From idea to published, without the headache
We all know that getting content out there is one of the most important aspects of growing your brand. It’s your way of staying relevant and reaching your audience directly.
But if you’re noticing that getting content from an idea to published and out in the real world is nigh on impossible, it’s probably time to look at your approvals process.
Time and again, brands tell us:
“We can’t keep up with relevant topics because it takes too long for things to get over the line.”
“By the time everyone has read the content and had their say, the original piece is unrecognisable.”
“No two pieces of content ever sound the same when written by different people.”
If that’s made your eye twitch, you’re not alone. To fix it, let’s go back to the foundations and get those ideas out of the heads of your team and out there in the world in a way that’s unmistakably, recognisably, you.
Reduce the number of people in the approval process
The bigger the brand, the more likely people are going to want to have their say on what content is published.
The first thing to do here is to ask yourself, do we really need 10 pairs of eyes to look over this? Are there certain people in the approvals process that are having a say, well, for the sake of having a say?
In many cases, some extra eyes are needed. Particularly if you have a regulatory or compliance team that needs to check the facts. In which case, it’s important that they do just that. Check the facts.
The problems (and delays) start happening when every single person in your organisation has an opinion on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Soon, you’ll end up in the nightmare that is amendments on amendments. Suddenly, your content is unrecognisable from the piece your content writers originally produced. And if it’s a topical piece, the moment’s probably been and gone, leaving your content useless. And then it’s back to square one.
Putting firm brand voice guidelines in place means that everyone who needs to cast an eye over content is bound by the same parameters. Karen from finance won’t be weighing in on tone. She’s purely there to check whether the financial claims made within your content are correct.
Tip: Create a shared document where anyone in the team can make their suggestions for tone or words and phrases to be used or avoided if things are coming up repeatedly.
You can then review these the next time you look over your brand voice, not when you’re trying to get content out quickly and on time.
Take the subjectivity out of your guidelines
You know how the saying goes, ‘opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.’ And when everyone is giving their two cents on your content, it can become a muddled mess, and ultimately never get published.
It’s time to take that subjectivity and get it in the bin.
Gone are the days of flimsy adjectives making up your tone of voice. Give three different copywriters three different adjectives and we can almost guarantee they’ll interpret them in three different ways. Then when you’ve got Karen from finance throwing her hat in the ring on top of that, you can see how the whole thing soon turns to chaos.
Put your foot down, and be specific.
When you say your brand is ‘fun’, what does that really mean? How do you write to convey ‘fun’?
If you need a framework, let’s break ‘fun’ down into the three core elements of brand voice; vocabulary, cadence and tone.
Writing to be ‘fun’:
Vocabulary
Using contractions; ‘we’re, you’re, ‘you’ll’ - gives things a more conversational feel
Using plain and simple language where possible - we don’t use our technical terms as acronyms when it comes to our customers
Cadence
Use short, snappy sentences; 10 words or less
Varying structure - using tables, lists and bullet points to get your point across
Tone
Using the active voice as much as possible
Keeping things positive. Focus on what we can do, not what we can’t do
This is a very brief example, but you get the idea!
You can do this process for every one of your company values. How does our brand voice demonstrate our values?
You can even go one step further and decide how you apply these things to your different audience types. Writing in a ‘fun’ way will inevitably look different when writing for senior stakeholders than it will for end users or consumers.
Don’t forget the details
Dates, times, even your company name - these are all the things that if ironed out will save time in the approval process. Unless it’s there in black and white, never assume that your team are all using dates, times or figures in the same way.
Are you a Thursday 20th April 2023 kind of vibe? Or are you more of a 20/4/23? Do your meetings happen at 14:00 or 2pm?
Importantly, do you ever abbreviate your company name? Are there variations? And has that ever been communicated to your team?
It’s worth sweating the small details to take the sweating out of the approvals in the future.
Put some cornerstone content in place
If you’ve decided to pull your brand voice together, it’s always worth developing some good quality examples of content to share with your team. What does this brand voice look like out in the big wide world?
This is your opportunity to show off how your voice changes depending on the audience and the content’s purpose. For example, you may decide to draft a response to a complaint alongside a longer, informative article. Give your teams as much information to go off as possible.
In the event of someone trying to weigh in on brand voice during the approvals process, you then have plenty of material to back up that actually, ‘this is how we do things around here’.
Hopefully, this has given you a glimpse into the good life where your content team’s ideas can get from their brains to published as quickly as possible.
And if the thought of compiling your brand voice is giving you the heebie jeebies, that’s what we’re here for. We’ll get all those big ideas out of your head and into a set of guidelines so you and your team can focus on what you do best - creating awesome content.
