Welcome to Part 4 of the Brand Strategy Summer Series! This 8-part series dives into the processes behind my Brand Strategy sessions with clients while also giving you bite-sized, actionable tips to dive into your own brand. After following along on this 8-part series, you’ll have a totally new internal and external identity by the end of the summer.
If you missed Parts 1-3 from the Brand Strategy Summer Series, you can access those past blogs below.
Part 1: Brand Foundations
Part 2: Finding and Understanding Your Audience
Part 3: Mastering the Art of Positioning
This week we’re embarking on a v exciting journey to discover the power of brand personality and voice for your amazing female-led creative businesses. Think of your brand’s personality as its vibrant spirit and its voice as the megaphone that amplifies its message. In this blog post, we’ll take a playful and friendly approach to help you uncover and maintain an enchanting brand personality and voice that will captivate your audience with ease.
Brand personality is allllll about giving your business a delightful character that captures hearts. However, it has to be similar to who YOU are as a person and how it aligns with your business, ya know? You uncover these characters when you start from the ground up (using the Part 1 framework from the Brand Foundations post).
First off (and I know I sound like a broken record) – but go back to your core values – what makes your creative soul tick? What are uncompromising truths that you want to uphold as a business owner AND person? Is it a hint of adventure, inclusivity, minimalism, kindness, or sprinkling joy into the mundane moments? Pinpointing your core values helps shape your brand’s personality and mission. And from there, you can bring those values and connect them to your brand voice.
I like to play the “if your brand were a [item]” game with my clients. I think it really helps to have that visualization of the “what you are” and “what you are not” come into play. Examples with one of my former clients is below!*
Once you’ve discovered your brand personality, it’s time to whip up a consistent and captivating brand voice to keep your audience intrigued and consistently connected.
Define your brand voice ingredients: What’s the perfect blend of brand voice traits (like your fave Starbies order) that your audience resonates with? Is it friendly, confident, chatty, or maybe a little serious? These traits will guide your communication style across all platforms. After I outline my voice traits, I like to put them into an organized chart that helps me (once again) really visualize what this will look like. Again, examples are attached below!
After I outline my voice traits (and put them on a scale like the example above), I put the characteristics into an organized chart that helps me (once again) really visualize what this will look like. I go over the description of the brand voice trait, and do’s and don’t of this characteristic.
Again, examples are attached below!
Create a brand voice guide and glossary: Craft a guide that you can go back and reference to! I personally like to keep a Google doc of my brand adjectives, key phrases, and things I should and should NOT say. I also like to keep a copy of a screenshot of my tone of voice sheets just as a reminder for me.
Outline the tone, language, vocabulary, and grammar preferences to be used in different situations. This guide ensures your brand voice is consistent and continuously attracts your audience (AND helps them create familiarity with you – they KNOW what to expect when it comes to communicating with you). It’s a trust-building benefit!
The Power of a Captivating Tone: Let your brand’s tone shine brightly and reflect its playful, friendly, or irresistibly fun personality. Across all platforms, keep that consistency as much as you can. Embrace your authentic self and let it weave its spell. Avoid using forced or artificial language that might break the spell and come across as insincere – and don’t be afraid to be 100%, uniquely-you. THIS is something that I struggled with up until a year or so ago! I was so afraid that letting my personalty shine through my blog posts would turn people away…and guess what?
It did.
(big oof)
BUT it was turning the RIGHT people away – in fact, it was a good thing! I was attracting the people that resonated with my brand voice, and repelling the people that wanted someone different. My brand voice was working.
Congratulations, you enchanting creative 😉 for crafting an awesome brand personality and voice! Remember, this journey is an ongoing adventure. Embrace it, evolve and adapt as needed, and let your brand’s unique charm shine through every interaction.
Don’t be afraid to unleash a playful and unique brand personality and make your audience rave with adoartion as you begin to forge insanely beautiful connections with your audience. I know it seems a little overwhelming and intimidating at first, but a captivating and consistent brand personality can make a big difference between an audience that knows you, and an audience that knows and understands you.
*Template of this brand strategy document is from One6Creative shop! Gigi has amazing resources on her website and I am obsessed with her shop.
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