Setting The Tone

For most college rowers, the month of February can be absolutely brutal. Typically because they have been indoor training on the erg for about four months straight (give or take a month depending on the weather) and all they want to do is get back on the water to row. Because once a team has their first water practice, it is smooth sailing from there and they are probably back on the water for the rest of the semester. By the time the first race comes along, a team has already prepared and put in the work. Race day is the time to see all the hard work they did over the winter become worth it. The four months of hard training is where teams gain speed, endurance, strength and fitness. The four months of hell all become worth it when you show up to the start line and jump out at the start and cross the finish line in first place. Winter training sets the tone for how your whole competition season will go, because you earn your medals in the winter, but receive them in the spring.

UofL rowing, erging during winter training practices

A brand voice can sometimes be referred to or is interconnected with a tone of voice a brand uses on their social media accounts. This week in my communications class we read two chapters that talked about a brand voice and how it can positively or negatively impact the success of a brands social media accounts in how they market themselves. That is why I started out this post with talking about rowing winter training and how it sets the tone for a successful or unsuccessful spring season.

A brands best marketing tool is social media and the graphic above explains what a brand needs to have on their accounts in order to be successful

The term brand voice is very unique but its definition is: "The strategic position for a brand to express specific attributes through written and visual exchanges interconnecting the brand culture and community" (Social Media for Strategic Communication by Karen Freberg). When creating a brand voice, a social media professional needs to make sure it does not reflect their own perspective, but rather that they embody the personality characteristics that are unique, memorable, and authentic to their brand. All brands have an individual voice, characteristics, and history that make them unique and memorable to their audience. The voice they want to project MUST be aligned with how others perceive the company, organization or person. Sometimes tone is confused with brand voice, but like I mentioned earlier the terms are interconnected. Tone is the overall voice characteristics you want to interject within the content a professional is writing. The tone of one's social media content can be tailored depending on the situation, channel and the audience. For every brand and professional, a specific writing style and tone for communication is one of the most important things to solidify before executing written content. Creating a writing style guide will provide a consistent and sustainable format for writing, framing and executing messages on various platforms. The reason why this is so important is because if this is not solidified, and a brand does not determine how they want to sound, it can be confusing for their audience members.

To dive a little deeper there are several writing styles that a brand or person can take on to their social media accounts. This includes: Professional, snarky, product/brand focused, audience focused, inspirational, conversational, witty, educational and personality focused. When I talk about writing style/ tone being a determining factor in a organizations success, I think it would be useful to give you a specific example. One of my favorite twitter accounts to follow is Wendy's, and they of course have a very snarky and spunky writing style. They are known for their attitude, and savage twitter interactions between other fast food companies and their audience members. The company has had an active social media presence for several years, but it was not until 2017 that Wendy's social media manager took over and started to engage with audience members in a more informal and conversational way. Wendy's has been praised for this interaction by its fan base, while other companies have tried the same writing style/tone but have not been successful. These companies that tried to hop onto the bandwagon with Wendy's were unsuccessful because the tone was not consistent with their overall portrayal online, which caused a lot of additional challenges. When company's think they can pull the snarky tone off, usually result in negative perceptions for that brand an even loss of trust among its audience. On top of that the snarky style of writing can be very difficult to maintain unless there is 100% commitment to it, and building a long-term relationships means focusing on the steps needed to maintain the community on each platform. Understanding what key audiences expect and want to see is an important driver of the content social media managers share, create and execute on behalf of a brand.

One of many snarky tweets coming from Wendy's account!

Proof that the snarky style of writing will not result in every brand having a successful social media account