Have you ever met someone who had such an engaging and animated way of speaking that you just wanted to keep listening? Have you ever had a conversation with someone who was so calm and soft-spoken that you left feeling peaceful yet resolute?
You could say that these people had their own brand voices. Not only was it the tone of their voice, but what they said. The words they chose. Their inflection and cadence. Just as people have a way of recognizable ways of speaking, so do brands.
Knowing how your health and wellness brand voice speaks is as important as knowing who it speaks to.
What Is Brand Voice?
A brand voice is the individual style, tone or color behind all of a brand’s communication and messaging. It’s the unique way that you communicate who you are, what you do and who you serve. A brand voice is like your fashion sense for your writing. It’s a way to let your brand’s personality shine while staying true to your core company values.
Your health and wellness brand voice is carried across every facet of your business. From your website to your social media to your newsletters. In videos, in client-facing emails and even in all internal communications, it stays consistent.
In the health and wellness market, in particular, most brands are communicating the same basic message: be healthy, you’ll feel better. But it’s in how they communicate this core message that differentiates brands, and ultimately, the types of consumers they attract.
Why Do You Need a Brand Voice?
If you haven’t intentionally crafted a brand voice, it doesn’t mean you don’t have one. Even if it’s not deliberate, readers still hear a brand voice. Without intention, it may come across as disjointed.
Brand voice may be one of those marketing things that you’ve gotten by without thus far. So you may be wondering whether it’s really that important to pay attention to.
Here are a few reasons to have a consistent health and wellness brand voice:
- Improve your brand recognition
- Earn brand buy-in from existing customers
- Present an assured and authoritative brand image
- Ensure all staff, freelancers and agencies properly represent your brand
By knowing your brand voice and having a clear definition for it, you not only build brand recognition, but you mitigate the possibility of being misrepresented.
Whether you have an in-house team of marketing specialists, or you hire from outside, it’s important that everyone is on the same page about tone, style and other particulars. Not only is this more efficient, but it’s simply more professional.
Tips for Defining Your Health and Wellness Brand Voice
If you have a vague idea of your brand voice but it’s never been officially communicated to your team, then it’s time to start defining. Here are four tips on how to get inspired when defining your brand voice:
Look Inward
Get your team involved in helping to define your brand voice. Ask them to give you three words that represent the brand. Or ask them to share a description of how they think customers see the brand. Your team is an important resource for better understanding where your brand is currently at.
Use Testimonials
Look through customer testimonials and reviews. Look for feedback on social media and blog comments. How are customers responding to your brand and what words are they using to describe you? You need to know how your customers currently perceive your brand if you want to take charge of your messaging.
Assess Past Publications
Look through your earliest blog posts and some of your more recent ones and evaluate your brand voice evolution. How did your communication style start out and where is it now? What would you keep and what would you change about your tone then and now? You might find that your earlier work had more honesty, authenticity and even vulnerability that you can recapture.
Check out the Competition
It’s important for your health and wellness brand voice to stand out from the competition. You want to be memorable, unique and true to yourself. Pick three competitors and review their blogs, website copy and social media profiles. Define their brand voices in your own terms. How are you different and how can you remain different?
Maintaining Brand Voice
Once you’ve put in the work of defining your health and wellness brand’s voice, you’ll want to make sure that your team, both internal and external put it into action. You’ll also need to anticipate a learning curve because it may take a while to get the whole team on board long-term.
Here are some tips for helping your team put your newly defined brand voice into action—and maintain it:
Commit to Communication
As the champion of your brand voice, you need to lead by example. Commit to communicating with your team and customers in your brand voice. This includes meetings, emails and any other points of communication.
Create a Style Guide
Style guides are a great asset to create, distribute and build on over time. But, the reality is that once someone reads a style guide they may not retain all they learned. Instead of creating a long document with lots of rules, create a one-page sheet that team members can print out, keep on hand and reference regularly.
Account for Different Media
Finally, it’s important to take into account that different media by nature require different communication styles. This is both because of the medium itself and the demographic who uses the varying platforms. It’s important that when you do have a clearly defined brand voice, you are flexible enough to adapt it to various media platforms. These include different social media like Twitter vs. Instagram and blogs vs. videos.
Work With a Communication Partner
If you’re outsourcing your content writing, you need to make sure that your hired writers understand and follow your brand voice. At Healthy Content, we love and respect the brands that our customers have built. As your communication partner, we can’t wait to get to know your brand voice and bring it to life through creative content writing.
If you’re looking to bring on a content writing partner, contact Healthy Content today to discuss your project and tell us about your health and wellness brand voice.