How Dare You Take That Tone With Me?

“It’s not what you said. It’s the way you said it.”

Story of my life.

From my wife lamenting my inability to even feign sincerity, to my mother-in-law’s reaction to my wedding speech, to a cavalcade of teachers, co-workers and friends bemoaning my deadpan sarcasm, I’ve always had issues with my tone of voice. Which makes it really strange that using the correct tone is apparently one of my key copywriting strengths.

Over a lunchtime burrito with a former colleague last week, I talked through a content rebrand from a local business, I can’t repeat much of the guacamole-flecked vitriol from that critique on the blog, but there are three key takeaways I think we all need to bear in mind when it comes to tone of voice.

1. Don’t Half Arse It

Nothing kills your corporate identity like half-arsing it. Click To Tweet

Unless of course your identity is a proprietary blend of indecision, conflicting ideas and bemused shrugging. If you’re going to use a strong tone of voice, commit to it. Choose a few words that describe the way you see your business – open and friendly, professional and reliable, honest and effective – and commit to it.

Don’t decide that half-way through a page you need to switch from being a safe pair of hands to being a quirky back-slapping mate. Your readers won’t have a clue who they’re dealing with.

2. Be Unique

It used to be that the worst tone of voice idea I’d ever seen was “Innocent but…” Innocent but for cars, Innocent but for van stickers, Innocent but for tax advice. Nobody knows why the Innocent tone works for Innocent, let alone how it’s supposed to work for an independent architect.

I’ve seen worse though. I’ve seen companies literally adopt the names of their competitors as positioning statements on their websites.

I mean, come on.

Don’t lift directly from the competition, folks. Otherwise you turn into “Competition but…” Competition but less confident. Competition but with fewer ideas. Competition but shit.

There’s nothing wrong with adopting a tried and tested tone. Honest and knowledgeable’s the tone I use for 603 Copywriting. It’s the tone most other copywriters use on their sites. But because we approach that tone in a unique way and focus on the things that are unique to us (background, core services, experience, etc), we come across as unique businesses. Then our clients can choose who they do business with.

3. Follow Through

Guess what, copywriters? It’s not all on you. If you’ve set the tone of voice, it’s damned important that the visuals and other parts of a brand’s identity follow through on that tone. Colour schemes, layouts, icons, image choices – it all needs to come together to portray a consistent identity.

If not, you end up looking foolish. Imagine for one second mentioning on an about page that even the way your workers dress screams “professionalism.”

Fair enough.

Now put that line below a picture of one of your admin team dressed as a ballerina, an apprentice taking a mirror selfie, and a collection of pets, wine glasses and other assorted trivia.

If you’re not going to take your own identity seriously, your clients won’t either.

And if nobody’s getting on board, what was the point?