Content Marketing

How to Blend Your Voice With A Brand’s Voice and Create Compelling Content in 2022

Team Pepper
Posted on 22/09/206 min read
How to Blend Your Voice With A Brand’s Voice and Create Compelling Content in 2022

Table of Contents

  • Writing Compelling Content by Understanding a Brand’s Voice
  • 4 Questions to Help Shape Your 2022 Marketing Strategy
  • Key Takeaways
  • Conclusion
  • FAQs

As a writer, you may be witty, humorous, friendly, conversational, perky and so on but the brand that has hired you wants you to write short, serious content with lots of statistics and numbers, in short, they want you to know how to write compelling content in 2022.

So, it doesn’t matter if the writer’s natural style differs from what the brand expects. All successful writers have one undeniable quality: Adaptability.

Brands rely on the fact that you are capable of writing compelling content. They want the content to have a personality that lines up seamlessly with their brand’s established voice. Else, they could have come up with something during a diplomatic board meeting! Writers essentially know how to create content for a brand and do this by showing how to play with words to match the style of a particular brand.

More often than not, brands, especially startups, rely on content marketing and branding to make their voice heard as they reach out to their target audience.

Just like a conversation, writing is all about emotions. Each part of the written content is different, as each piece of a particular conversation. This is how the brand wants to resonate with people – as a particular emotion, feeling, and a voice.

As Grammar Girl has rightly and justly said, “If the voice is the personality of a story, then the tone is the mood.” Each brand has a message, a solution that should reach the people. The writer brings this message alive with a voice, feel, and emotion.

So, in this post, we will shed some light on how to create compelling content in 2022.

Writing Compelling Content by Understanding a Brand’s Voice

Source

A writer’s first task is to understand the voice of the brand. It isn’t merely trial and error, but more of a structured approach to the answer. Branding is an important part of business, after all. Ask the following relevant questions about the brand that you are writing for:

Who are you?

The brand may not have a clear statement yet, but find out what kind of an entity they are. Their existence as a brand is of high relevance here.

What is your message?

What do you what to convey to the people who show interest in your brand? How do you want to convey it? It could be formal, informal, witty, joke-riddled, quirky, bold, fearless, etc. These adjectives help you to create a voice for the brand that you are working with.

Who is the target audience?

Although most brands want the maximum number of varied audiences, there is a select group of audience that matters the most, in terms of business, sales, happy customers, etc. This is the target audience that should be given maximum priority and importance.

Target audience – Source

4 Questions to Help Shape Your 2022 Marketing Strategy

Just like asking yourself a certain set of questions when you are trying to understand a brand’s voice, there are also some questions you should ask yourself when you are trying to shape your marketing strategy and to create content for brands in 2022. These questions include:

Target the main audience when you start writing

Most startups might not have a very well predefined set of audiences. More often than not, they will utilize some time, in the beginning, to see what kind of audiences are showing interest and positive responses. However, they may have a vague idea of who their target audience is in terms of gender, age, occupation, area of residence, location, etc.

Write relevant content tailored to meet the demands and hold the interest of this audience. Content marketing forms a major chunk of drawing in potential clients and turning them into faithful ones.

Some brands have an informal and casual approach. In cases like these, slang, short forms, etc. might go down well with the audience. It is important to balance the terminologies and vernaculars well. If you include jokes or puns in the content, they should not be derogatory or offensive to the audience under any circumstance. Knowing how to write compelling content as per the brand’s need, in this case, is crucial.

Source

Differential voices of a brand:

Although the brand resonates with its audience in one voice, there is a subtle difference that a writer must know, thinking from the readers’ point of view. The style of curating web content is different from that of a flyer or invite.

Fine-tune the levels of technicalities, jargon, formality, etc., depending on the occasion and type of content. Sometimes, the brand may not be able to explain its need with total clarity. In that case, ask for examples or competitors’ content that they liked or something pre-existing, so that you may get a clear picture before you start curating content for them.

Write meaningful, purposeful content:

Every brand’s purpose in creating content may be different. It can be purely for entertainment, or informative, inviting, something that is simply business-oriented, and so on. So, it is important that you curate content with a specific purpose in mind.

If the idea is to entertain the audience, the best way to so do is by throwing in humor, wit, jokes, puns, creativity, comparison, and whatnot!

On the other hand, if the idea is business-oriented or to sell an idea or product, you must ensure that you are writing a persuasive copy that can convince the readers to follow the call to action. Content marketing focuses on selling ideas or products.

Do what you do best

As a writer, you know that you do not have the luxury of a face to face conversation, hand gestures, body language, facial expressions, etc. However, you are equipped with the skill of using punctuation to convey your message in a tone that you want, to a reader who could be on the other side of the globe!

With this is in your hands, the content you write should be clear, meaningful, purposeful, and concise. It should engage readers until the last word.

Key Takeaways

  • You must have a keen understanding of the brand’s voice. There are three questions to ask yourself here. Who are you, what is your message, and who is your target audience. Having clear answers to these questions before you start writing can help you immensely when it comes to writing compelling content for any brand.
  • It is not uncommon for a brand to not know who their exact target audience is, especially if they are a startup. But, with the type of service and brand they offer, it is possible to gauge who the target audience can be. With that information in hand, you must know how to create compelling content by choosing either a formal or casual approach, vernaculars, jokes, puns, etc., anything that can target the audience and grab their attention.
  • There are nuances when it comes to writing compelling content for brands. You must understand them by thinking from the readers’ point of view. If you are uncertain how to do that, you can refer to the competitors’ content or research for similar examples.
  • Knowing the brand’s purpose is another excellent way to writing compelling content. Ask yourself what you aim to achieve when you are writing content, whether you are trying to entertain them, inform them, explain them, and so on. With a clear purpose, it becomes much easier to write meaningful content.
  • As a writer, you are limited to conveying your message to the reader only through your words and nothing more. So, make sure you are giving it your best. Read it from your readers’ point of view. Make sure that the content is powerful and succinct and hit the mark always.

Conclusion

As you keep writing compelling content, you will realize that you can express the voice of the brand in what are merely words for the others, but expressions to the readers. Blending your voice with the voice of the brand becomes really easy when you have clarity regarding all the questions discussed above.

FAQs

1. What does compelling content mean?

You can consider compelling content like Beethoven’s iconic symphonies. Writing compelling content follows a refined process and structure, at the same time it delivers an emotional punch and creative flair. This is a skill-set that takes a lot of time, effort, and practice to acquire.

2. What makes a compelling brand story?

When you write for a brand, you need to ensure that in addition to providing a good narrative, the story gives the audiences something they can relate to and support in. At the end of the day, branding is a tool that you use to increase sales and grow your audience and that can be achieved if you write compelling content.

3. What does brand voice mean?

Brand voice can be defined as the distinct personality taken on by any brand in the way they communicate to their audience. For instance, think you are at a party and are talking to all the guests present there. Amongst all of them, one stands out the most because they are a great storyteller.

4. How to find your target audience?

Finding your target audience is crucial for any brand to perform well. It takes time and effort. In a nutshell, you can follow these tips below to find your target audience.
– Analyse your customer base and interview them
– Do market research and understand industry trends
– Analyse your competitors
– Create personals
– Clearly define who isn’t your target audience
– Revise continuously
– Take advantage of tools like Google Analytics

5. What are the three components of content strategy?

A successful content marketing strategy will consist of a mix of three types of content creation and these include Thought Leadership Content, Sales Content, and Awareness Content.