Finding your voice

A voice is a terrible thing to lose. It’s easy to take your voice for granted since it’s something that always seems to be there. But when you lose it, the world stops.  We use our voices to perform many common daily tasks such as; talking on the phone, placing orders at Chipotle, yelling at our kids, explaining a report to a client and communicating with our co-workers. We go about our day to day lives taking advantage of our voice until one day, poof, bronchitis. What now? You can make hand gestures in the Chipotle line but chances are you’ll get a veggie burrito instead of your fully loaded chicken and steak taco. You can write notes to your kids in all caps but it won’t have the same effect, and you can try to explain that report over email or Google Talk but your client will not be fully satisfied.   End result, stunted communication and the inability to clearly relay your message.

With changes in social climate over the past few years, many companies have caught “bronchitis” and are no longer able to properly relay their message. Those companies are either vomiting irrelevant information all over social media or hiding in their caves, cowering away from the “scary” world of technology.  Their identity as lost as a polar bear in a rainforest.

Depressing right? There is a bright side. Just like medicine can cure bronchitis, good advice can save a company. Here are some key factors to finding your business voice.

Figure out who you are – what does your company do, WHY do you do it, where do you get your inspiration, what sets you apart from everyone else.

Once you solve your identity crisis you can feel comfortable in your own skin. You are awesome, tell people how awesome you are, OWN your awesomeness, believe in yourself and others will start believing in you too.

Build your brand – now that you know who you are, what you do and why you do it, build a brand around that knowledge. What does your logo say about you, does it reflect your business identity? If it doesn’t then scrap it, there are tons of awesome graphic designers in this world that would be ecstatic to create a logo that reflects YOU. What do your colors say about you? Your branding should reflect your office/business/restaurant. If the walls in your store are orange you should have orange in your branding, otherwise pick a color that works better for your brand and re-paint your walls. Choose one to two fonts and stick to them. There is nothing more annoying than a company that uses 50 different fonts in their collateral and on their website.

Establish an online presence – identity, check. Brand, check. Ok, now it’s time to show you off. Do you have a website? If you do, you need to make sure that it reflects your brand (if you don’t then GET ONE designed ASAP). If you’re selling muscle cars you wouldn’t have fluffy unicorns hopping up and down on your webpage and throwing rainbow skittles in the air, right? Well then if your logo is blue and yellow and your font of choice is Calibri then you should not have a red background with purple font in 10 different font styles (yes, websites that don’t match the company’s brand are on the same level as fluffy unicorns who throw rainbow skittles).

Make sure your website describes your identity. Now that you’ve figured out who you are, you need to use all of the tools available to you to tell everyone about it.  Make sure your website contains all of the right tools for awesome SEO (this part can be tricky for some business owners, luckily you have agencies like TOMA that can help you out with stuff like that). Set up a Facebook and Twitter account and write relevant content to share with your fans (we can help you with this part as well). Get your business listed on Yelp, Google Places, Kudzu, City Search, Foursquare, Merchant Circle and LinkedIn. Create a Google adwords campaign and increase your search rankings. If you have an awesome voice but no one is around to hear it then you’re singing to yourself. Let’s make sure you have an audience to hear your beautiful melody!

Keep your content relevant - content is super important for your SEO and customer engagement. Make sure your content is relevant to your voice while keeping in mind who your customers are and what they are more likely to engage in. If you’ve branded yourself as a family man, then your customers may want to hear stories about your family. But if you’ve branded yourself as an activist who opposes higher powers then your audience may not really be interested in hearing about your kid’s softball game. Be creative but don’t stray from your brand.

Now let’s re-cap, figure out who you are, build your brand, show it off, and keep your content relevant. You are now on your way to taking over the world! Use your voice and shout from the mountain tops. Own your brand and you will succeed!