And getting to know yourself

Your writing style and your brand personality is as important as your graphics and your logo. In fact they should all work in perfect harmony. You’ve probably heard me say, just as you wouldn’t have different logos and colours on your different marketing materials, so you shouldn’t have different writing styles or use different personalities.

Your writing needs to be consistent and it needs to be uniquely you, so that someone can pick up what you’ve written and instantly know it’s you without even looking at the top. And that means spending a little bit of time identifying and recording your brand personality and identity, your voice and tone of voice and your style. And if you have more than one person writing for your business, it’s even more important.

Your brand personality and voice – are you fun but professional?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a new client who doesn’t want to be thought of as fun and professional so try to go a little deeper than that. If you have spent time on your graphics and branding you should already have some useful information but here are some quick questions which should help:

• What was the basis for your original branding? And the logo itself, colours and images?
• What are your business values and your mission and what is the story behind your business?
• What is your business purpose, what makes you different from your competitors and how do you want to be perceived?
• What sort of car, animal or celebrity would your brand be?
• Are you sincere, exciting, sophisticated, competent, masculine, relaxed, calm, youthful, reliable, mature, quirky, experienced, dynamic, inspirational, ethical, affordable or gold star?
• Who is your ideal client and what do you know about them and their values?
• If you’re a solopreneur draw on your own personality. You are the larder with all the ingredients – now you just have to work out which ingredients are right and in which quantities, bearing in mind the person you’ll be writing for.

Your tone of voice

Your voice is the unique and distinctive voice of your business but your tone of voice is how you say what you say. The chances are you may have different target clients or personas and this is where getting clear on you tone is important.

You need to have a consistent voice but adjust it according to who you are writing to, just as you would at a networking event as you spoke individually to different people or at a family reunion as you mingle with the young and the old. Don’t assume this will necessarily come naturally as you write. But by using your target audience data and by knowing your personality and voice, it will start to evolve.

Your style

If you’re doing or going to be doing your own writing, there’s no better way to identify your writing style than by playing around and practice. Start keeping a journal. No one needs to see it but just write naturally for a week or two and then look back and see what you learn about your style.

Read other blogs and newsletters and start making a note of styles you like and which ones you don’t. What is it about them that works? And remember always to keep in mind your ideal client, the person you’re going to be specifically writing to and what makes them tick.

Have some rules

Set some rules to start with: what sort of words, grammar and expressions are representative of your brand? Premium, lux’, affordable, cheap? Stellar or grounded? Won’t or will not?

And will you start sentences with an And (or even your paragraphs?). Or other conjunctions? I personally love doing so and will argue the case til’ the cows come home but it does come down to personal choice and who you’re writing to. What about capital letters, specific spellings (American or UK for example) acronyms and event fonts and formatting?

Having a consistent voice, tone and style makes a real difference. It will build brand awareness and trust. People will start to get you and enjoy reading your stuff. It will make you instantly recognisable and unmistakably you. And if you have a clear written guide, as your business starts to grow, it will make outsourcing some of your marketing activities much easier too.

Spend 10 minutes today thinking about your personality (just 10 minutes) and write down 5 things about it. But write them down. It’s the start of your brand guidelines.

Next week, as a bit of a break from all this hard work, I’ll give you 15 easy ways to come up with writing ideas. Until then, have fun.