Ever been checking out a brand’s Facebook page and noticed that their posts are obviously being written by a couple different people?  Yikes! That’s no good. With strapped marcom budgets, reduced staff and large workloads, many brands rely on several different people to post to their social pages and profiles.  How can can a brand ensure that all the people posting on behalf of the brand are singing in the same voice rather than their own?

Each person posting needs to understand and embrace the brand’s personality.  Is the brand formal or more casual?  Is the brand fun or serious?  Ultimately, the brand’s personality needs to be determined by the executive team and everyone, from the top down, needs to buy into it. Once the brand’s personality has been established, the marketing team needs to figure out how to marketing materials will reflect it.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to have a list of words that illustrate the brand’s personality to work with.  Our marketing team worked with our branding agency to develop the list we use in our marketing.  The list includes adjectives as well as strong action words that allow us to properly depict our brand’s personality.  Once the brand’s personality is clearly understood and a word list has been developed, those responsible for posting to social sites can feel confident that they are accurately reflecting the brand’s personality through their tone and word choice with each post.

Not sure what tone to use for your brand?  Do you need to determine your brand’s personality but you aren’t sure where to start? Check out this awesome infographic from FreshPeel, which indicates that most brands fall into one of these 12 archetypal characters.

FreshPeel, 2012