How to Find Your Brand Voice [Personal Branding]

BrandingVisibility

Sep 2

Written By brandmerry

How to Find Your Brand Voice [Personal Branding]

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

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If you've never tried hard kombucha before, I highly recommend it. If you're a kombucha fan and you also like to consume a beverage from time to time with alcoholic content, the shizz is amazing.

No, this is not what this post is about, obviously, but hear me out.

Today, I want to share with you my top tips for finding your voice through personal branding.
But, why is this so important? Let’s dive in.

My favorite company for hard kombucha is called June Shine. This small San Diego-based business has built a product that has expanded over the last year to nationwide delivery. Their success has been so fun to watch.

While I love the taste of the product, what has made me a loyal fan is their brand. Because of their clear brand, the company voice and their knowledge of their ideal customer, their marketing are exceptional. I see myself as their ideal customer in everything they do.

It’s one of the reasons I bought and their voice continues in their customer service as well, from their emails to their text messages you clearly understand their brand and the ultimate vibe they want to portray.

Everything you do in your business and your success ultimately comes down to your brand.

All the growth that we see, the loyalty, the brand affinity, as I've shared multiple times on my podcast, it all comes down to the work that you do on a branding level.

I hope by now that you have watched my free training called Build a Better Brand Method. If you have, you are familiar with that method.

I shared that method with you on the podcast. If you want to go back and listen to episode 10, the Better Brand Method, you'll learn my six-part framework for building a better brand.

One of those pillars is your brand voice.

Today I want to dive into why this is so important, how you find it, and some of the key things that I teach my clients that support them in finding their authentic voice.

BRAND VOICE GUIDELINES

Now, I will say that finding your voice and refining your voice is a process. It's kind of like what we talked about a few episodes ago around visibility and showing up with confidence.

It is through the act of getting visible that you increase your confidence.

It is through the act of showing up and sharing your voice that you refine your voice.

You will learn what feels good and what doesn't feel good as you show up and get visible.

But where do you start?

How do you know what your voice even is?

How do you create a voice from the beginning that feels very much like you and who you are and how you want to show up and isn't heavily influenced by others in your industry or mentors?

This is something that I had to catch myself with when I first started my business.

When we talk about authenticity and especially your authentic voice, this is where the relatability piece shines.

Your voice is ultimately how you're showing up. This is how you're positioning your content. This is how you talk about your offer. It's the little quirks and little things that you do on your videos, on your podcast.

One of the things that I do and I don't know if you've noticed, maybe it drives you nuts I don't know, is I don't edit my podcast.

My husband will add some intro, outro music, fancy it up a bit, but I'm not cutting out things that I say or if I misspeak or anything like that.

That was a choice that I made early on because I want to show up as my true self, without filters, without edits, without all of those different things.

That's one of the elements of my authenticity. That's important to me. Yours might look a little bit different. You might be a very polished person.

Maybe you come from a very professional background and that is in fact who you are, not a front, not a mask, not a facade. That's who you are.

When you put your work out in the world, of course, it makes sense to have a nice edited and polished piece.

That's not who I am.

And I hope this story reminds you that just because I show up this way, doesn't mean you have to show up that way. It doesn't mean you should show up that way.

You should be showing up in the way that is most authentic to you.

If we're creating a personal brand in which we're offering products or services based on something that has happened in our life, based on our story, or based on our experience, we are the center of the brand so the voice is our own.

Even as I expand into more of a company here at Brandmerry, I'm coming from a full personal brand where my voice and my story are the center.

As I'm moving into this transition of building a company with additional levels of support and team members, specifically inside of my program Brandmerry Academy, it's about taking those elements of the brand voice, me, and what that impacts in terms of values, mission, messaging, etc...the pillars that have already been created for Brandmerry, and then how I move them over and we communicate them as a company and as a brand as a whole.

It still had to start with me!

When you're just starting, it's you.

Don't try and fancy it up.

Don't try to make it all complicated.

It is you, it is your voice.

So let’s talk about how your voice specifically fits into personal branding.

TWO QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR BRAND VOICE

There are two questions I want you to think about when we first dive into this. I'm also going to share with you a few key points I want you to identify that are going to help you in actually creating your brand voice.

IDENTIFY YOUR FEARS AROUND SHOWING UP

The first thing that I want you to do is to identify the fears that you have around showing up as your most authentic self.

A couple of things might come up for you when I say that.

One, “Who is my most authentic self, Michelle? I have no damn idea.”

This is why I'm a big fan of the story work that I teach in all of my programs because through the story work, I am giving you prompts and encouragement to uncover elements of your story that have impacted who you are and how you show up today and the work that you're doing.

It's through diving in and doing those pieces that you're able to start to determine who you are authentically.

When I first started my business, I created an entire brand that was not me. It didn't look like me, it didn't sound like me. It wasn't me. And that's because I didn't know at the time what story work was.

Story work and how I teach it is a framework that I created through my discovery.

So when I was making that transition to figure out how to rebrand my business, because I identified that what I had created wasn’t me, I dove into the story work.

If you're at that place where you're I just don't know, then I would encourage you to check out some free resources on brandmerry.com on the blog, around storytelling, as well as my YouTube channel.

But the next level, that is what I teach inside of You! Branded. That is what I focus on inside of my intensives. Depending on where you're at in your business, your level of investment, and your eagerness to figure this shit out, those are some options for you.

If you don't know who you are, you’ve got to figure that out first.
So, let's just assume, for our purposes today, that we've all done story work and now it's about how you want to show up and squash the fears that come up around being judged, looking unprofessional, not being polished, etc…

I still had those fears when I was starting, because I was looking at what everyone else was doing and thought that if they wear blazers, take pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower, they have these perfect backdrops behind their live stream, no kid running around, etc that I had to do those things too.

I had to face those fears and say, "Are you afraid that those things mean that you aren't going to be successful?"

Of course, they don't.

And we know that one of the best things that you can do is stand in your authenticity to stand out online. If I were to adapt or mold to what all those people were doing, I would look and sound like everybody else.

Now, I know you aren’t here because you want to look and sound like everyone else. There's no way. You wouldn't be here. And we know that that's a bad marketing move overall.

The first thing you want to do is identify the fears that you have around showing up as your most authentic self and then start to work through those fears and rationalize those fears.

Is this ultimately true?
What is this telling me about myself?
How can I use this as a damn momentum driver to show up and share my voice?

Use Emotion In Your Brand

The second thing you want to do is attach a little bit of emotion to it. Now I know I always say keep the emotion out of marketing. Make your marketing decisions based on data but listen, branding is all about emotion.

The whole concept of branding is emotional. So what better way to feel connected to yourself and how you are going to show up than thinking about how you showing up as your most authentic self would make you feel?

How would you feel creating content as your most authentic self?

How would you feel sharing your website when you knew that it was a true reflection of who you are?

How would you feel going on video and not worrying about all the little things that you have made up in your head that have to be a certain way or sound a certain way?

I can tell you from experience, it feels damn good. Even though the video was the main platform that I decided to focus on with visibility, this is something I talked about in episode 12, I still had a ton of fears around it.

I was worried that everything had to be perfect.
It had to be silent in my house.
I couldn't be interrupted.

And while I don't recommend that kids are running all around when you have a live stream, this is the reality of it all. It was the first live stream I did with my son because it was either show up with him or not at all, that I realized that there was so much power in me showing up as my true self.

- QUICK STORYTIME -

In 2016, I was hosting one of my very first challenges and for me it was huge. I think I had 50 people signed up. It was a big deal.

I had already left my 9:00 to 5:00 and I was hosting this challenge during the middle of the day, rather than the evening as I had done before.

Back then it was just my son and me at home during the day and I thought I had positioned it right around nap time.

Well, it doesn't always work out that way. And my son would not fall asleep before the video.

After pacing back and forth and seriously questioning what I was going to do and freaking out a little bit, I ended up putting him in our baby carrier on my back and I just started the live stream.

I remember it was the first time I'd stood up on a live stream, typically I’d be sitting in a chair. And I remember saying to my audience, "Hey, listen. Here's what it is. I'm a working mom. I'm building my own business. My son wouldn't lay down. He's on my back. If you see hands, feet, a head or hear crying, that's what's up."

I just laid it outright in the beginning and I delivered the entire live stream.

He ended up falling asleep because I was swaying back and forth. And I kid you not, it was the first time that I had received such a tremendous response from a live stream where I got comment after comment after comment.

"Thank you for doing this.”
“Thank you for showing up.”
“Thank you for giving us permission."

I was selling a program on the back end of this challenge, it was a branding program, my first ever. I had multiple people tell me that they ended up joining because of that live stream.

Could you imagine if I hadn't shown up because I was worried about the fears of what people would think of me?

When you make an intentional choice to face those fears, to put them in perspective, and honestly, to lead with the emotion of how amazing it would feel to do this thing as your most authentic self, you can potentially change the entire course of your business.

So before you dive into the tips and tricks, you need to consider these first two questions.

7 KEY ELEMENTS TO IDENTIFY YOUR BRAND VOICE

Now let's talk about some of the key elements that I have found that help my clients in identifying their voice.

We're feeling confident and yeah, we're going to do the damn thing.

Now, how do we do it?

Know Your Audience

Number one, and as with all things in branding, you have to know your audience. This is huge. And I don't think people realize what role this plays in your authenticity.

But let's say you are coming from corporate America. I've worked with so many clients who come from a very heavy corporate background, high-level corporations, where they have been their whole life, who leave the 9:00 to 5:00 grind for starting their own business. And some of them end up working with corporate individuals, that's amazing, but a lot of them don't.

When they come in and start writing copy and thinking about showing up, they get really obsessed with this whole corporate train of thought. “But this is who I've worked with. This is what my boss would say.”

When I ask them who their audience is. They'll tell me and then I ask them:

What does your audience do every day?
What's your audience wearing?
Why is your audience interested in the topic that you're sharing?
Do you think your audience actually cares about what you told me previously?
Typically the answer is No!

If you know your audience, it can take a lot of the pressure off how you SHOULD be showing up.

It's not that we're molding ourselves to fit our audience's expectations. But if you're coming in with these high expectations of how you should be performing, sometimes it can put it into perspective for you.

When you realize…
Wait, actually my audience cares about transparency.
Wait, actually my audience cares more about connection.
Wait, my audience is a bunch of moms who are also juggling X, Y, and Z so me showing up will be a great way to show both of those.

That's one thing that I have found has been tremendously helpful for my clients, especially my clients who are coming from more professional backgrounds.

Why Do You Like Your Favorite Brands

The second tool that I love to teach is one that we have to tread a little light around.

Now, I'm going to share this with you but I'm not recommending that you go hunt down all your favorite brands and stalk their websites and their copy and so forth. There's no room for that. That is the opposite of authentic.

What I want you to focus on are the brands that you gravitate towards. The brands that you feel connected to and why.

You don't even have to look at these brands. You just have to think about that brand and your interactions with them. Think about the content that you've consumed from them and write down why you feel good when you see their stuff.

How does it make you feel?
And why do you think it makes you feel that way?

Then on the flip side of that, I want you to think about brands that you don't like seeing and don't like interacting with.

When you hear that name and you think to yourself, "Ugh," why is that?

This is going to tell you how you want to show up in the world.

We're typically drawn to things that feel most authentic to us so if you can identify some of these pieces that draw you into other brands, you can replicate those feelings but in your authentic way with your brand.

Use Everyday Language

The next tip that I have is one of the most simple, yet most difficult strategies in the book but it is going to help you so much with not just your copywriting in general, but also your storytelling.

And that is to use everyday language.

Start to identify some of the things that you love to talk about or some of the quirks that you have. One of the exercises that I have in You! Branded is to list out some of the most popular words that you typically say a lot and then carry that over into your messaging or ask some of your friends and family, people who know you on a very intimate level to name three quirks that they find that you always bring to a conversation.

We can kind of survey people closest to us to pinpoint things that we don't see in ourselves because the everyday language, ultimately speaking in your true voice is really what this is about.

So why not identify that before you ever start creating content or showing up?

Be Conversational

This is also a great way to improve your copy and your storytelling.

When you are thinking about creating content, showing up on a video, or creating a podcast like this, imagine you’re having a conversation with your audience.

When I recorded this podcast I pretended I was speaking to you as if we were sitting on the couch, drinking kombucha together, talking about your voice and personal branding.

Be conversational. This is what people resonate with.

One of the greatest tools that I learned was to pretend I was writing emails to a friend. This completely changed how I wrote emails to my audience when I was starting.

This is why tip number one, identifying your ideal customer, getting to know who they are, is incredibly important. It will allow you to give them a persona and use that when writing your copy.

If you're writing an Instagram post and you were writing a letter to them, how would you write it?
It would be descriptive.
It would be conversational.
It'd be funny.
You'd have emotion in it.

It wouldn't be like, "Hey, I have this free thing and I want you to get your hands on it. It will be great. Here's what you'll get."

You sound like a damn robot.

But if you're conversational and you're like, "Hey, are you struggling with this right now and it's driving you up a damn wall and you can't stop thinking about it? How would it freaking feel if you didn't have to worry about that anymore and instead you could focus on X, Y, and Z? I want to share this with you because I'm so excited about it. And it's my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

Big difference.
One feels like a friend, one feels like a robot.

You tell me which one you gravitate towards?

Put Keywords To Your Voice

I love getting clear and specific and having a framework for things. One of the things I love after you've gotten to this point is to put some keywords to your voice.

For instance, one of the things that I teach inside of You! Branded is all about emotional branding and identifying the emotions that you want your audience to feel. You can use similar words when you're trying to describe your voice.

Maybe you use exclamation points a lot when you write and it's playful.
You love to use gifs and emojis to keep it light.
You might say that your brand voice is playful, compassionate, and constantly excited.

With this tip, you’re ultimately giving your brand voice an identity.

If you’ve done the emotional branding work that I teach, there will be crossover and it can help in brand consistency from a brand voice and brand emotion (aesthetic) standpoint.

It will give you a marker for self-assessment as you continue to show up. You can reflect every 30 days and ask yourself, “Oh, does this sound like my voice? Does this hit the three characteristics that I established in the beginning when I was thinking about my brand voice?” But then also as you move into sharing your brand with others, hiring people to come on your team to share your brand, create graphic designs or promotional pieces, you can share these pieces with them as well so they understand how you want to be presented online.

I was just bringing on a new graphic designer, which I'm so excited about over here at Team Brandmerry, and we're trying to figure out what design we like. I’m able to give really thorough feedback and say things like, "Okay, less bright, moodier. Less playful, more grounded."

I’m able to share these keywords because I know my brand voice and it ultimately will help them in the creation process.

Once you’ve identified your keywords then put those on a Post-it and always check in with yourself to make sure that you're following your own criteria. The criteria you've determined.

Identify Your Values and Mission

Identifying your values and your mission plays a really big role in your voice and how you show up online.

If you haven't created your brand values or your brand mission, make sure you go back and listen to some previous episodes that we did on the podcast.

Episode one was all about creating a mission-driven brand and episode three was all about identifying your brand values.

Doing that work can help you tremendously in solidifying your brand voice and really understanding how you want to show up in the world.

The Art of Brand Containers

Now the last thing that I will leave you with as we close up talking about your brand voice is the art of brand containers. One of the ways that I recommend my clients get started in choosing how they're going to show up online, organizing their content, and playing with talking about different things, is brand containers.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the playing and the doing are all part of the solidifying process.

As you show up and you get visible, you will figure out your voice way faster than if you're not actually creating content and putting anything out there.

So with brand containers, I typically recommend having five. You can do anywhere from five to seven. Five to seven containers that you can ultimately create content around.

For instance, my brand containers are branding, marketing, travel, productivity, mompreneur, and systems. These have changed and shifted over the years based on my interest, but they’ve mostly remained the same.

So those are all elements of my voice. Those are all things that I love to talk about and things that I know connect with my audience.

I know my audience is here for branding and marketing and those are the things I “sell” in my business.

I also know that my audience loves productivity and systems and is an extension of the work I do and things I’m super passionate about.

Most of my audience wants to travel and love when I share my experiences with them and some of my audience are moms or maybe planning for it in the future. It's not that your audience has to connect with each piece of it, but try to find the ones that offer your ability to show up as your authentic self and connect with your audience in some way.

Think about answering this question, “Who am I? What are the things I love to talk about? And how can I create that brand experience for my audience by sharing those things?”

Your connection pieces have to be about more than just what you sell. You can't constantly be pitching your services and your products. Your audience is going to get tired, unfollow, and unsubscribe.

Spice it up.

CONCLUSION

As you're thinking about these different pieces I share today, as you think about how you want your audience to feel, your everyday language, the three words to describe your voice, pulling in your values and your mission, don't neglect also thinking about some of the things you genuinely love to talk about and how those can ultimately support your clients.

It's one of my favorite exercises that I teach entrepreneurs who don't have a consistent content strategy as of yet, as a great way to get started in refining their voice and finding what their audience resonates with.

The connection piece is key and everything I shared with you today will allow you to first identify who you are and how you want to show up in the world and then build that connection with your audience.

I wanted to take a minute to remind you to grab that free ebook that I've put together for you, where I am sharing The 15 Lessons to Propel Your Online Business.

It's the ultimate guide of shit I wish someone would have told me. I talk about a lot of the elements that I see holding entrepreneurs back from reaching the income level and the impact that they desire.

And as you can probably imagine, I made the same mistakes.

Whether you're just thinking of starting your business or you're three or four years into it, I recommend that you head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free ebook.

Because even if you get one little golden nugget from this ebook, I know it is going to support you in achieving your goals.

Head to brandmerry.com/lessons to download your free ebook today.