Finding a voice for your startup

I had the great pleasure of attending the Social Media Week Glasgow retail event hosted by Incentive Media and Harper McLeod last week. The event focused on how you could use social media in regards to a retail business and it got me thinking about the ‘voice’ adopted by companies, young and old, on social media.

Before setting off on my own ventures I worked for an award winning global PR agency and one of the most important things I took from my time there was how vital it is to ensure your message comes across with the correct ‘voice’.

What do I mean by ‘voice’?

How your message sounds to others, the tone within it, the level of knowledge that is portrayed and most importantly a message people feel they can connect with.

This is something I am putting into practice with my startup Mallzee. We’re a company that’s about online retail and changing the way people shop. Our audience via social media is one that is style conscious and with this audience getting the ‘voice’ right is vital. That’s why everything that is user-facing, whether it’s a tweet, a flyer or an email to our prelaunch; we think about the ‘voice’ and make sure it fits our company and most importantly, our users.

The voice we use isn’t mine. My voice simply doesn’t fit. My tone isn’t the same as our customers and a lot of the time our interests aren’t the same.

Find yours

We know who our customers and we have identified keywords for our voice: Young, Popular, Chic, On Trend and High End. From here, everyone on the team thinks about these words whenever they’re doing something user facing. This is vital.

That’s how our customers talk so that’s the voice we need to adopt. It’s difficult at times to make sure we always use this ‘voice’ but we know that it needs to be right or we could put off potential users.

What I’m trying to say is that sometimes your own voice and your companies voice aren’t the same thing. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s worth doing something about it. Getting your voice right gives you a much better connection to your users, potential users and gives you an ideal opportunity to create a bond – no matter the industry.

That’s what it’s all about, right? Connecting with people in a manner that they feel comfortable with and that gives you the best possible opportunity to keep their custom or win them over.

So what is your voice? Have you defined it yet?