Developing and sticking to a purposeful brand voice allows social interactions to stay consistent and offers customers a clear vision of what your brand represents overall. While we don’t advocate acting precisely the same across every social media channel; after all, there are substantial differences between each platform and audience expectations on each. How we behave at work is much different than how we act at a club with friends, but our core personalities remain unchanged. Brands are no different. The character of your brand should be clearly defined, yet different elements of the brand’s personality can come to life across the various social platforms.

Here are our recommendations for maintaining a cohesive brand voice on social platforms.

Define the Brand (Voice)

All brands should define the relevant elements they want to express to their customers. If brand character, personality, and voice do not already exist, take the opportunity to create them by pulling from existing elements of brand positioning. By maintaining your brand’s fundamental characteristics across all content (advertising and social media posts), you create a sense of consistency and continuity.

Tip: Sprout Social’s Q2 2017 Index discovered that consumers want honesty from brands above all other behaviors. Their least favorite behavior is a snarky attitude. But, again, the type of brand and consumer will determine what works best.

Define the Role of Social Media

Before starting to articulate how the brand voice comes to life in social media, take another step back. Aligning to the key objectives for your social media presence will help define tactical application. A few common examples of social channel objectives are:

Select Social Platforms and Articulate the Role of Each

Now it’s time to make some choices. No brand has enough money to do everything, plus it’s impossible to do everything well all the time. Connecting on social platforms is no different. Once you have a firm grip on the brand, brand voice, and objectives, select the top platforms that can best achieve your goals.

Here are some characteristics of the top social platforms to consider:

Facebook

A mass audience that is highly intergenerational (especially compared to Twitter or TikTok). Recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm have attempted to strengthen Facebook’s focus on community.

LinkedIn

The perception is that LinkedIn is highly business oriented and brands must always be professional. While that may be true for some, our experience has been that when brands show their human side, they get rewarded.

Twitter 

Think fast and keep it relevant. What is your brand doing NOW? Posting old news will be lost among the many rapid-fire conversations taking place. Twitter is a good channel for immediacy. Customer service also plays a significant role.

Instagram 

Think culture. It’s possible to drive significant brand awareness and engagement via Instagram. If Twitter can be somewhat snarky, Instagram trends more positive. It’s a safer space for brands and is the most #HashtagFriendly of the major social channels.

TikTok 

With an audience that skews heavily toward teenagers, TikTok is like the Wild West. That’s important to consider, as the platform can be great for some brands and not appropriate for others. For brands where risk is part of the DNA, TikTok makes sense to try.

Stay Consistent

Reinforce your brand by keeping your brand voice relatable, reliable, and easy to digest. A well-developed brand voice helps cement a consistent message. It helps you to develop a style and personality that’s exclusively yours and becomes recognizable by your target audience. Perhaps most importantly, a cohesive brand voice on social platforms offers reassurance to your audience of what they can expect from your brand wherever they engage with it.