Here’s a conundrum that businesses face when they dive into content marketing. Who should be the face person? Whose voice or voices should be the ones engaging with the audience? There are some hidden challenges in these questions. We’re going to tease out one possible solution in this article.
Why Use A Single Voice
Using a single brand voice creates consistency in your message. When your audience comes across your content they know what to expect. Over time, it’s comfortable and familiar, and we like that. A single voice also gives your executive team the chance to shape the perception of the company in an easy way.
However, there are some disadvantages. Any writer that you hire for your team has to learn how to write in the company voice. If that voice is very distinct and you cannot communicate how to write that uniqueness to the writer then it can be hard to make content. It can also go the other way. A single voice often falls into the default “business formal” voice that’s easy to write but sounds the same as everyone else.
Why Use Multiple Voices
When your writers create content using their own unique styles, it makes your brand sound diverse and fresh. It feels more authentic to feel like you’re talking to many different people in one company because a singular voice can feel artificial. Authenticity is quite appealing to Millennials and Gen-Z.
Multiple voices also help your company A/B test how different approaches to writing appeal to your audience. You might find that a particular writer often gets a great response writing in their own style. If that writer was locked into a single voice, the company would never discover this.
However, it can also cause controversy. A writer might have an opinion about something that doesn’t accord with the brand’s overall strategy. A writer might also have a natural voice that doesn’t work well with the audience. Messaging can become muddled. Which writer speaks for the company?
The Advantages Of Using Both
There is a way to balance both paths to draw the advantages from each without diluting the company’s vision or your writers’ unique creativity. Start by dividing your content marketing into appropriate voices. The static information like a home page or an about page should be written in the brand’s voice. Other things that should be in “brand voice” are firm opinions held by the company, press releases, and anything else that the entire company agrees about.
Everything else can be attributed to one of your writers. Personal opinions, stories, blog posts, all of it! But there also needs to be some restraint. Any writer on your team is a representative of your brand and they need to recognize this and understand what parts of your branding and messaging need to stay consistent. For instance, on this website, CONCURED is always spelled in all-caps and opinions about AI are positive.
Employee attribution on opinion-based content makes it simple for a company to say that the author doesn’t speak for the company, should that be necessary. Furthermore, when writers know that their own name will be attached to the byline it can make them more responsible about what they post.
Most businesses hide all their writers behind a single voice or a single editorial account for posting. Using these tips, you can let them express themselves safely and show your audience that there are actual people with actual personalities writing your content.
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