How to Find Your Voice (Even in a Crowded Space)
Your voice is important. It’s part of who you are, what you care about, and how you present yourself to the world. It separates you from others and shows why you’re unique. The words you choose and the tone you create help other people get to know you and understand who you are.
This is true for your business’s voice as well. The voice you set for your business is key to helping prospective customers find your business, get to know your business, and trust your business as the unique, consistent brand it should be.
But how do you find your voice amidst a crowded world of other voices? How do you separate your own brand from all of the others like yours? How do you determine what your voice should even be?
Here are 4 tips to finding your voice despite being crowded by millions of other voices!
4 Tips for Finding Your Business’s Voice
1. Understand the difference between branding and voice
Fleshing out your business branding is important, and it goes hand-in-hand with determining your business’s voice. However, branding and voice are not the same thing. Branding encompasses all of the characteristics of your business whereas voice only deals with one: your business’s literal words. Branding organizes the colors your business uses, the fonts, images, themes, graphics, target market, as well as the voice used to represent your business. Think of it this way: branding is the bookshelf where you keep the personality, appearance, attitude, and characteristics of your business, while voice is just one shelf on that bookcase.
2. Determine who you’re speaking to
Different voices are appropriate for different audiences. Think about it. Would you use the same voice to talk to the Queen of England as you would to chat with your best friend from high school? Chances are you wouldn’t! Determining who you’re talking to is key to fleshing out your business’s voice. Matching your voice to your audience’s needs, expectations, and interests is important to remaining consistent, reliable, and valuable. People are more likely to listen to you if you talk to them in the way they already want to be talked to, so figure out who they are and then decide how you’ll communicate with them.
3. Determine what you’re talking about
This one might sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how easy it is to forget about your niche. You obviously want to talk about your business, what your business offers, interests similar to your business, and other valuable information your potential or current customers will appreciate. However, it’s way too easy to go off on rabbit trails, especially when you have a lot of personal interests or if your business has a wide range of possible topics. In order to determine your business’s voice, decide what you will talk about. Narrow your niche and stay focused in order to keep things interesting for your desired audience. Decide what your message is, what you’re trying to accomplish, what problems you solve, and so on. Then only talk about that!
4. Determine how you’ll say it
Will you be communicating via blog, newspaper, or email? Whatever medium you choose can help you determine your tone and your tone is key to a consistent voice. Is the tone excited and enthusiastic? Serious and informative? Sarcastic and clever? Understanding who your audience is, your conversation focus, and how it is presented will all help you decide the appropriate tone to take and make you recognizable to your audience.
Have a great week!
Robyn
P.S. Comment below and let me know what you think and what strategies you will use to find your voice.