Written by Katya Firyan, co-founder of Writitude
Very often even well-meaning teams fail at their brand tone of voice (ToV) style guides, that are created to instill consistency.
There are four main challenges to establishing true to type communication:
Formalisation
Each company already does have a tone of voice, even if they have never thought about it.
It occurs spontaneously from the company's culture and personal traits of the people, doing the communication.
The problem is, if the rules are not set, they tend to be vague, can be disputed and change easily.
This is why formalisation of ToV in the form of detailed guidelines is the best way to ensure that the most important principles (and their practical manifestations!) are clear to everybody.
Different registers and genres
As a company's communication serves different purposes (such as sales, customer support, image-building etc.) the style and tone of texts the company uses also tend to vary extensively.
It is typical of companies to speak in one voice when they are trying to sell a product, and in a completely different one — when troubleshooting issues or dealing with customer complaints.
Setting a minimum subsistence level of basic rules that need to be followed at all times, helps tackle the natural human tendency to switch tones from friendly to defensive when faced with challenging situations.
Human factor
If a company has more than one person doing the communication, in the absence of clearly defined rules it will inevitably vary.
People differ not only in terms of their extraversion or agreeableness, which influences their particular style of communication, but they also have a surprisingly varied understanding of the meanings and connotations of different words or phrases.
Another level of human factor challenge occurs when communication and marketing specialists change, and they eventually do in every company.
Rotation
If the only agreement that binds a company's communication is in the form of mutual understanding of certain people, there is a risk of disruptions when new people are hired and the previous holders of a position leave.
It also makes integrating a new employee slower and costlier as unwritten rules are hard to convey.
A good tone of voice guide solves all of these issues by providing a clear set of rules that can be followed by all communicators across subjects and channels for as long as they fit their company’s identity.
