In the fast-paced realm of digital marketing, having a distinct and genuine blogging voice is your brand’s secret ingredient. To have a blog that attracts readers and entices them to return for more, dive deep into the art of discovering and honing your authentic blogging voice to create content that resonates, connects, and promotes your brand effectively.
Before delving into the topic of how to develop a unique and authentic blogging voice, it’s helpful to understand why you should be blogging in the first place.
Blogging helps promote products and services, drive website traffic, and more. It is a great way to increase your brand visibility and serves as an immensely effective SEO tool. Of the estimated 8.6 billion Google searches a day, somewhere around 80% of those are informational...people searching to answer a question or learn information. That means your content marketing strategy should serve to inform, engage, and delight potential customers who are looking for information that you can provide. Keeping that goal in mind, here are 10 tips for building a blogging strategy that matches your brand's voice, tone and style.
The first part of finding an authentic style and a unique blogging voice is to understand your target audience. This means knowing their language, pain points, and preferences, and then you can tailor your tone and content accordingly. This understanding forms the foundation of meaningful communication. Understanding who your audience is, what they value, and how they approach a problem or solution helps you to better adapt your content toward meeting those unique preferences. Consider your audience like a target, you will never be able to hit the bull’s eye without understanding your audience well. Consequently, this is the first step you need to take to find your blogging voice.
Let your brand’s personality shine through your writing. Your voice becomes an emblem of your brand’s identity. You can best reflect your brand when you know your customer base well, meaning you have done the research mentioned above and know what makes your audience tick. This also means considering your business’s core values and your overall mission. Your brand’s personality will likely be a combination of qualities and motivation behind what you do every day. These qualities will be closely associated with your brand and should be reflected in the content you create on your blog.
Infuse what sets your brand apart, like stories or unconventional approaches. Uniqueness is your compass in a sea of sameness so be crystal clear on your key differentiator. The digital market is full of great content, and yours simply needs to stand out. Therefore, highlight what makes your brand different. Do this by leveraging your expertise in your field as well as clarifying what your brand’s passion is and what makes you different. Then, let it shine! Your uniqueness should color your perspective on your writing giving your content the edge it needs to stand out.
Talk, don’t lecture. Engage readers in friendly, approachable language. Conversations forge connections that last. No one wants to feel like they are being talked down to or “told” what to do. Therefore, even if you mean well, having a blog that seems a bit too informational or educational instead of being more conversational can come across the wrong way. Honoring your brand style, make sure that your posts are easy to read and understand.
Connect emotionally by using stories or scenarios aligned with your message. Emotion is the glue that bonds your content to a person's heart. From the dawn of time, people have enjoyed telling stories, hearing stories, and more. This is because stories bring with them emotion. They make you feel happy, sad, proud, or some other emotion that leaves an impression. Therefore, to create an effective blog post that helps your brand’s authenticity and is memorable, make room for emotion. Tap into what your products or services do for people, and tell that story.
Experiment with tone and style as your brand grows. Evolution keeps your voice fresh and adaptable. While you do want to maintain a consistent voice and overall brand appeal, you also need to adapt when necessary to meet your changing audience. Don’t make overarching changes constantly, but also be aware that what worked last year might not work this year. Rules change. Trends change. Preferences change. Technology changes. Your blogging strategy should evolve in response to those changes.
Keep language simple for easy understanding. Clarity is the bridge between you and your readers. You want your readers to understand what you are writing. You don’t want to worry so much about impressing readers with big words and hard concepts that they simply don’t understand what they are reading. This will lead to disengagement and loss of interest. Keep it simple and clear! Present an opening paragraph with a thesis statement so that a reader knows what to expect in the blog. Then, resist the temptation to over-inform. Stay to your topic, and if you see that more room is needed to expand on connected topics, start another blog!
Maintain your voice across all platforms for brand recognition. Consistency builds trust and familiarity. This doesn’t mean don’t ever change anything, this just means maintaining a consistent brand representation across all the platforms. It also means that you should pick a blogging schedule you can maintain. A flurry of posts followed by silence for a few months will only serve to undermine the very trust you are trying to create. Make sure your content is on brand, and make sure you post consistently.
Share customer successes or behind-the-scenes peeks to create a connection. Stories are the currency of human connection. Make sure you share the successes your customers have had using your products or services. Search engines reward user-generated content (UGC) and you can accomplish this by sharing testimonials, case studies, quotes, photos, videos, and feedback from actual customers.
Let your values and passion shine for authentic, heart-centered content. Authenticity is the cornerstone of a powerful blogging voice. Even though your content is posted on a digital medium, your communication is still person-to-person. Never forget that you are writing for a human. Your audience will be able to see through an “act” or inauthentic persona. Be true to yourself and what makes you a unique business. Stay true to this and communicate your authenticity, personality, and creativity through your blog posts.
Your authentic blogging voice sets you apart in a crowded digital space. It’s your ticket to genuine audience engagement, trust-building, and brand triumph. So, let your voice resonate, tell your tale, and witness your brand thrive.