s a lesson for another day.

Notice what kinds of voices don’t resonate with your brand: Is easygoing and casual not the right vibe for your premium price point? Does avant-garde seem off-putting for your product that’s aimed at a wide audience??

Using the examples I shared above, I would synthesize into the following tone of voice:?

• We describe our products in order to educate our customer.
• We don’t shy away from big words or long text.
• Emojis should be minimal, or none at all.?
• We are sophisticated and stylish, but not stuffy about it.?
• We are creative, expressive, and original, but not dense or unintelligible: artistic in a way that everyone can admire, it doesn’t go over anyone’s head.?

Now take a step back from the process for a moment. You’ve gathered your favorite inspiration, taken it apart, and removed the bits you didn’t like. We’ve glued it back together into something that feels fresh and new. Ask youself: does this feel right? Or, in Judge Stewart’s words, Do you know it now that you’re seeing it??

It’s important to note that brands can also have more than one tone, because voices have use cases. This is very similar to the way that you are always 100% yourself, though you may dial up certain aspects of your personality to suit specific situations: being more competitive in the gym versus being a team player at work, being more tender with your spouse versus being sarcastic with your buddies.?

Using our same example, we might dial up the sophisticated and stylish tone for product descriptions, but dial down the dry sense of humor because it’s distracting. Then we’ll dial up the deadpan punchlines when we go behind the scenes to storytell about our brand, because that feels more human and relatable. See what I mean?

On another tab of your spreadsheet, develop three columns: Tones, Descriptions, and Use Cases. Like this:

EXECUTION: Bringing Your Brand to Market?

We’ve discovered, distilled, and synthesized…now what? Next, we’ll develop examples of copywriting across your marketing channels: your social media platforms, your email newsletter, your blog, product descriptions for your website, your website in general, the list goes on.?

In other words, every single touchpoint you have with your customers should be in a branded TOV. That’s your packaging, the insert card that comes with the package, the pop-up on the website that asks customers to sign-up for your email newsletter and get 15% off, I’m talking everything.?

(This is why it’s also a very good idea to hire an experienced copywriter who understands how to implement voice across channels at the very start of building your brand. ??????)

It’s best not to try and boil the ocean from the very beginning; you’ll just overwhelm yourself. Create a single social media post, write one product description, develop your first email newsletter. Then, before sending these out into the world (or adding them to your brand bible), share them with your Brain Trust: a group of 3-5 close individuals who understand what you’re building, care about supporting you, and ideally have different perspectives and backgrounds.?

Once you have received and integrated their feedback, then go for it: publish that post and send that email!?

Stay consistent to your initial TOV for at least the first six months of your brand being live. During this time, it is absolutely critical to gather data about your followers and customers.?

One thing most founders forget – especially in the immediate and swirling chaos of a brand launch – is that they aren’t necessarily their own best customer. Yes, this brand is your baby. Yes, you are the one creating this company out of thin air from your own blood, sweat, and tears. No, you are not your own buyer persona. Sorry! ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ

You must pay attention to your metrics: demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information, and it’s got to start from the very beginning. A marketing strategy that doesn’t include time or budget for analytics is incomplete. How else will you know if you’re on the right track??

So if that deadpan wit is getting a ton of comments on social, but isn’t leading to clicks on your link in bio . . . it might be time to adjust something. I’d start with your call-to-action, though it could also be about scaling back on the frequency of that particular voice’s appearance on your socials.?

There is a fine balance to be struck between consistency?and the willingness to experiment.

A brand’s tone of voice is important because it establishes a point of view. That “personality” will permeate every point of contact you have with your customers, allowing them to develop first affinity, then loyalty to your products or services. Tiffany & Co. was founded in 1837, and perhaps needless to say, but their brand TOV has been carefully refined over time, much like their diamonds themselves. Successful brands stay true to their core, but also allow for evolution.?

And, hopefully I don’t have to knock you over the head with this, but I will anyway: this is also true for successful humans.

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Links in Table 1: Tiffany & Co. | National Park Service | Architectural Digest