From the course: No-Code Web Design

Voice, tone, and brand

From the course: No-Code Web Design

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Voice, tone, and brand

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- [Instructor] You've heard the word brand before, many times, but have you ever thought about what it really means? If you think of LinkedIn, you think of the logo, the blue and white colors, maybe a little bit about how the website looks, but remember a brand describes everything about a company or an individual, positive and negative, including how that brand makes you feel. Oh, ick! Feelings, not something I usually like to discuss but this is a critical piece of branding. How do you want people to feel when they do business with you? For example, think of Apple. Among the people who own iPads, iPhones, Apple computers, and other Apple products, these classic advertisements are inspiring. Indeed, Apple is a brand that makes people feel inspired, empowered, and creative. Notice how Apple has chosen three famous people who reflect these values. They think different. Think about how LinkedIn makes you feel and what kind of voice it has. You might think professional, efficient, and direct. These words do a reasonable job of describing what LinkedIn is like. It's all about business and getting things done, growing in your career field, getting a job, and connecting with colleagues in your field. What three feelings would you use to describe your brand? Here, you could be you, the individual, or your side hustle, or the company that you work for. Think about the feelings you want to inspire in your customers and your clients. Now make use of a voice and tone table to describe how you might want to incorporate these feelings into your writing. This is an example of a voice and tone table. So the very top of the voice and tone table, you want to put in a feeling. So here, in describing LinkedIn, let's say we want a feeling of professionalism. Then we're going to provide an example of how we want to write, how we don't want to write, and our reason for doing so. So write like this: Share your profile and make new network connections. And not like this: Hang out with your new peeps and make new pals. The rationale for that is that we want to emphasize professional networking, not personal friendships. This voice and tone table you can replicate in its exact format in a Word document, or you could simply make a list of these things and repeat that list three times. Whatever works for you is just fine, the important part here is the little bits of information and you probably want to have say three to five of these, but certainly no more than five, otherwise the feelings start to conflict on your website. It just gets confusing. What are the three feelings you'd pick to describe your brand? What did you create in your voice and tone table? Be sure to share in our LinkedIn group discussion.

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