Information in this blog post was obtained from Hootsuite, Semrush, and Sprout Social.
Establishing Your Brand's Tone
Having a tone of voice for your brand is important, but not always discussed. Depending on your area of business, your brand could be humorous, serious, humanly authentic, or even unbiased for delivering data-like content. The tone of your brand on social media should represent the image the brand is delivering and aiming for in advertisements.
The tone of voice carries the content you are creating. It can change the way your content resonates with its viewers and even inspire motivation or a "drive" in your audience about a specific topic. Enthusiasm, empathy, anger, and professionalism can all be picked up in writing. For example, many political campaigns use emotions and values to influence voters' opinions. Additionally, consistency in this tone is crucial. Having a strong brand identity tags along the brand's tone, and this should never change often. Having inconsistencies in your tone can confuse viewers and make them feel like your brand is floppy. You should aim to keep your brand strong and dependable.
An example of a great tone from a brand is Wendy's. Their brand has established an informal, humorous tone online and has carried it for years. Wendy's "roasts" their competition in tweets and creates unserious commercials for TV. Determining how or what tone of voice sometimes isn't so easy though. Semrush offers tips on how to determine if your writing is following the tone you are aiming for in this blog: Semrush.
Representing Your Brand
While the tone is important, even in humorous writing you should be positively representing your brand. When creating content, you never want to represent your brand in a negative way or give the impression that your brand is "bad". Your writing should uphold your brand's reputation and shine a light on why your brand is strong. Even non-promotional content can create a positive image in consumers' minds.
Representing your brand can take place in different forms. First, you should acknowledge and respond to relevant comments and other engagements on your posts. Responding to negative comments or rumors must be handled in a specific manner as well. Your brand should have a policy and possibly even a spokesperson for handling negativity against your brand. Additionally, you should never set up bots to respond either. Consumers have proven that they want authenticity from brands and will turn away from those who are not authentic.
Along with the topic of being authentic, cross-posting the same content on different platforms also leaves a bad taste in viewers' mouths. Cross-posting the same content gives off the image of being lazy, preset, and inauthentic. You want to avoid doing this even though it does save time. Hootsuite offers more information about how to positively represent your brand here.
Writing Your Bio
When creating your brand's bio on social media platforms, you still want to stay consistent with your tone and representation. Some brands use quotes, links, emojis, and more to help carry the brand's image in the bio. Having a good bio can help build trust, drive traffic, create emotion, etc.
According to Sprout Social, your bio should contain:
The brand name
The services or products you provide
Your brand’s personality or vibe
Where you’re located (if you have a physical location)
The industry or niche in which you operate
Links to your website (at minimum) and any other relevant online real estate
A clear call-to-action (CTA) that helps visitors decide what to do next
Keywords that help people find your brand via search
Along with a good bio, your profile picture and header, or cover photo, should be just as strong and relevant. Many brands use their logos, trademark phrases, or products as their pictures. Having a representable, professional, and relevant profile and cover photo also helps build trust and the brand's image.
For more information about content etiquette, head over to The SMMU's recent blog about content platform relevancy by Jordon.
Resources
Coleman, J. (2022, December 12). How to write an engaging social media bio for your brand. Sprout Social. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-bios/.
Loktionova, M. (n.d.). How to establish tone in writing (guide + examples). Semrush Blog. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-establish-tone-in-writing/.
Stanton, L. (2023, April 20). 15 social media etiquette blunders (and how to avoid them). Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-etiquette-rules-for-business/.
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