Establishing Your Brand Voice on Social Media

Abby Shaw • December 28, 2020

So, you’ve been tasked with putting together a social media strategy. Before jumping into creating social media assets and posting, you need to figure out what your brand’s social media voice is.

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If anything, it should have the same type of vibe as your established brand voice. Your brand voice should be consistent across your website, social platforms, ads, email campaigns, publications and so on, but here we are just going to focus on the social side of things.

Defining your voice and tone are crucial aspects of developing a social media presence. Let’s start off by defining the difference between the two:

• Your voice can be upbeat, professional, compassionate, clever, funny, responsive, etc. and this all depends on the social platform you are utilizing.
• Your tone gives the extra flavor and allows your content to have more substance. Audience, situation and channel are what determine your brand’s tone. Are you excited about a new product release? Maybe you want to add in some exclamation marks or emojis to catch your audience’s eye, for example.

Social media brand voice can be broken down by determining your brand’s:

• Character – what your brand sounds like
• Tone – your vibe
• Language – how do you speak or what words to consistently use to get your point across to your audience
• Purpose – what are your organization’s mission and goal for posting on social media?

If you are struggling to figure out your social media brand voice, you must become one and immerse yourself with your organizations culture, community and conversation.

What makes the organization unique and stand out from the rest?

What does the organization stand for? Express what makes the organization unique. Join in on the conversation among your audience demographics. See what they are looking for, talking about and sharing on their platforms. This will help you mold the direction your social media brand voice needs to go in.

So now there is the question: What do the different social media platforms look like for you? Well, you have your social media brand voice, this is where you can have fun with the “tone” we mentioned earlier.

Instagram – Is a platform that allows you to be creative through photos, videos and obviously through you’re caption copy. Instagram can be a platform where you can be more fun and playful with the use of emojis, exclamation marks and get the conversation going with your audience. Get the audience engaged with a clever caption, trending sayings and hashtags.

LinkedIn – The B2B powerhouse. This is where your company wants to be more informative and formal with its content. Here it is business mixed in with opinionated and long-form content.

Twitter – Concise and get to the point in under 280 characters. With a character limit like that you need to make sure your voice is something that captivates and intrigues your audience. Much like Instagram, you can let your company’s witty, sophisticated or snarky sides emerge within your company’s boundaries.  

Facebook – You to have a mix of it all. Have some fun, but don’t forget that people are there for information as well. Mold your voice to the content you are presenting.

Remember, although there are different social media platforms, try to keep your social media brand voice consistent. Change up the tone with an emoji or two or add in an exclamation mark, poll or question to give your audience a welcoming vibe. Show them you are on that platform for them.