After hitting a legendary music festival this summer, you might be inspired to sing in your car or round up your friends for a night of karaoke so thought I’d refresh this story in time for the festival season.
Find your brand’s voice
Content marketing strategies are on everyone’s to-do list these days. It’s with good reason, since developing dynamic, unique content is an effective way to reach out to target audiences and promote your organization’s expertise. To build stronger recognition for your brand, a consistent voice, tone and language should be used across all marketing and communications touch points. As a company grows, extends its reach and impact, all brand extensions should share the voice and tone to capture your brand’s unique personality.
Once the strategy has been set, it can seem daunting to shape the ideas into stories, but these tips: lessons learned from karaoke sessions, will help to create rock star content.
Singing in the wrong key and out of your range
Stepping up to the microphone? Then pick a song you can actually sing! Technically, can you hit those notes that push against your range? In content marketing, if you venture beyond a comfortable range, the words come across to the reader as off key or ‘pitchy’ like they say on the Idol shows. Avoid straining: stick to a comfortable range and content that you really know. Create a powerful and unified voice for your team and stay current – you may love those moldy oldies, but the tech savvy generation z will tune out immediately. Here’s a related story that explains further – Tone and Voice: Showing Your Users That You Care.
Picking a song that’s way too long
There’s a short window to keep everyone entertained at the karaoke bar, and it’s no different when writing online content. Remember that poor soul who picked the six-minute song, only to lose the crowd’s attention after the first guitar solo a quarter of the way in? Painful! Stick to a shorter word count and run a few tests to see what will be read and understood by your readers. Break up longer concepts into a series that keeps them coming back for the encore.
Inviting others who can’t sing up to the mike
When building a content team, make sure all contributors understand the strategy and have an editor critique their work. Companies that share ideas with other audiences as guest contributors may even get in front of entirely new audiences. Guest writer’s stories need a review to ensure the content fits. Much like inviting tone deaf friends up to the mike, one bad song can lose the audience, so keep control of the process and only host contributors who complement the marketing strategy.
Bringing down the house with a sappy or diva song
Time and time again, the person who chooses the song with the sad story or crazy vocals brings down the energy in the room. The whole point of going to the show is to be entertained and feel like you’re part of a community. When someone thinks they can play the big diva at the mike, they exclude everyone else from their pedestal on the stage. So consider the audience when writing content and understand their motivations for reading the stories. Do they want some drawn out sad story that has no positive solution, or do they want to to be drowned in detail about how great your company is? Probably not.
Getting on a roll once you’ve warmed up your voice
The first person to grab the microphone is pretty brave, so they deserve a round of applause even if their voice was a bit weak or crackly. As with singing, writing warms up with each new story that’s pumped out. Get momentum going and ensure each story builds on the other while cross-referencing and linking to key learnings. What’s the ‘liquid courage’ that will keep the stories coming?
Like any legendary rock star knows, there is a way to stand out from the crowd and build a loyal following. Find your authentic voice, tweak the messages and keep extending to a broader audience as you find your groove and hit the right notes. Need a coach or producer to help you find your voice? We’ve designed Voice and Tone Guides for clients to make it easy. Contact Seeds Consulting today.