Should your Business have a Consistent Voice?

Should your business have a consistent voice across all content marketing?

Yes, but not all the time.

And yes, I am aware that, “You should not be consistent all the time,” is a very ironic statement.

Consistent Company Voice

It depends on the channel. Press releases require formality. A company website can have some fun, but should be consistent from one page to the next. Similarly, eBooks/ white papers and other content for deeper into the funnel should remain consistent with each other, as well as the website.

But what about blogs?

Incorporating Personality into Blogs

As I’ve written before, blogs are an excellent venue to bring out creativity. They are also a location to highlight the expertise of individual people within your company. If a blog is attributed to a specific author, and not the company at large, that blog should absolutely reflect the author’s unique personality.

As a ghost writer, this means that occasionally my personal analogies must be removed. Here are some things I’ve written that didn’t fit, and therefore didn’t make the cut:

• “Reliability is a key attribute to seek in any vendor. No one wants to be stuck with a fly-by-night service provider. (Although it’s a great Rush song.)”
• “…data centers are still actual buildings that human thieves could break into. (I once read my son a Batman story with that exact plotline.)”

My clients want fun infused into their blog posts, although we all recognize that not every idea will be a fit. Fortunately, only a small minority of fun content is rejected and such edits are a normal part of the process of producing great content.

Don’t Be Afraid of Fun Content Marketing

Investing potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars into software applications is a serious matter. You need to empower your buyers with content that maps to their buying journey and helps justify the investment in your product. ROI, compatibility, ease of use, TCO, and time to value all need to be taken into consideration.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t be silly at tradeshows, on display ads, or in videos and blogs. Don’t feel you need to choose between seriousness and silliness in your messaging. Just like in life, each has a time and a place.

We just all need to remember that dancing, skipping, and singing are great while hiking in the woods, but not while walking into Starbucks to chat with a new prospective client.