Defining Tone, Voice, and Messaging

Before we dive into creating standards, let’s define the key terms:

Tone – The attitude and emotions that come across in communication through wording, style, and phrasing choices. Tone aligns with brand personality.

Voice – The unique way a brand expresses itself. Voice brings tone to life through specific language and sentence structures.

Messaging – The core ideas, themes, and narratives a brand wants to communicate. Messaging ties everything together.

These elements work together to shape how audiences perceive an organization. Standards ensure consistency in how tone, voice, and messaging come through across channels.

Importance of Setting Standards  

Locking down standards for how your brand communicates has a bunch of benefits:

• Stronger brand identity – A consistent voice helps audiences recognize you and trust you faster. This can really set you apart from competitors.
• Better marketing performance – Messaging lands better when it feels on-brand. This leads to higher engagement and conversion rates.
• Aligned employees – Standards empower all staff to represent your brand values in their communication.
• Increased efficiency – You save time and money by reusing language and templates across materials.
• Risk reduction – Guardrails prevent PR missteps that could hurt your reputation.

Overall, standards act as a north star to align communication with core brand objectives. They give you the consistency you need to build relationships at scale.

Elements of Effective Standards

Constructing standards that can be easily understood and implemented requires incorporating several key elements:

– Brand persona – The persona acts as the muse for defining tone and voice aligned to brand attributes. Begin by clearly articulating brand personality, values, mission, and audience relationships.

– Guidelines – Create style guides that outline specific best practices and parameters for tone, voice, messaging, and formats. Supplement with examples.

– Governance – A governance plan should designate content stakeholders who ensure guidelines are followed appropriately by involved teams.

– Training – Initial and ongoing training is required to educate employees on applying standards. Training also obtains buy-in across the organization.

– Assessment – Standards must be continually assessed through feedback and brand tracking. They should evolve to meet changing brand and audience needs over time.

By incorporating these strategic elements, standards can enable consistent, effective communication.

Voice Guidelines 

Defining voice is typically centered on three main style aspects:

Personality Attributes

What core personality attributes describe the brand? Example attributes:

• Down-to-earth 
• Witty
• Professional
• Approachable

Guidelines should align word choice and tone to reinforce these attributes.

Word Choice

What vocabulary and language is characteristic of the brand? Consider:

• Active vs. passive voice
• Contractions vs. formal speech  
• Technical jargon vs. simple terminology
• Use of idioms, metaphors, analogies

Word libraries and style sheets further define parameters for word choice.

Sentence Structure

What type of phrasing, cadence, and syntax embodies the brand? Assess:

• Sentence length and complexity
• Use of questions, imperatives, and other rhetorical devices
• First-person vs. third-person perspective

Establish primary sentence patterns that match brand voice.

Tone Guidelines

Tone guidelines act as guardrails on how attitude and emotion are conveyed through all verbal and written communication.

Formality Scale

What is the appropriate level of formality for common interaction types? Consider:

• External announcements vs. social media engagement
• Support documentation vs. email newsletters  
• Sales conversations vs. conference presentations

Provide examples for contextually matching formality to channel, audience, and intent.

Emotion Scale

How should the brand convey emotion and affect? Define:

• Appropriate humor, enthusiasm, warmth 
• Empathy, concern, reassurance, gravity during crises
• Confidence and urgency during advocacy

Map intensity of emotion against communication goals. Caution against overly informal or enthusiastic tone.

Messaging Guidelines

Messaging provides the substance that brings voice and tone to life. Guidelines should cover: 

Core Messages

What are the primary messages the brand seeks to convey?

• Value proposition and brand purpose
• Products/services offered 
• Differentiators from competitors
• Market position and industry impact

These pillars act as jumping off points for tailored messaging.

Message Hierarchy 

What is the hierarchy for core messages versus secondary messages?

– Prioritize lead messages during high-value interactions 

– Secondary messages support core messages

Hierarchy allows focus on most important messaging. 

Message Mapping 

How do messaging priorities shift across contexts? 

– Map core messages to topics/scenarios 

– Define supporting facts/statistics

Message maps guide contextually relevant communication.

Formats to Standardize

Guidelines should cover standardization best practices for formats including:

Email

– Email signature format

– Standard templates for newsletters, outreach, etc

– Optimal subject line structure and length

Social Media

– Profile descriptors, images, etc aligned to brand voice 

– Post structures tailored to each platform

– Hashtag and mention conventions

Print Materials 

– Magazine/newspaper ad layouts

– Billboard design templates

– Direct mail brochures, postcards, letters

Website

– Website navigation structure

– Page content organization

– Optimized page title and meta description formulas 

Standardizing recurring communication formats saves time while ensuring consistency.

Getting Organizational Buy-In

Achieving employee and leadership buy-in is critical to successful adoption of standards. Tactics include:

– C-suite endorsement – Senior leaders must visibly support and sponsor guidelines for organization-wide credibility.

– Collaborative development – Involve key internal stakeholders in co-creating standards to foster shared ownership. 

– Reduced redundancy – Position standards as an efficiency driver by consolidating fragmented documented guidelines.

– Interactive training – Training should actively engage staff rather than lecture them to spur adoption.

– Continuous reinforcement – Reference standards across regular internal communication touchpoints.

With cross-organizational alignment, standards gain legitimacy and momentum.

Training Employees on Standards 

Training is required both during initial standards rollout and ongoing for new hires. Recommended training approaches:

– Accessible documentation – House standards guides on internal wikis/portals allowing on-demand reference. 

– Virtual workshops – Interactive virtual sessions support remote or distributed teams.

– Curated examples – Share positive and negative examples of past content following and violating standards.

– Apply and practice – Include exercises for applying standards to sample content during workshops.

– Assess comprehension – Administer brief comprehension assessments after training to gauge understanding. 

– Local brand ambassadors – Identify respected team members across business units to model standards and mentor colleagues.  

Multimodal training allows employees to engage with standards guidelines through different exposures.

Evaluating and Evolving Standards Over Time

Standards must remain dynamic and responsive to perform well long-term. Build in ongoing evaluation through:

– Internal feedback – Collect input on standards efficacy from end users through surveys and interviews.

– External feedback – Gauge external stakeholders’ perspectives on current standards.

– Performance benchmarking – Assess content metrics before and after standards rollout to validate impact.

– Competitive audits – Regularly audit competitors’ communication for tone, voice, messaging evolution. 

– Guideline refresh cadence – Set formal review cycles, around annually, to update standards.

By continually aligning standards to internal needs and external trends, they stay relevant over time.

Conclusion

Establishing strong standards for tone, voice, and messaging provides immense value to organizations through increased branding, efficiency, and alignment. However, creating and implementing these standards requires concerted strategy encompassing guidelines, governance, training, and continuous assessment. With thoughtful execution, tone, voice, and messaging standards can become a vital asset for long-term communication success.