Visit any writers’ forum and you’ll see a lot of posts about ‘finding your voice’. Some of the discussion is helpful and some of it deeply pretentious. But voice isn’t just about creating great literature. It can really help your business too.
Voice is important because it tells people who you are. Whether you’re a huge business with a recognisable figurehead or a sole trader, you are the human face of your business. At the end of the day, that’s who your customers buy from. The Virgin brand remains a huge success partly because its’ customers feel that they know (and can trust) Richard Branson.
Getting things in writing
I used to think that finding your voice was easy. It always came naturally to me. The words appear in my head and I write them down. It’s not that easy for everyone. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me that they’re OK talking but when they write things down they don’t make sense.
I always advise people to speak, record themselves and then write that down. However, I’ve discovered that this approach doesn’t work for everyone and I started to wonder why. Then I remembered that non-verbal cues form 90% of our understanding of speech. Your tone of voice, expression and body language all play a part.
If you listen to people speak you’ll also notice that they very rarely stick to the same topic. They go off on tangents or get interrupted. If you do that when you’re writing something down your reader will just get confused. But when we’re talking we can somehow keep up. As an Eddie Izzard fan I know this to be true!
Finding your voice
The key to communicating within your business is writing in a way that sounds like you. This is especially important if your customers are going to meet you at some point. If you meet customers face to face you’ll probably find that you speak to them in a certain way. You’ll hopefully still sound like you but your tone and the language you use will be tailored to the work you’re doing.
You probably already understand the importance of brand consistency, having the same logos and images across all of your websites, social media and branded communications. You can also carry this through in your writing. If your blog posts, newsletters and social media all use the same type of language, it gives the reader a comforting sense of familiarity. Then, if they meet you in person and hear you speak in the same way, they feel as if they already know you.
Where to start
I know I said that speaking and writing doesn’t always work, but it’s a good place to start. Imagine your ideal customer is sitting in front of you with a question. How do you answer it? Talk them through the answer and record it.
Then get it down in writing. If you have a nifty app that can turn speech into type for you, so much the better. Then read it back and start editing. What sounds great when you’re talking sometimes looks clunky on the page. Or you realise that you’ve used jargon which your customer won’t understand if you’re not there to explain it.
Make a plan
Have you gone off topic? If you’re trying to describe your products or services and there’s a lot of them you might find that you jump between different subjects and back again. It can be really confusing so try to stick to one subject before you move on to another one. If you’ve got loads of information to get across you might want to think about writing more than one piece.
