As powerful as a brand voice can be, businesses will want to take extra care in crafting their own brand voices and making sure content, messaging, and the look and feel of their brand are all consistent with their voice.

There are many brands with strong brand voices, some that are so well-crafted they have become synonymous with certain tones of voice. One great example is Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Everything about Harley screams ideas of individuality, freedom, and maybe just a bit of danger and rebelliousness. Their messaging — through advertisements, content, and even branded clothing — all supports this tone of voice. 

It has taken the Harley company over a hundred years to solidify their strong brand voice into the global zeitgeist. While your own brand may not be at the level of Harley-Davidson, you can still work towards crafting a brand voice that resonates with your target audience. 

Here are some tips to guide you toward finding your own brand’s tone of voice and using that to successfully scale your business and reach the right audience for your product or service. 

Think of Your Target Audience 

It can be difficult to craft an effective tone of voice if you don’t know who your audience is. If you’re not clued in to what your target audience wants to hear or see, you have no hope of reaching them. You’ll simply be screaming into the void, hoping someone will hear you. Businesses should look at what type of people are most likely to want to use their products or require their services. 

Is your target audience busy blue-collar workers who enjoy watching NASCAR on the weekends? If that is the case, the brand voice will be different than if your target audience was upper-crust ladies who lunch. Your audience will guide your brand voice, as it needs to speak to them, and it needs to be something they understand and resonate with. 

Understand Your Identity 

When we look at brands with strong voices — Nike, Apple, or Starbucks to name a few — they all have something in common: They know who they are. When developing a strong tone of voice for one’s business, understanding the business’s identity is key. Who are you as a business? Are you the champion of the little guy? Are you a laid-back oasis for hard-working corporate types? Perhaps you are a cool, minimalist tech company who can always be counted on to be on the cutting edge. 

Whatever your identity may be, it must be identified and understood before a brand voice can come from it. Founders should think about why they started their brand in the first place. What problems did they want to solve and who did they want to serve? Answering questions such as these will help the business find their brand identity and get them closer to creating a brand voice that resonates. 

Know Your Team 

The people who work for you are part of your brand voice. They are on the front lines of representing your voice, and are often part of why the tone of voice of your brand is what it is. When you think of the employees of certain companies with a strong brand voice, they often have similarities in speech, look, personality, and how they approach their jobs. It’s a part of brand culture that absolutely influences the brand voice. 

When you have hired a team, take the time to get to know those people as individuals. Those people will often help guide you, as the founder, to the development of the brand’s tone of voice. 

Analyze Past Content

It’s been said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This also rings true for brand voice — the best predictor of future brand voice tone is past tone. Take a look at past content, such as blog posts or social media posts, to see if there are words, phrases, images, or a general feel that run consistently throughout the past posts. You may have already formed a brand tone of voice without even realizing it. Those consistencies are your natural brand voice, and if they have been successful in attracting the audience you wish to attract, it should be something that you stick with as a brand.

Your brand voice speaks in a number of ways: through social media, packaging, logos and colors used, and through your products and services. With a well-defined brand voice, you can count on attracting your target audience and define your uniqueness outside of your competition.

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So, how does one get started writing guest pieces? While there are a number of ways one can succeed at guest writing, here are some tips for mastering the art of the guest piece.

It All Starts with the Perfect Pitch

In order for journalists and publications to gain interest in your brand or company, you will have to pitch the idea of your guest piece to them first. To best find outlets that align with what your business provides, a simple Google search of  “subject matter or keyword + contributor” can help you find a wealth of resources. For example, if you run an organic skincare company, you may Google “organic skin care + contributor” to find outlets that have written about organic skin care or wellness in the past. 

Crafting and sending a well-written pitch specific to your subject matter expertise to your target outlet(s) can open the door for guest pieces that inform, entertain, or lead people to your site and services. You want your pitch to hold the reader’s interest and show off your writing skills. Even if you don’t consider yourself the best writer, you can still craft sound guest pieces that get the job done.

Your pitch’s tone should come off as professional and cordial. Research your target outlet first to find out what kind of pieces they typically publish, get a sense of their approach and tone, and discover their parameters for submissions. 

You don’t want to waste time submitting pitches to an outlet that does not publish content specific to your services or product. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the outlet to say yes to your pitch.

Perfecting Your Content 

When pitching an outlet, you should already have an idea of what content you would like to present in your piece. The topic you choose should be relevant to your product offerings or services. 

Once your pitch is accepted, you will then have to write your article. The outlet should provide you with some parameters for structuring your piece, which should help you along the way, especially if you are new to article writing. They will typically let you know how long the article should be, how to break up paragraphs, and what information, keywords, or backlinks they would like included. Outlets should also let you know how promotional (or non-promotional) they want you to be.

Above all else, remember to focus on making your content compelling — you want to write something people will want to read and ultimately share. Your primary goal is engagement and getting your name out into the world, so serving up good content is a stepping stone in the right direction toward reaching that goal. 

Make sure that any claims that you make are given correct sources, and that quotes are properly cited. While it should go without saying, don’t ever plagiarize any of the content in your guest piece. Many outlets will want a guarantee that content is theirs and theirs alone to publish, so you won’t be able to simply send them a previously-published article and call it day.

Keywords and SEO

One of the main reasons outlets want guest pieces is to help with their own search engine optimization (SEO). Learning how to leverage the most appropriate and highest-ranked keywords and backlinks for SEO purposes can be challenging at first, but once you learn how to best use these tools they can be invaluable for marketing. Additionally, many outlets will provide you with direction on keywords and backlinks for SEO purposes. 

For outlets that have issues with overly promotional content, craftily using keywords and backlinks can still make these guest pieces beneficial for your company or role as a subject matter expert, even without specifically naming your brand. Having your name as a byline and a bio that tells who you are and where you are from are all great ways to direct traffic back to your business.

Actionable Content 

Most outlets want any content that they publish to be ultimately useful and actionable for their readers. They want an engaged readership that is going to share content and, hopefully, help that content go viral — depending on the subject matter. 

While there is no guarantee that every pitch you submit will be accepted, once one is, you will soon see the benefit of getting your voice heard in an industry-aligned outlet. If you can dedicate yourself to crafting compelling, actionable, and shareable content, you will reap the rewards of increased engagement and more profit for your business.

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