Hello there! I’ve written social media posts for a number of wildly different brands, including a web browser, a mobile videogame publisher, and a line of cosmetics-dispensing vending machines. Even though each of these businesses, products, and their respective consumer bases were vastly different, I never had a problem with penning content that fits each one’s distinct tone, style, and personality. While I have plenty of experience, people who are new to social media need to understand how to find their brand’s voice before sending out a single tweet:
It’s time for me to let the cat out of the bag with the most important secret of them all: Writing content for brands is so much easier if you consider them as characters with a set personality, tone, and focus. Think about it! For instance, Mountain Dew is all about being cool, upbeat, and positive, all while focusing their attention to the younger crowd with a mix of content that revolves around extreme sports, videogames, and of course, their collection of neon-colored sodas. When Mountain Dew shares anything to social media, it’s consistently happy, cheerful, and above all else, fun! It’s that consistency in the Mountain Dew message that does wonders to establish how everyone recognizes their iconic drink.
It’s only natural that established brands are the easiest to write for, as they already have at least some previous history to build upon, but a general public opinion keystone doesn’t create itself, and if you are writing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media content on behalf of your brand, you’ll have to do some serious self-examination.
Ask yourself some personality questions about your brand: Is it a fun joke-a-minute laugh riot? Does it have an explicit a down-to-business tone? Is it somewhere in between? Are you able to write content with flexibility, or should you stick to a specific formula? Are you open to frequent back-and-forth communication with followers, or does your brand announce information and immediately withdraw? Above all else, your brand’s inherent character not only needs to properly represent your business, but it also has to do so on a level that fans, followers, and future customers will relate to and understand. For instance, Dolphin Browser is a hip and conversational brand that wants to inform potential users and longtime fans alike about their top-tier mobile browser in an entertaining way. When I write posts for Dolphin, I’m given plenty of freedom to poke fun at tech news, caption silly images, and share links to entertaining articles, and it works to lure in lighthearted mobile fans worldwide. Writing for Dolphin has been made much easier for me because these tech tycoons knew exactly who they were, and how they’d like to represent themselves to their fans.
Once you’ve collected enough key research about the tone and personality of the brand, do your best to write like a real person who wants to connect with the other real people viewing your posts online. It is only natural to lean towards writing straight-up advertising on social media, especially since any company’s presence on social media is at its core about advertising themselves, but the most important thing is making a genuine brand to reader connection. My work with DeNA Games was an especially fun and memorable example of this, as their audience consisted of mobile videogame fans, and as someone who is a longtime enthusiast of electronic games, it was extremely easy for me to write content that connected with their fans on a personal level through DeNA’s friendly and enthusiastic social media voice. Whether I was building hype for Darth Maul’s introduction to the newest Star Wars game, or introducing this week’s special story mission as the narrator of the Transformers series, my tone was bubbly, knowledgeable, and optimistic about the future of DeNA’s latest games, and their fans sincerely appreciated my projected passion for their favorite hobby in return. Talk about a win-win!
In a nutshell, writing social media posts for a brand is like writing dialogue for an established character with a set tone and personality. Once you’ve studied the personality of the brand, you’ll know exactly what sorts of concepts you should experiment with, and those you should avoid like the plague. When you’ve got that down, you’re golden!