135. How do you find your authentic brand voice?
When you write content, do you find it hard to be "you"? 😵 💫 This week's Brand Therapy episode is here to help! Get ready for hosts Phil and Lauren to have an in-depth discussion on all things brand voice. From inspirational examples to exercises to keep you in check, you'll become conscious of your unique communication quirks and motivated to be yourself. If you create content in any form, this episode is for you!
Episode transcription
PHIL
Welcome, welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
LAUREN
And I'm Lauren.
PHIL
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. I'm so happy you're here. So, so happy. Here's my promise, we'll make it worth your while to spend the next roughly, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes hanging out with us. It's gonna be worth it. We're going to talk about a topic that, for the record, I'm shocked, we have not made an episode on. This is going to be good. We're going to talk about a very important aspect of your brand, specifically that of Lauren, and this is one of your favorite topics.
LAUREN
It is, but it's challenging to articulate. I'm a little nervous, how do you talk about a voice? I don't know. We'll see how it works out today.
PHIL
Let's see how it goes. Because we do try to make these episodes as tangible as possible. And we will continue to try and accomplish that in this episode.
LAUREN
Yes. So first, let's frame it up. Why is it important to have a brand voice?
PHIL
Well, maybe I've said this before, but think of it this way, when you appear online for someone to consume you, the goal is that they could cover up the profile photo and the user name and still know who that post is coming from. I would also say visual style. Let's say you're just reading the caption, not even looking at the photo. If I was just reading the caption, let's ask ourselves if I know it's from you. It's interesting, actually, because I posted on Instagram today and we use Instagram as an example. It doesn't mean that everything revolves around Instagram, but the post that I did today that you helped me add started with a capital sentence or cap, uppercase sentence and then an emoji. And I reflected on the fact that that is very much my brand voice. Anyone who's listened to our podcast, while they're listening to it right now, hello, you know that I have some wild and wacky inflections. Kind of like my signature voice. I can get serious at times, but it's just how I talk. When I'm presenting. Even with friends, I talk this way. And so we decided, and I just thought, you know, this serves as an example, but we decided a long time ago, why not start every Instagram caption in capital letters like it almost reads how I would talk. And I do it and people are used to it. And I repeat it. Really, branding at the most basic form is repetition. And I think that's just a quick off the top of my head example of brand voice not saying that we're perfect, but it is something we try to be good at. Obviously, we need to be examples here.
LAUREN
There are a few other interesting decisions that have been unconsciously made basically over the years with your brand voice that I think listeners can learn from. In the example you just mentioned, all caps emoji starting off the post, notice how it's not all caps, five exclamation marks, or sentence case with five exclamation marks, because exclamation marks really aren’t brand for you unless it's making a joke or an outrageous statement.
PHIL
I don't think I've ever used two exclamation marks ever in a post. I do not do it. I actually actively avoid exclamation marks. I use them sometimes when they're totally necessary, but I try to avoid them because I think I try to be a little more assertive in anything that I say. So an exclamation mark almost kind of leaves it open to interpretation in a moment of passion, whereas I put a period. And this is a fact and a belief that I'm stating. But I do love all caps to emphasize words. These are decisions point being. And we're kind of letting people you know, it's like a little window into our world. We're letting people see how we make decisions.
I actually have a really good early example of creating a system for brand voice in one of my very first clients. In fact, my first television client, Joshua McKinley season 13 Project Runway, he became a great friend of mine. We had met actually, while the show had started, and he through a mutual friend, was like, Phil, I'm not good at social media. Is this something you can help me with? I was like, Yes, please, I'll help you. You don't even have to pay me. I want a client on television. This was like early on. And so I helped him and I made his website. I would sit with him in a room or virtually when the show was on and he was answering, replying to DMS and mentions on Twitter and Social Media. It was overwhelming, so he was happy to have my help.
But in order for both of us to do it, and it sounds like him, we needed to create a system. So we would reply to men and call them handsome. And we would reply to women and call them gorgeous, or beautiful, or lovely. And so this was using his language, which was a lot of fun, but we created a system to make sure that the brand voice was cohesive. That's a quick example from a long time ago.
LAUREN
I love that. And I think that we can all think of a time where we've been messaging, texting a friend, for example, and you're used to their normal tone of voice, but maybe there's something wrong or you said something that offended them or whatever. And you get a very formal text back that has a bunch of periods and is a different style than they normally would like, maybe it's a single sentence, or maybe it's a long paragraph and not being sent over multiple texts. And it's always jarring to sense that something's different in the voice and so similar to how you have a style with texting or emailing someone, that's the type of style that we're wanting to really, really nail for social media.
PHIL
Absolutely, absolutely.
LAUREN
Okay, so you mentioned Joshua McKinley as an example. One of my favorite brand voice examples is the Skinny Confidential Lauryn Evarts Bosstick actually has her own handle now that's actually using her name instead of the Skinny Confidential as it was for 10 years. But I'm just pulling up her profile now because she's so funny with her brand voice. She writes in all lowercase, which is interesting. And she also feels like you're texting with her. So for example, her most recent post that I'm reading now starts off all lowercase. jet lagged sucks, and with a baby, but, and W a baby. Like it's abbreviated. It sucks, even all caps harder. Some things that have worked are simple, uncomplicated, and nothing fancy. The first thing you have to do is grounding. Bear with me, this is weird, but it works. And she just goes on and on and on. And it feels like you're getting a text from your kooky friend who knows the latest and greatest of whatever problem you're facing in the wellness area. So I love her brand voice. I think it's really really fun.
PHIL
Great. That's a good example.
LAUREN
She was also sorry, one caption that was really funny. She was on a trip with her one year old. And it's a photo of the two of them together. And she goes oh my god, do you know how fucking hard it is to get a decent Instagram with a jet lagged baby? That's her caption. So funny. Okay, what are some of your favorites?
Phil
Well, my favorite one is We Rate Dogs. Specifically, their Instagram captions are so funny. But they actually created almost like a brand from their brand voice actually. And yes, they always have amazing photos of dogs, and everyone loves dogs, but their captions are amazing. So I'll give an example. This is Archie. And it's a picture of the most beautiful Golden Retriever. He's out of ‘pawffice’ this week, do not even think about contacting him for any reason, 14 out of 10. And then they give the social media handle for the dogs to follow which for the record, I follow more dogs than I follow people on Instagram. So you can see why this is one of my favorite accounts. But they follow a system totally in line with what we're talking about. And I love that system.
When you create a system with a consistent way of showing up, your audience gets used to it and they love it. It's like falling in love with your favorite TV show and being happy when they follow the formula that you love. You can still keep things interesting. You have to keep things interesting. But when you follow a formula that your audience gets used to, you reap the benefit of that. So they rate dogs. That's the whole thing. We rate dogs and they always write them more than 10 out of 10.
LAUREN
Oh they do.
PHIL
It's always like 12 out of 13 or 14 out of 10.
LAUREN
Precious.
PHIL
And they do all kinds of amazing things like they have senior Sunday, where every dog that they feature as a senior dog. So 10 or older. They do all kinds of amazing sponsored collaborations with pet insurance and all kinds of stuff. It's my favorite Instagram account, hands down. And I love the photos and they have hilarious photos but the captions are actually better. That's why I bring it up because everyone loves dogs. Pets are used in advertising but I'm telling you the captions, the brand voice of this account is even better than the amazing photos. So they're a really good example.
LAUREN
I love that. And I also like how even though in the example you raise there is a pun, the sentence structure is very serious. They take grading dogs very seriously, you're probably never gonna see an exclamation mark, and they take the rating itself very seriously. 14 out of 10 decisions made, let's move on.
PHIL
Yes, yes, that's totally accurate.
Lauren
I love it. Okay, so some tools, one thing that came to mind was the 100 words to describe your brand PDF that we offer. I think it is really, really useful for someone to get a sense of what their brand personality is. Whenever we do brand audit recaps for clients or potential clients, we always narrow down eight words that we would use to describe their brand. And I think people should do it for themselves, don't you?
Phil
I do. In fact, I have the URL handy for that PDF, I shorten our PDF links so that I can remember them off the top of my head, that one is philp.al/100words, all lowercase. So you can go get that PDF, it's super, super handy, with 100 words that you can describe your brand, and we group them in a really cool way.
LAUREN
Now, another tool that's a little crazy, is I recommend that someone basically copies and pastes the captions of their past 10 or so posts, or blog, it can be posts of any kind, Instagram blog, post, whatever, dumped them into a word cloud, you can find any of them on Google and see what words are used the most across those 10 posts. And a word cloud is cool because it will visually make the most frequently occurring words larger, so you can actually see what words you use the most. And I think that would be really interesting to look at.
PHIL
I love that exercise. So how many posts do you think they need, you said about 10?
LAUREN
I think 10. And it actually might be worth looking at your 10 best performing posts because you could get a sense of what words resonate with people, and what words potentially help you even in an algorithmic sense. But that way, you'll be able to see quite boldly which words are the most popular.
PHIL
I love that. I think that people will actually be surprised. This is something that we're each as brands like we're so close to it ourselves, that it's hard to be self aware to identify these. So you kind of just need instances of you doing existing creating. That's why I love this exercise, because it's taking you out in your environment, speaking how you speak, showing up and then taking inventory of that. That's really cool. I think both of those tools actually work really well with the word clouds. So just go to Google and type word cloud tool, you'll find all kinds of free ones, paste in your, let's say 10 last captions, blog posts, the more the merrier. And it's going to create a word cloud when you paste that content in from that content. Love it. And then you can see what your most popular words are. And you can cross reference with our free 100 words to describe your brand PDF which can be really useful when you're writing a copy for your homepage.
It can be useful when you're writing words for your resume. I mean, there's so many you know, social media bios or so many instances where you need to write for how you show up online just a few seconds ago, I sent my bio for a speaking opportunity. You just never know and you need to be ready to show up in a way that's solid that's really reflects your brand in real life. Love those two tools.
LAUREN
One final tool that I feel we should get to sponsor the podcast because we mention them so much is Otter. Otter transcribes whatever you're saying, into written form. Sometimes it's a tough pill to swallow. If you say ‘like’ frequently like me, for example, but it's useful, it's useful to get a sense of how your verbal tone of voice translates to written because it's not always a one to one translation. But as long as you've got your eight words to describe yourself, you've got your word cloud, and then you can apply those to whatever transcription otter spits out. I think you'll be in great shape for finding and sticking with your brand voice.
PHIL
They do a beautiful job. I also love specifically about Otter, I love the formatting built into Otter for when you go to export a transcription to PDF. It looks really really beautiful. It could be notes from a meeting whether you have multiple speakers, it could also just be you speaking and Otter will break it up into sections they make it really simple to export as PDF, or a variety of formats that you might need SRT files if you need transcriptions or subtitles for videos. Otter just makes it really easy and I appreciate how they put such attention to detail into that. If you look at a PDF from Otter, it's so well organized and easy to read. really accurate. Yeah, you're right. They should be paying us to always say they're not but they should be. I do love the people over at Otter. In fact, I have an Otter affiliate code, so that's almost like a sponsor. But if people want to sign up for an account, it's free. It's free for your account. But if you want the additional features like I use for SRT and stuff, I think I pay $10 a month, go sign up, philp.al/otter-ai. That'll take you there. And thanks for using my affiliate link.
LAUREN
Well, I think we covered the next steps in our descriptions of the tools, don't you? Is there anything else you'd recommend people do?
PHIL
Yeah, I have one final recommendation, which is something we should always be working on. I'm not sure you can ever master it, you can get better at it. And we all need to get better, better, better at listening to ourselves. I often say this idea of building an inventory of listening to yourself. You could be recording a podcast, you could be having a conversation with a client. Remember, when you weren't feeling particularly inspired to post on Instagram or write another blog post and you couldn't think of what to make that about? Listen to yourself, not just for content, but for style, for personality. How do you speak? How do you show up in real life in a way that you're not even overly intentional about how you say every word for example. So much of it is your personality, if you can listen, we all hate listening to the sound of our own voices, but if you can listen to yourself, and start to take inventory of how to recreate that on the web, that's really the art of building a brand voice. I'd say that in every instance of a brand voice being good.
Good is synonymous with consistent. If someone can experience you online where that little piece of content that Instagram posts or blog posts, podcasts like a little soldier you've sent out into the universe to represent you. If that experience is consistent, then that is good. So I think building a strong or a good brand voice comes from achieving consistency between how you're showing up online and how people experience you in real life.
LAUREN
Amen.
PHIL
Here's my final extra on that. We'd love to hear what you have to say about this. Hopefully you’ve got some good tools from us. I know we brought up Otter before, but our 100 words to describe your brand PDF is really handy philp.al/100words Also, using a word cloud generator, a word cloud tool, go to Google, they're free helpful. If you're creating content, then you are ready to paste in some of your most recent posts to see what some of those words are that you're using frequently.
There you go. We'd love to hear from you. #brandtherapy I’m @philpallen.
LAUREN
I'm @thelaurenmoore.
PHIL
We want to hear from you. Also, since you've already gotten to this part, the podcast is almost the end, we would appreciate it if you took the time to leave us a review a few of you have recently. Thank you for that five star five star that helps other people discover this podcast that we work very hard to create for you. You know how this works. Next week, we'll be back with a brand new guest. That's going to be great. Until then. Thanks for hanging out with us on brand therapy. We'll see you then.
LAUREN
Bye bye.
