What is a Public Relations Voice?
A company’s PR voice is the particular personality and style that it takes on while communicating with the target audience. The choice language used with the public, phrases, stylistic choices, and the personality traits are all combined to create a PR voice.
This is then applied through all the channels where the company communicates with the public, such as social media posts, newsletters, and press releases.
Having a distinct PR voice means that the consumers are going to be able to connect to the brand a lot quicker because they are going to get familiar with that personality, and as a result, develop better brand awareness.
There are plenty of essential elements to how a brand represents itself in front of its audience. When most people think about branding, they tend to focus on how the brand presents itself visually, with things like design styles, colors, and fonts.
Companies tend to overlook the brand’s voice, which, thanks to the prevalence of social media in marketing campaigns, has become extremely important and is now one of the best ways for a brand to stand out from the crowd of competitors.
Most people have already experienced a brand’s PR voice - for example, a company that’s selling clothes for young people will usually have loose language and use slang that the younger generation is currently using, or a company that’s selling gear for surfing might take on the attitude and the voice of a surfer. The companies that have taken on a distinctive PR voice have a much easier time taking their marketing efforts a lot further.
Developing a PR Voice
The best point is the company’s mission statement because this is the place where all of the company’s values should be reflected. This is also the starting point when establishing any sort of voice across all channels for a company.
After that, it’s time to briefly analyze the company’s current content and messaging, including its website, blog or social media posts, advertisements, and promotional material to see if there are any common themes in the tone messaging.
Next, the company needs to analyze the target audience and learn their interests, the way that these people communicate, and the publications that they prefer reading. Once all of that information is gathered, it’s time to make a chart with all of the words that best represent the company, the brand characteristics, an explanation of each of these traits, and how everything should be used in any promotional content with the public.
Finally, when all of the above steps are taken, it’s time to take all of the newly-created guidelines and use them across all of the channels that the company is using to communicate with its target audience, as well as the general public. All of the employees can stick to the outlined guidelines and always refer back to them when creating new content.
