How to write in a tone to suit your target audience
When it comes to writing content, of course, you need to write in YOUR tone.
It is authentic to you, and you should never think your written voice or content voice is NOT good enough, never think that! BUT some might want to know... "how do I know my tone is connecting to my audience?".
Well, for most purpose-led business, your aligned audience comes to you based on your tone and voice, but it is always key to do the research and make sure the tone you are using connects.
You know why??
Well, I wrote this post I did on Instagram you might relate to!
So, you might be saying something someone has said before (because isn't that what we are all doing?), but it is the way you say it, your tone and your voice that resonates with certain people!
Making sure this tone and voice resonates with your audience isn't hard, but not many of us are doing it!!
So when one of my followers asked me this, it got me thinking, and below is what I know about developing content for aligned tone!
Define your audience
So you first want to define who your audience is! Sounds pretty obvious but have you got a profile or a journal entry describing your aligned clients? Your target audience?
If you don't, how do you know you are speaking to the right people, or if you are even speaking their language?
If you haven't done this, I HIGHLY recommend you go do it now, or today! But as soon as you can!
Kim Garst sums it up pretty well here around the seven steps to identify your ideal customer or client AND Hootsuite also have a great persona template you can use here.
If you are in business to serve someone who is similar to who you were five years ago, most the time this is the case, who were you then? What did you do? What were your struggles?
Map these out!
Go back and interview yourself at this time! Be as in-depth as you can be in this stage, it might seem time-consuming, but market research IS KEY!!
Talk to your audience and gauge how they speak
Now you have your audience defined and determined, STUDY THEM!! I know this all takes time, but if you want your tone to resonate, you need to do this!
Do a mini stalk (legit) and look at how they communicate with their audience, look at the language they use!
Have conversations with them, send them messages and even look at the emojis they use!! It sounds strange, but this says a lot about them! Also, do polls on your platforms and ask people what they like!
Look at the platforms they engage with and become one with your audience! If you were you five years ago, this should be EASY PEASY!!
Of course, you don't have to match their tone, but channel that side of yourself when you write content. The aligned people will LOVE your content.
This is the most important stage of determining your tone for your content. If you don't know your audience 100%, how can you match tone to suit them??
Trial tone and see what people interact with
The next stage is to trial your tone, your content and your strategy and see how people engage and interact with it!
You can do a period of time where you focus on certain tones and see how people respond, I recommend you do this for a few weeks to really get a good idea.
Make notes and measure using social media insights and feedback from your audience. You want to make sure you continue to do the research throughout this period to work on a new tone and writing style.
It is all about measuring and insight.
Define your tone
A great way to get your tone sorted for your most aligned audience is to actually define what that is!
You can do this through a series of exercises including:
Defining your values, this is important!! I explain this in the podcast, your values will decide what tone you right in! Value fun? Well, you will speak in a fun tone!
Define the words you will and not use
Define your writing style
Define the channels you will write on
These are just a few things you can do to help you form your brand tone! This brand tone will also be incorporated with the research you did around your target audience!
So how can a "brand voice" help your business? Simple - it will allow you to develop your content quicker and easier, giving you more time to develop your business. Once you have a brand voice guide, you can then give it to people who join your team, then they can produce content for you. It isn't rocket science... download my "creating a voice for your brand" guide and find out.
Always look deeper into something than you think you need!
Final thoughts
Defining your tone based around your market research will help you communicate clearly and directly to your target audience.
You can't be a fun-loving business and refer to your target audience as "customer" in your emails or podcast.
Define how your target audience speaks, take on their persona and mix it with your own voice and personality! Incorporate your business values and business "words" and document it all up as one branding guide.
This guide will help you start aligning with your audience and will also prepare you for when you have people join your team! That way, they know the direction of your brand and the voice they need to take on when writing for the business.