Developing Your Brand Voice for Social Media

You’ve built your transportation and logistics company doing what you love and know best. Now you’ve decided to invest in a social media strategy and commit to putting some effort behind it in order to increase profitability and further grow your business.  

Before you fire off a tweet or record your first TikTok video, there are several things you should do to ensure your efforts will be maximized and to guarantee social media success. 

Define who you are

In your mind, your business identity may be clear as day, but is it clear to your customer or client base? Having a readable brand identity can help build brand loyalty; people come to trust a brand that’s easily recognizable at every touchpoint. Whether you’re starting from square one or fine tuning your existing brand identity, it can be helpful to ask yourself these questions to hone in on a clearer picture of your brand:

• What do I want the tone of my content to be?
• Funny? Informative? Friendly? This should translate across all content (blog, social, ads, etc.)

• What emotions do I want to evoke with my content? 
• This may sound fluffy, but think about your favorite brands. Chances are they’re your favorites at least in part because they make you feel a certain way. Do you want to make your customers laugh? Immediately connect to them with a feeling of loyalty? Or do you just want them to know that they can trust in your professionalism? Whatever you decide, making sure that is communicated clearly takes a concerted effort and consistency across channels. 

• What key words come to mind when you think about your brand?
  • Do you value transparency, communication, or diversity? Does your business excel at transportation, drayage, technology, or maybe warehouse solutions? Create a list of keywords that align with your brand.

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can use the answers to define the persona of your brand. Keep in mind that your brand doesn’t have to be just one thing, but it shouldn’t be everything. You can be a thought leader while being funny, but shifting gears from very serious content to humor can confuse your audience and lead to a loss of followers, which can translate to lost revenue. 

As you define your brand identity, consider putting together a brand statement, which is a concise statement that brings all your brand points together. Additional elements may also include any specific value propositions your brand offers, your tone, keywords, and anything else you think would be helpful to include. Having a brand statement can help steer you as you’re putting together content. 

One last step to consider as you define your brand: colors, fonts, and imagery. If you don’t have brand colors and a font yet, you’ll want to choose some to stick to. Consider readability as well as the feelings they evoke. You’ll also want to think about logo and image unity across platforms. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire an expensive photographer to shoot every image you post, but keep in mind certain photo quality or types of images and aim for consistent visual quality. 

Choose platforms that align with your brand personality  

Just because Tik Tok is where all the influencers are doesn’t mean it’s where you need to be. There’s a balance between being relevant and staying true to your brand. You should also consider your bandwidth for maintaining a presence on these social media platforms. What good is it to be on Tik Tok if you can only post monthly? As discussed in our previous post about improving or developing a social media strategy, consistency is key. And also, if your brand voice is more serious or informative, Tik Tok may not be the right microphone for your brand, anyway.

Conversely, trying out new platforms can seem daunting, but if your audience is there, it’s worth it for you to be there, too. And there are lots of tutorials to help get you started. 

Are you talking to truck drivers or purchasing decision makers? Remember who your target audience is when considering platforms. Think about your demographic and the bandwidth you have available to maintain the platforms your brand identifies with; where those overlap is where you should have a presence. 

Develop content with these parameters in mind

Now that you’ve determined who you are as a brand, what you want to convey and where you should be posting, the only thing left is to create content. As you do so, there are two important things to keep in mind:

1. Does this content align with the voice of my brand?
   Is your tone consistent across channels? Are you conveying the message you set out to? Are you doing it with humor or intellect, or whatever characteristics you defined as important? 

Your tone may need to shift slightly if you’re posting to Instagram vs. LinkedIn. And the type of content matters, too. Videos/reels perform best on Instagram, but video content may not be necessary to make the same splash on Facebook. 

And you’re good to go! Do you have additional questions or are you looking for more support? drop & hook is the best in the biz when it comes to social media & content marketing. Contact us to take your social media game to the next level.