Your voice advertises who you are to the right audience and warns the wrong audience not to engage.
Your authentic voice is the tone your client responds to (and the voice that feels true to you). Never try to be someone you are not—but the converse side is you don’t want someone to misinterpret your “voice” either. How can that happen? Well, just think of the times someone has taken issue with you on social media because they didn’t realize you were joking, or not being patronizing, or any one of the emotions people who can’t actually see and hear you are capable of ascribing to your words. (That’s why emoticons are so popular: They are clues as to how a poster wants you to take what they’re saying, or to how they mean it.)
Many times, this sort of minor misunderstanding flares up when we break out of character, and respond in a way our “friends” are not used to. We’ve built up expectations. And that is also what you do with your branded web presence.
Reinforce the meaning of your brand message and voice with:
- Graphics that act like metaphors
For example, your post could be talking about self-reflection and meditation. This peaceful wilderness shot acts as a metaphor for reflection and serenity.
(Google defines a metaphor as a word/phrase applied to an object to which it is not, properly speaking, applicable (e.g. “hard-hearted”, “a butter-tub of a man”)
Second meaning: “a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.” For example, the above photo signifying reflectiveness, serenity, peace. Or even isolation.)
- Graphics that reinforce mood
For example, these bright roses emotionally resonate with happiness, femininity, love and luxury. It could be used to support the mood of a message about love, or about treating yourself kindly, or supporting your female friends (in which case, the multiple roses also become a metaphor for those friends).
- Graphics that reinforce and pick up on your brand colors
Repeating your brand colors in, say, your Instagram and Pinterest photos is another easy way of getting across your “voice” … without saying a word!