Introduction
Do you really have a tone of voice? Or are you just stuck in that boring “business casual” zone?
In a world where standing out is everything, playing it safe with typical corporate jargon could be what’s dragging your brand down!
What if LESS could actually mean MORE for your messaging?
Join Miguel Svelte, head of Montanus, as he breaks down the power of tone of voice in marketing. 🚀
Get ready to explore:
🔥 How your brand can ditch the old school and make a unique splash.
🔥 Fresh strategies that redefine content creation and communication.
🔥 Insights that’ll spark new conversations around your brand.
Whether you’re in a content team or crafting marketing strategies, this episode is all about pushing boundaries!
Tune in and discover where your content can take you next!
What You’ll Learn
1. Discover why ‘business casual’ isn’t a genuine tone of voice.
2. Learn the benefits of crafting a unique tone for your brand.
3. Understand how a distinct tone can make content production easier.
4. Explore how a unique voice helps you stand out and engage.
5. Discuss how voice clarity allows for bold, clear communication.
Episode Transcript (AI Generated)
Hello and welcome to the Content Universe. Today I want to shake things up a little bit and I’m sorry if I’m stepping on any of you because I probably will. Today we’re talking tone of voice and I’m sorry guys, I have a surprise for you. You don’t have a tone of voice. I bet you, you don’t have a tone of voice. Okay, for those of you who don’t know me I’m Miguel Svelte and I’m the head of the company called Montanus, where we produce marketing materials, that could be different kinds of content, podcast, blog posts etc. All these kinds of things for knowledge driven companies. Now my point today is that business casual is not a tone of voice. Professional is not a tone of voice, business professional is not a tone of voice. Casual professional whatever you call it, I’m sorry guys, it’s not a tone of voice, that’s just a way of writing generic texts or a way of creating generic content. Now it’s not because… I want to argue that all of you need to go all innocent juice on it, where your tone of voice becomes super quirky, super unique like this kind of school girl way of talking to your audience. That’s not what I’m arguing. I’m just trying to say that having a professional business language is not a tone of voice, that’s just generic, it’s just plain generic. Now what you want to do to create a tone of voice, there are many different ways that you can do this. You can be super formal, you can choose to be very polite with your audience, you can choose to be very impolite, you can choose to be very direct, very indirect. All of these kinds of things, you can choose short sentences, long sentences, you can have all kinds of ways of structuring content that, and even the structure itself in the sentences, that will then of course create a tone of voice. So what you want to do, I would argue, is you want to sit down with your marketing team, with your branding team, and all of those stakeholders involved in the brand, sit down with those people, and then talk about how is it that we want to have a little bit of a unique way of telling stuff. And when I talk tone of voice, it’s not just a written stuff, it can also be the way that you cut and edit your videos, it can be the way that you introduce your podcast, it could be the well, have your presentations. It’s that what kinds of words are you using. Sit down and have a good talk about this because I really think that there are major benefits from having just that little unique way of speaking or that little kind of unique tone of voice. Of course the obvious benefits are it’s easy to recognize a good tone of voice. It’s easy to recognize content coming from a specific place if you can recognize the way of talking, the way of communicating. So distinguishable and recognizability, is that a word ? I don’t know. But the fact that it’s easy to see where this comes from and that you kind of feel as a reader or as a content consumer, you kind of feel at home with that specific tone of voice. You feel like you kind of know the person writing it, that’s a really big benefit. Another benefit of course is that you stand out from the crowd because obviously I would say probably 80 to 90 percent of all business to business companies and I would even include most of business to consumer companies as well they don’t have a specific tone of voice, they just have that business casual generic way of writing or way of communicating. I’m always saying writing because that’s such an obvious example, but it is about the kind of communication part of it, no matter what kind of content that you’re working with, so having a unique way of communicating that will make you stand out from the crowd. And I think that’s just super important, because in this day and age obviously the crowd is kind of big. Now hidden benefit that I find when I have a specific tone of voice or when I use a specific tone of voice is that it makes it a little bit easier to to push different agendas. It makes it easier to have a more unique stance on a problem, on an issue. It makes it easier to kind of just come out with statements that are more clear-cut. Because when you have a specific way of writing them or communicating them you you can kind of be more bold. Whereas if you’re tone of voice is a business casual in, you know, in quotations, then coming out with a harsh statement on something, it’s gonna be so much easier. Because that generic tone of voice is going to kind of require that you also include other things. Like you include compromises. And there’s not because you don’t include compromises, but being a provocative always helps Spark, the engagement and spark, you know, conversation with people. So I think that is a kind of hidden benefit from having a more unique tone of voice is the fact that you, you can definitely allow yourself to be a little bit more bold. Okay, and then the last benefit, which I think is also something that is not considered that much, is that it actually makes it so much easier for you guys out there in the content teams to produce content. Because if you know what is the way that we communicate, what is the way that we write, what is the, even the colors that we use, when do we use emojis? When don’t we use emojis? All this kind of stuff, if you know that, if you have like, a clear cut way and it’s always in this tone, it’s so much easier to create content. It’s so much easier to create unique content also because oftentimes let’s, let’s just be honest. Often the content that we want to create is already existing on the internet, you know, it’s not like our little company is coming up with something super unique. It’s more or less. You would always be able to find the things that we’re talking about. You will always be able to find that elsewhere on the internet. And sometimes we basically just, you know, yelling messages, yelling out content that is already a crowded place, but that’s also okay. And especially if you do it in a unique tone of voice, because that really makes that piece of content, even though the topic might be a little bit generic, it still makes the tone of the piece of content quite unique. So I really think that you guys out there, you should sit down with your branding team, all the stakeholders involved and try and discuss what, what specific tools and what takes can we have on our tone of voice that kind of pushes the boundaries of that business, casual, boring tone, that most companies, let’s be honest, probably my own included, you know, struggle getting out of because we kind of want to be polite. Right. So we want to have that business casual professional, that kind of tone of voice because it’s polite. Right. But it’s also boring. And that is something that I think you guys should really talk about out there in the organizations. It’s a really hard talk because it’s going to be a lot of opinions, but I promise you it will be so much easier to stand out and to produce content afterwards if you do. So, okay. That is my take for today on tone of voice. Um, I hope you, I don’t know if I hope you agree. If you do, let me know. If you don’t let me know why. Uh, it could be super interesting to have this conversation. I think with you guys, uh, on, well, either on email, hit me up on podcast at Montano’s dot CEO. That will land in my own inbox. Um, or yeah, let me know on social media or wherever you can find me, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn or just post a comment to this episode, wherever you listen, and I will see if I’ll see if it pops up somewhere. I bet it does. I think the notification hell we all know. Okay. That is it for today’s content universe. I hope you enjoyed and if you did share it with your colleagues and friends and give it alike and a yeah comment, see you inside the content universe next time.