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The Art of Finding the Right Voice for Content

The delivery of your content is just as important as the information it contains — and this is where voice comes in to play! When you work with a number of clients, mastering the art of creating the perfect voice is more critical than ever because each of your clients is targeting a different audience. Every company needs a unique voice that represents their brand, allows them to stand out from competitors, and enables them to build trust with their audience. These tips will help you find the right voice for every one of your clients, increase the number of readers to your posts, and lead to greater engagement and more conversions.

1. Create Personas

Whatever persona you choose will depend on what is relevant to your clients’ products or services. Work with your clients to create as detailed personalities as possible using any relevant demographics and statistics. This may include age, gender, occupation, salary, location, values, and goals, to name just a few suggested by Buffer.  You can gather the information for your persona by website analysis, asking your clients about their customers, researching through social media, and talking to the customers directly through surveys and other means.

2. Think about Style

Once you have a clearer idea of your target market it is time to figure out what type of voice your audience will respond to best. Several factors come in to play to take into account when developing the style of your voice:

Formality

Addressing your audience with the correct formality will determine how well you connect. Bear in mind that formality comes in an array of shades, and you need to use your personas to determine what will resonate best with your target audience.

Vocabulary

Use your personas expertise and understanding of subjects to decide the degree of technicality of your vocabulary. If in doubt, explain terms, spell out acronyms, and keep your language simple. However, if you are reasonably confident that your audience will understand how the industry speaks, avoid going into unnecessary depths to explain as this may bore your readers and might possibly appear patronizing.

Person

The last style consideration is whether to use first, second, or third person voice. In most cases second-person voice is best because it enables you to involve your audience. And when you involve your audience they feel like they are a part of what it is you are trying to accomplish. However, if a client prefers you to take a particularly professional tone, you may like to opt for third-person voice. Reserve the first-person voice for talking about experiences from the client’s point of view, of course, but to ensure that you still relate to the customer, use at least a few second-person pronouns such as you and your. Generally your client will tell you how he wants the information displayed and what voice he prefers.

3. Identify the Qualities of the Brand

Finally, you need to infuse an element of the brand into your voice. Interview your clients to ask them about their motivation for starting their company’s, what message, concept, and values they are selling to their customers, and how they feel that they are different from the competition.

Distilled recommends that you condense your information so that it is specific to what the client is asking for. This can be achieved by using words and phrases that express the company’s goals, ideals, and expectations within the marketplace. Your last challenge is to apply these findings into your content. For example, if your client’s goal is creativity, consider using an upbeat voice to inspire your audience. If the brand is proud of being trustworthy, take a more authoritative tone and focus on being informative.

When you start working with a new client, developing a new voice from scratch may seem like a lengthy process but it will be well worth your effort. The right voice enables you to connect with readers and gives your content a greater impact. Plus, provided you take all of the above into consideration, you will only need to complete the process once and thereafter you will be able to make slight adjustments now and again as you monitor the effectiveness of your content.

Topics: Content Creation Process

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