Creating a voice & tone for your product
The article touched upon the topic of tonality and voice of the product. The concept in our area is not very much discussed, it is practically not used consciously. And, to be honest, the voice and tone are usually included in brandbooks and similar documents, or are written in an implicit form in editorial policies of magazines / newspapers, etc.
I bring to your attention the translation of the article “ Creating your product's tone and voice ” by Kaja Laura Toczyska. As usual, thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to read.
Work in the product development team has an undeniable advantage over other types of teams: you can delve into the project. At Growbots, after a year of work on a complete redesign, a stage came when we were able to focus on polishing and correcting our previous work. Since we did not have a UX writer, it was necessary to complete work on a large release in a short time, and the texts in the application should have been normal anyway. All of these button names, messages, and errors definitely lacked uniformity and, as I deeply regretted, my own tone and voice.
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When the calmer times came, I proposed to improve the text part of the application and develop my own tone and voice. Since I was working with such a project for the first time (and my level of English is lower than even native speakers), I would like to share our process with you. I hope that something from our experience will be useful for your company.
This is how you express the nature of your company in communicating with customers at each contact. This is how you sound, what words you use, what atmosphere you create in your letter. Your tone and voice is everywhere - every message that your customers exchange, every text on your website, every slogan in your advertisement.
Your brand may (and should) have a different tone for different types of messages. I will tell you by my example why. You yourself, and your character does not change much. But your tone largely depends on the situation in which you are located and on the person with whom you communicate. When you talk to your friends, you are probably relaxed, use slang, joke, and sometimes even speak. But when you are at a company’s official meeting, you’ll probably watch your words, give yourself more seriously and try to make a good impression. It's just a change of tone, while remaining the same person.
You need to project this knowledge onto the tone of your brand. When sending messages to the user — for example, errors, tips or feedback — the tone should change slightly. This is very important to indicate when preparing the voice & tone manual.
Now let's move on to the process of creating recommendations for the tonality and voice of the product / brand, etc.
The first thing I did: I quickly looked at the sites of our competitors and their technical support pages for tonality and voice. This simple operation will help you understand how you can distinguish your product / brand from others, as a unique tone and voice can be a huge differentiating factor. Pay attention to the words and phrases that they use, their tone (more formal or everyday?) And consistency among themselves.
Next, I looked at how we communicate with clients now, studied marketing materials (website, blog), listened to successful negotiations with clients. I selected a few messages that, in my opinion, best reflect our current tone.
To make sure that everyone has the same idea of ​​our tone and voice, I organized a seminar, inviting people from the design team, marketing specialists, and customer service managers — people who communicate on behalf of our company every day.
We tried to talk about who our customers are, what they do and how we are currently communicating with them. Then we tried to figure out how we all see Growbots, highlighting a few features that we associate with our company (for example, the desire to be useful, natural in behavior, friendly). We learned that our vision is very similar. Everyone more or less saw Growbots as a young man (we are a startup), very useful, who studied everything on her own and likes to share this knowledge with others.
Our head of UX, Peter, printed a photo of a group of people and asked us to point out the person in the photo who, in our opinion, is most similar to Growbots. Most people chose the same person, and this really showed us that our vision is very holistic.
Now that we had an image of a man similar to Growbots (we called him Mark), we did the following exercise, which really helped us translate our vision into something more tangible. We presented that Mark has his own store with data on prospects, and the buyer enters this store. Then we wrote a conversation that we assumed would happen in such a situation.
We went through all the scenarios - from the beginning of the relationship with the client, through some of his problems and small achievements, before the client decided to stop using our services. In different cases, we changed the tone. For example, when a client was angry that something was not working, Mark was very reassuring and helping. And when the client did it all, Mark was cheerful and encouraging, using less formal words.
Having finished the work, we assigned one category to each Mark phrase:
Then we analyzed these phrases and marked them in the matrix. The matrix consisted of two axes:
Through this exercise, we were able to relate the types of messages and the tone that we want to use in these situations.
With all this information, I was able to create a guide for our tone and voice. It consisted of several sections with 1-6 slides per section. Below you can see sample slides for each section:
1 What is tone and voice and why are they important
2 Who are our customers?
3 What is the “identity” of Growbots and familiarity with our image (Mark)
4 What is our voice
5 Who we are and who we are not
6 A few rules of writing on behalf of our brand, with an explanation and advice
7 General writing tips. For example, what times to use, how to structure sentences, phrases to be avoided, etc.
8 Examples of good and bad phrases
After creating the guides, I introduced them to the product owners, developers, and other people working on the Growbots app.
I bring to your attention the translation of the article “ Creating your product's tone and voice ” by Kaja Laura Toczyska. As usual, thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to read.
Work in the product development team has an undeniable advantage over other types of teams: you can delve into the project. At Growbots, after a year of work on a complete redesign, a stage came when we were able to focus on polishing and correcting our previous work. Since we did not have a UX writer, it was necessary to complete work on a large release in a short time, and the texts in the application should have been normal anyway. All of these button names, messages, and errors definitely lacked uniformity and, as I deeply regretted, my own tone and voice.
')
When the calmer times came, I proposed to improve the text part of the application and develop my own tone and voice. Since I was working with such a project for the first time (and my level of English is lower than even native speakers), I would like to share our process with you. I hope that something from our experience will be useful for your company.
What is voice & tone?
This is how you express the nature of your company in communicating with customers at each contact. This is how you sound, what words you use, what atmosphere you create in your letter. Your tone and voice is everywhere - every message that your customers exchange, every text on your website, every slogan in your advertisement.
“The voice of the brand is a purposeful, consistent expression of the brand through the words and styles of the text that attract and motivate. This is true: the personality of your brand is largely determined by the words you use and the sentences you write. ”Why is it important
Quote from the site larsen.com
- This is an expression of your core brand values.
- It creates a more humane image of the company.
- It contributes to the trust and loyalty of people to the brand.
- It highlights among competitors.
Different messages = different tones
Your brand may (and should) have a different tone for different types of messages. I will tell you by my example why. You yourself, and your character does not change much. But your tone largely depends on the situation in which you are located and on the person with whom you communicate. When you talk to your friends, you are probably relaxed, use slang, joke, and sometimes even speak. But when you are at a company’s official meeting, you’ll probably watch your words, give yourself more seriously and try to make a good impression. It's just a change of tone, while remaining the same person.
You need to project this knowledge onto the tone of your brand. When sending messages to the user — for example, errors, tips or feedback — the tone should change slightly. This is very important to indicate when preparing the voice & tone manual.
Now let's move on to the process of creating recommendations for the tonality and voice of the product / brand, etc.
Stage 1 - Research
The first thing I did: I quickly looked at the sites of our competitors and their technical support pages for tonality and voice. This simple operation will help you understand how you can distinguish your product / brand from others, as a unique tone and voice can be a huge differentiating factor. Pay attention to the words and phrases that they use, their tone (more formal or everyday?) And consistency among themselves.
Next, I looked at how we communicate with clients now, studied marketing materials (website, blog), listened to successful negotiations with clients. I selected a few messages that, in my opinion, best reflect our current tone.
Stage 2 - Sharing knowledge in the company
To make sure that everyone has the same idea of ​​our tone and voice, I organized a seminar, inviting people from the design team, marketing specialists, and customer service managers — people who communicate on behalf of our company every day.
We tried to talk about who our customers are, what they do and how we are currently communicating with them. Then we tried to figure out how we all see Growbots, highlighting a few features that we associate with our company (for example, the desire to be useful, natural in behavior, friendly). We learned that our vision is very similar. Everyone more or less saw Growbots as a young man (we are a startup), very useful, who studied everything on her own and likes to share this knowledge with others.
Our head of UX, Peter, printed a photo of a group of people and asked us to point out the person in the photo who, in our opinion, is most similar to Growbots. Most people chose the same person, and this really showed us that our vision is very holistic.
Now that we had an image of a man similar to Growbots (we called him Mark), we did the following exercise, which really helped us translate our vision into something more tangible. We presented that Mark has his own store with data on prospects, and the buyer enters this store. Then we wrote a conversation that we assumed would happen in such a situation.
We went through all the scenarios - from the beginning of the relationship with the client, through some of his problems and small achievements, before the client decided to stop using our services. In different cases, we changed the tone. For example, when a client was angry that something was not working, Mark was very reassuring and helping. And when the client did it all, Mark was cheerful and encouraging, using less formal words.
Having finished the work, we assigned one category to each Mark phrase:
- Positive information
- Neutral information
- The answer to the problem
Then we analyzed these phrases and marked them in the matrix. The matrix consisted of two axes:
- How professional is the information?
- How energetic was Mark, conveying information
Through this exercise, we were able to relate the types of messages and the tone that we want to use in these situations.
Stage 3 - Guideline
With all this information, I was able to create a guide for our tone and voice. It consisted of several sections with 1-6 slides per section. Below you can see sample slides for each section:
1 What is tone and voice and why are they important
2 Who are our customers?
3 What is the “identity” of Growbots and familiarity with our image (Mark)
4 What is our voice
5 Who we are and who we are not
6 A few rules of writing on behalf of our brand, with an explanation and advice
7 General writing tips. For example, what times to use, how to structure sentences, phrases to be avoided, etc.
8 Examples of good and bad phrases
After creating the guides, I introduced them to the product owners, developers, and other people working on the Growbots app.
A few final tips
- Do not do this for too long, because no one will find so much time to read
- Try to make the guideline aesthetic, so that it is not only pleasant to watch, but also easier to read.
- Always add examples to your recommendations, otherwise it will be difficult for people to use them.
- Specify which times to use in different situations. I noticed that this is usually the most controversial area when different people work on texts.
- Attract as many people as possible to create a guide. Do not forget about marketers and customer service managers - they usually communicate with customers most often.
About the translation of illustrations
I was not sure how best to translate images, and came to the current form: when some of the information on the images remained original. This is a compromise regarding labor costs, time and transfer of important information into Russian. In addition, the matrix decided not to touch. I hope there will be no difficulties with its study. I would be glad if someone tells you how to do better in the future.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/446052/
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