DESIGN MANAGEMENT

TONE OF VOICE (TOV)

Tone of voice is how the character of your business comes through in your words, both written and spoken. It’s not about what you say, but rather the way you say it, and the impression it makes on everyone in your audience who reads or hears you.

 

Why you need a Tone of Voice?

1. It builds a connection with your audience that encourages a dialogue. 65% of customers say that they are emotionally connected to a brand in a way that makes them feel like the company cares about them.
2. It builds trust with your audience. Trust can be built using different measures — in one study, 64% of customerscited that shared values are the primary reason to trust a company, among those who said they have a brand relationship.
3. It may increase your company’s revenue. A survey shows the average increase attributed to presenting the brand consistently, estimated by those organizations with brand consistency issues, is 23 percent.
4. It creates a memorable image of your brand and the people behind it. However, the perception of your brand is not just based on the language used — key colours improve brand recognition by 80%.

 

Four dimensions

According to NNGroup there are four dimensions for TOV:

• Funny vs. serious: Is the writer trying to be humorous? Or is the subject approached in a serious way? (Note that for our purposes, this dimension was only the attempt at humour. We didn’t evaluate if the writers successfully landed their jokes.)
• Formal vs. casual: Is the writing formal? Informal? Casual?  (Note that casual and conversational are not necessarily synonymous, but they do often appear together.)
• Respectful vs. irreverent: Does the writer approach the subject in a respectful way? Or does she take an irreverent approach? (In practice, most irreverent tones are irreverent about the subject matter, in an effort to set the brand apart from competitors. They are not usually intentionally irreverent or offensive to the reader.)
• Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact: Does the writer seem to be enthusiastic about the subject? Is the organization excited about the service or product, or the information it conveys? Or is the writing dry and matter-of-fact?

 

Read more here:  https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tone-of-voice-dimensions/

 

Links

https://hbr.org/2012/05/three-myths-about-customer-eng

https://www.lucidpress.com/pages/resources/report/the-impact-of-brand-consistency

https://gathercontent.com/blog/a-simple-tool-to-guide-tone-of-voice