Tips for Emulating a Brand’s Voice on Social Media
Let’s chat: brand voice! 💬 Brand voice is the personality a company conveys in various communications. It's essential to building a brand and differentiating oneself from competitors.
When you’re an outsourced marketer or freelancer challenged to wear the “in-house marketer” hat for several businesses without losing the personal feel and identity of each brand, it can be totally normal to initially be hit with intimidation or the dreaded writer’s block.
If you’re struggling to fully emulate another brand’s voice on social media, read on for four tips to help you “get into character.”
LEVERAGE YOUR ONBOARDING QUESTIONNAIRE
The first step to emulating a brand’s voice on social media is to have a strong understanding of the brand from the start.
Once a lead has signed our contract, we send them a New Client Questionnaire for them to fill out prior to our team getting started on content. While this form is used to collect several pieces of information, we love that it provides clarity on four key aspects of their business:
What is it?
Straight to the point - we use this form to deepen our understanding of what the client’s business has to offer.
Who is it for?
We want to know alllll the demographic and psychographic details about their ideal customer.
Why is it important?
By asking what solution their product or service brings, we’re able to learn more about the pain points of their target audience. Plus, we typically learn a bit more about the mission behind their brand too!
How is it portrayed?
Your social media content is only as clear as your branding. We ask clients to describe the look and feel of their brand both in terms of visuals and copy. This is where our creative team will look to really nail down their vision and tone of voice.
By asking these questions from the start of your working relationship with a new client, you’ll gain complete clarity on what you’re speaking about, who you’re directing speech to, why they should listen, and how you should speak to them. This will not only help you nail their voice when crafting future copy but also when engaging on behalf of the brand (yep, we’re challenging you to dig deeper than just responding to comments with emojis!).
Snag our New Client Questionnaire for yourself in our Client Onboarding Checklist.
REFER TO THEIR WEBSITE AND PAST CONTENT
Website and previously published content is a great place to turn for copy inspo as it provides a clear example of their brand voice in action.
Is the language they’re using witty, sophisticated, informal, motivational, informative, etc.? Take a look for yourself on the following channels:
Website
Blog
Sales pages
Newsletters
Past social media captions
Take note of the overall tone and any keywords or phrases they frequently use, and continue baking that into content going forward.
ANALYZE COMMENTS ON SOCIAL
This next tip is especially valuable for discovering keywords, adjectives, or technical terms that are super niche to an industry. Scroll through the comment section on their past posts and take note of what their audience is saying about the photo.
Ask yourself:
What can kind of language do they use to describe and/or react to the content?
Are there any keywords or technical terms included that can be incorporated into future copy?
This tactic also allows you to better understand your audience and what they find most valuable or notable about the content that’s created.
CONSUME TO CREATE
In our New Client Questionnaire, we also ask clients to outline brands they admire both visually and copy-wise, regardless of whether or not that brand is a competitor. Take a deep dive into those brands’ content and leverage Instagram’s Save feature to refer back to any copy you like for inspiration later.
We hope you found this blog post helpful in learning more about how to emulate a brand’s voice on social media. For more copy or marketing tips, be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our social media newsletter. Chat soon!
xx,
The Homies
