Where does "tone & voice" fit into your content strategy?

Frequently, a new client will ask me to set the “tone and voice” of their web content. And way too frequently, they don’t have a clue what tone and voice really is. They just know that they’re supposed to have one that works. So to all you business people out there who know you need an effective tone and voice, but don’t really know what that means, where it fits in your content strategy, and how to go about it... this one’s for you!

Tone and voice: What the heck is it?

The easiest way to understand your web copy’s tone and voice is to compare it with your mother.

The voice of your mother (and your web copy) is always recognizable. She has a clear point of view, a distinctive personality, and language idiosyncrasies that make her unique. Her “voice” never changes. It always sounds the same. It’s always recognizable as your mother.

Your mother’s tone, on the other hand, is changeable. She may use a completely different tone when baking cookies with her 5 year old grandson as she does when berating you for driving too fast. She may use a different tone of voice depending on the mood she’s in: angry, happy, confused, scared, or sad. She may use a different tone of voice depending on who she’s speaking to: her colleagues, her friends, her husband, or her children. She may also use a different tone of voice depending on the type of information she’s sharing: she’ll communicate serious information differently than she would tell a joke.

So, the voice remains consistent and recognizable, while the tone may change depending on the audience, the mood, and the message being communicated.

Where does tone and voice fit into your content strategy?

It’s an important piece of the much larger puzzle that makes up your overall content strategy. Yes, tone and voice is really important, but simply defining your tone and voice isn’t enough to get you where you need to go. If you’re looking at your web content seriously, you need to consider the other critical content elements: Are your content processes effective and efficient? Have you got good people with appropriate skill-sets caring for your content? Have you got a suitable content budget and can you demonstrate your content ROI? Does your content contribute to a positive customer experience? Is your content getting your business where it needs to go? Can you (and do you) test the effectiveness of your content? Have you got a clear plan for managing, developing, and publishing content over the next year? How can your content give you a competitive advantage?

Just as your mother by herself does not create a cohesive family, a strong tone and voice by itself does not create great content. Your web content needs to be effective and strategic, and an appropriate tone and voice is only one of the tools you use to get it there.

How do you develop an effective tone and voice?

First, think about voice. You need to have a voice that your core audience will relate to and trust. To do this, you need to really understand your customers. Who are they? How do they speak? Who do they trust, and why? What are they interested in? What do they want or expect from you? What gets them through their day?

An effective voice is not just about writing style. It’s just as much, or more, about what you have to say. What’s your key message? What’s your point of view? What kind of a communicator are you? How much information do you share, and when? How do you respond to customer feedback? What channels do you communicate through? All of these things impact your corporate “voice”, and this voice should personify your brand. 

Next, think about tone. For each different type of information, you need to define an appropriate tone. Do you want to use the same tone for your security guarantees, marketing copy, advertising copy, and customer service FAQs? Probably not. You should identify an appropriate tone to use for each type of content, based on its purpose and your customers’ goals and expectations.  

Finally, think about people and processes.  This is the glue that holds it all together! Now you need to determine the actual writing mechanics, phrasing, and vocabulary that create the desired tone and voice. Develop content prototypes and, if possible, test them with real customers. Make sure that your customers’ perceptions are aligned with your perceptions of the tone and voice, and that it’s effective. Create a writer’s style guide that documents writing and word choices. Keep it up-to-date, and ensure that it’s used by all content developers for all content. If you have multiple writers, assign an editor to ensure that your content has one consistent corporate voice, rather than a chorus of different voices. Make sure that your writers are comfortable using a style guide, and that you have sound content development processes that support quality content. 

So, just make sure that you know your company as well as you know your own mother. And before any word is written, ask yourself what your company would say.

How useful is your content?

Previously, I wrote about how you can ensure that your web content is readable. But it doesn't matter how readable it is if it's not useful. Here are four easy ways to make sure that your content is useful to your customers:

1. Create customer profiles and personas.
   
   Who are your customers? Exactly? Create 3 or 4 primary customer profiles and personas that define who they are, what their needs are, and what they want to accomplish on your site. What are their personal or business motivations? What do they most value? What helps them to make a final decision? Think about the type of content that may be useful to them that they don't even know they need. Use facts and data (to create profiles) and then weave those into engaging characters (or personas) to help you accurately focus your content.
    
   
2. Make it easy for your customers to do something useful.
   
   Your customers may want to contact you by e-mail, by phone, or by online chat. They may want to subscribe to your blogposts, leave a comment, or provide a product or service review. They may want to order your product or services online, refer you to a friend, or compare your products. Discover what they want to do on your site, and make it easy for them. (Tip: Customers don't often know what they want until they experience it!)
    
3. Help your customers to learn something useful.
   
   Most prospective customers will come to your site to learn more about your business or products and services. They may also want to learn about your customer service and support policies. Be generous and transparent in your information. Gone are the days when you could provide a morsel of vague information and expect customers to contact you to learn more. They'll just move on to another site that gives them the information they're looking for. Existing customers will come to your website for customer service and support, to purchase additional products or services, and, if you provide truly useful content, to learn more about something relevant to your business and their lives. That type of content (also known as content marketing) often takes the form of blogs or newsletters, and not only keeps your customers coming back, but is often widely shared among prospective customers.
    
4. Provide content that encourages customers to make a decision. 
   
   Most prospective customers won't make a purchasing decision until they have sufficient information about the product or service, and trust in your company. Why should they buy from you, instead of your competitor? Have other people just like them been happy with your product or service? Why should they buy Product A instead of Product B? Which of your products or services is best for them right now? What happens if they're not happy with their purchase? Again, be generous and transparent in your information. Prices, taxes, fees, additional charges, and return policies should be clear, unless you have a good reason not to publish that information. Testimonials, customer reviews, and customer comments help to instill trust. If your product or service offerings are extensive or confusing, help your customers to determine which is best for them.

How readable is your content?

Content readability is a basic writing fundamental that’s often overlooked when writers or researchers evaluate online content. I’m not sure why. It seems to have gotten a bit lost in all the complexities of content strategy and design. But your content isn’t worth spit if your audience can’t read it! Here’s a quick primer to help you understand the basics of readable online content.

What is readable content?

Content readability describes how easy or difficult it is to read and understand information. Readable content is familiar and invisible. You read it and don’t notice the words at all. You just end up with a strong sense of the message and the personality or brand behind the message. You don’t have to think, interpret, or decipher. You just sort of absorb the information, quickly and easily.

Why bother?

In case you need a few reasons beyond, “It’s the right thing to do”, check these out:

• The average North American adult reads at a grade 8 level.
• Consumers will not read web content that is difficult for them to understand.
• There are an increasing number of regulations and laws to ensure that public-facing legal, medical, and government information is easy to read.
• It’s becoming competitively critical to speak clearly and directly to your customers. If you snooze on this one, you’ll lose.

How do you know if your content is readable?

Integrate good content practices into your writing and editing cycles, and test your assumptions.

1.  Check your writing mechanics

There are some basic rules of readable content. Ask yourself these questions as you conduct your first round of editing:

• Do you mostly use an active voice? Use passive voice only when it serves a particular purpose.
• Do you use first and second person point-of-view whenever possible?
• Do you use consistent terminology? Don’t vary terms for variety sakes.
• Are your sentences short? Say, no more than twenty words per sentence?
• Are your paragraphs short? About 3 or 4 sentences per paragraph, max?
• Do you use serial commas?
• Do you use mostly simple sentence structures?
• Do you follow conventional rules of grammar (unless you have good reason not to)? 

2.  Check your information design

Since you’re editing for mechanics anyway, check this stuff too:

• Do you use lots of headings? Preferably short, descriptive ones.
• Are you presenting information in a way that makes it easier to scan? Maybe a bullet list, or a table, or an illustration, or a graph? Or something else. Just don’t automatically default to narrative text because you have no imagination.
• Is your page (or paragraph, or sentence) loaded with too much information?
• Does your information have a logical and natural flow that your audience will understand?
• Is there enough white space around and between the text?
• Is your type big enough so people don’t have to squint to read it? Typically, 10 pt for a general audience or 12 pt if your audience is over 45 or under 16 years old.
• Is your typeface legible? Sans serif fonts usually work well for online body text. 

3.  Use readability formulas

Readability formulas have their limitations, but they’re an effective way to identify possible problems early in the content creation cycle. They’re also a great way to show “before and after” improvement statistics. Here are two of the most common and easy-to-use readability formulas. You can set up Microsoft Word to run these formulas when you run your spelling check:

• Flesch Reading Ease: This formula takes into account the number of words in each sentence, and the number of syllables in each word. It gives you a score from 0-100, where 100 is extremely simple and 0 is extremely complex. The Plain Language Institute suggests that a score of 80 or higher is considered to be plain language. In web writing for a general consumer audience, we aim for 60 or above. This article scores 61.0 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale.
  
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: This formula takes Flesch Reading Ease results and translates them into North American school grade level equivalents. Remember that the average North American reads at a grade 8 level? That’s where your web writing should be, unless you have clear research about your audience that says otherwise. This article is written at a grade 7.6 level. 

4.  Most importantly, test with your audience!

Seriously, do not skip this step. You’ll be amazed at how effective this is in letting you know what’s really going on with your content. Find 6 or more people within your customer demographic to read through your web content. Ask them to find key information and then pay attention to how long it takes them and what they look at and read as they find their way to the target content. Then, ask them just a few questions to gauge their understanding of key concepts and get a feel for how they experienced the content. Nothing is better than putting real content and real customers together, and seeing what happens!

Now you know how to make your content readable, learn how to make your content useful!

What Kind of Content Are You Serving?

What kind of content are you trying to serve to your customers?
And what does it say about you?

Hiring the Right Writer

You already know that it’s more effective and cost-efficient to hire a professional writer to develop your business copy than, say, getting the product manager or designer to do it. But how can you make sure that your content investment pays off? And why do so many professional writers do a lousy job of getting your message across?

Well, the good news is that bad writing is not necessarily the writer’s fault—it may very well be yours. That’s good because it means that great writing is within your control.

Many businesses hire writers because somebody tells them the writer is good or they read something the writer wrote, and liked it. This is a bad approach. There are way too many different types of writers, with different styles and skill-sets, writing for different audiences and business purposes. What’s divine in one instance is deadly in another.

Here are 6 steps to help you hire the write writer:

1. Don’t rely on their title

Writers use many different terms to describe their role: copywriter, web writer, technical writer, marketing writer, SEO writer, and content developer are a few of the most common. But these all mean different things to different people. The title is pretty much irrelevant. Ignore it.

2. Ask for writing samples that demonstrate familiarity with your project type

Just because somebody has written great marketing content on a website doesn’t mean that they have the skills to write user-interface text for your web application. An article writer who was trained in print media may not know how to effectively adapt their skills online, and an ad writer may make a mess of your e-newsletter.

The audience is also important. The skills needed to write for Mr. and Mrs. Everybody is very different than those needed to write for software developers, or the youth market, or research scientists. Is your writer experienced in speaking to your target audience in a natural and compelling way?

Look for strong writing samples that reflect a similar purpose, audience, and communication channel to your project.

3. Make sure they have sufficient subject matter knowledge or good research skills

Many businesses rely on writers to “create” rather than just “write” content. But writers need to get their information from somewhere. Be sure to hire a writer that has demonstrated a solid understanding of the subject, or has excellent research skills. Even if you’re providing all of the content, a writer who has research experience knows how to ask the right questions and can identify and strengthen weak areas in your content.

4. Choose somebody with the appropriate level of experience

If you have a good understanding of the writing requirements, only require one specific type of writing, and have a strong writer’s support system, then a junior writer may be appropriate. Look for a writer who is articulate and eager, has an adaptable writing style, and at least some experience in your specific type of project. It’s ok if this experience was gained through a school project or volunteer work. It’s essential that they know how to ask relevant questions and follow direction and the systems you have in place. I’ll talk about more how you can support your writers next week.

If you do not have a good support process in place, or if you need a writer to develop content for different purposes across multiple communication channels, then you need an experienced writer. Look for a writer who can clearly explain how their writing approach will be different in each context and the processes that they follow.

5. Choose a writer who can articulate and defend their writing choices

With every sentence we write, we make a series of choices. During the interview process, ask the writer to explain why they made the choices that they did, both in terms of language and information design. Listen to see if you think their points are valid in speaking about your business to your target audience. If the project is online, can they explain why their content is easy-to-use and easy-to-read? Can they explain why their content is compelling and effective?

6. Verify the quality of their writing

Get an expert’s opinion of the quality of the applicant’s writing. This is often easiest when you ask each shortlisted candidate to complete a brief writing assignment. This way, you can directly compare writing styles and techniques based on a writing sample relevant to your project. If you don’t have the necessary background to effectively evaluate the quality of the writing, hire a professional editor to provide feedback. For many people, mediocre writing may appear to be great. But the impact of mediocrity on your business can be huge.