"Hello, bro" or "Hello, esteemed colleagues" - how should brands communicate with customers? Strangely enough—differently. Each brand should have its own voice, Tone of Voice.

Tone of Voice is the style of communication between a brand and its customers or target audience. ToV is also referred to as the brand's voice, it's recognizable and sounds the same across all platforms: on social media, radio, and advertising banners. And this is why it builds trust.

Why you need Tone of Voice

Just like different products are targeted at different audiences, brand voices also differ. Some may have a chummy tone—and this may be acceptable for a specific target audience. For others—it's only formal address "Вы" with a capital letter. No jokes! For yet others—communication is conducted on equal terms, respectfully and tactfully.

However, it is more important not which layers of vocabulary you use, but whether the brand's voice sounds the same everywhere. If you, for example, address a customer as "my friend" in a post, write "bro, don't worry" in a comment, and "Dear subscriber" in an email, he will feel confused. He simply won't understand: is he a friend or a bro, are street thugs communicating with him who might cause problems, or are they professionals offering to solve all issues. Most importantly, he won't understand the intention: do they want to sell him some product or are they drawing his attention to a quality product he needs.

Thus, Tone of Voice makes the brand recognizable, conveys the company's values and mission, helps to build communication with customers, and maintains an emotional connection.

Types of Tone of Voice

The brand's voice must be consistent across all levels: texts, images, live communication. Meanwhile, different companies will have different voices. It's important to choose your tone, taking into account the characteristics of the audience.

Friendly

Choosing a friendly tone, the brand will communicate with the customer on equal terms and respectfully. Here both informal and formal address are allowed. The main thing is to maintain hierarchy, so the audience perceives the brand not as a resource for entertainment, but as a commercial project.

Provocative

This tone is characterized by boldness, loud and sometimes ambiguous headlines, hot topics that can be immediately discussed, jokes from the "18+" category. When choosing a provocative tone, clearly define the boundaries so as not to offend customers and damage the brand.

Chummy

Communication between the brand and the customer, as if they have known each other all their lives. Most often, this tone is chosen by companies where the target audience is the youth. Hence, lots of slang and borderline jokes.

Expert

Brands that choose this voice know how to explain complex things in simple words. Every text is a treasure of useful and understandable information, life hacks, experience applicable in your situation. Expert Tone of Voice is characterized not by an abundance of terms, but by the ability to clearly and simply explain complex matters.

Serious

Here you will not encounter a single joke—only dry facts, figures, conciseness, and informational richness. Open any government channel—and you'll understand what's being talked about.

Witty

Unlike "chummy", this Tone of Voice implies intellectual jokes, wordplay, irony, and self-irony. Here you won't see provocative statements or dry statistics. However, trust in such a brand will be not only among intellectuals.

What makes up Tone of Voice

Tone of Voice is always observed at all levels of information perception: text, image, and direct sound.

At the text level

• Style: conversational, formal, informational, slang.
• Tonality: respectful—defiant, restrained—enthusiastic, serious—humorous, solemn—everyday.
• Sentence structure: complex sentences consisting of several simple ones, or simple sentences sometimes consisting of two or three words.
• Text formatting: use of emojis, paragraph spacing, number of sentences in a paragraph.

At the image level

• Color scheme.
• Composition.
• Rhythm of the photo or video.

How a brand can choose its Tone of Voice?

Determining your voice will likely not happen immediately. Your brand may search for it, change it, until it sounds clear and pleasant to its target audience.

To make this happen faster, you need to determine the following:

• the company's mission: what customer problems it solves, how it is useful, and why it operates. You can personalize the company. For example, a flower boutique is a girl with a delicate taste, and she will communicate gently, using elevated language. An auto service is a middle-aged brutal man who can figure out the car in detail and diagnose a malfunction by ear. His speech will have some chummy element and many terms;
• audience: analyze your target audience: gender, age, interests, level of education and income, place of residence. Knowing what the audience needs and in what "language" it speaks, you will find your Tone of Voice faster.

How to implement Tone of Voice in a company

We are sure that your team consists of like-minded people who understand the company's mission and speak the same language as the target audience. And yet it's worth establishing some kind of code of rules that specifies the most important aspects of Tone of Voice:

• brand value and mission;
• target audience;
• brand personalization: what the brand would look like if it were a person;
• message structure: sentence and paragraph length, use of emojis, text style;
• lexical features of messages, including prohibited and allowed words;
• how it is permissible to communicate personally, by phone, on social media.

A little tip: you can create ToV, or rather—prescribe a code of rules—using Postmypost AI. To do this, enter the command in the query line: "Write ToV for <brand name> in <specify style> style". The more detailed information you provide, the more fully it will meet the requirements. You can use it immediately or add something else.

Now all that’s left is to follow this set of rules. Of course, over time, the brand evolves, and its voice can change too. However, keep the most important thing: respect and goodwill towards your customers.