Two companies can sell exactly the same thing and yet feel completely different - the difference is often in the way they write. It's aboutvoiceandtonality. If you get hold of the two words, your text will be more recognizable, and the customer will trust you more.
What is the difference between voice and tonality?
Voice is your permanent personality in text. It does not change between different texts, much like a person has the same basic personality all the time. Are you to the point? Hot? Playful? It's your voice.
Tonality is how that personality is adapted to the situation. The same person speaks differently at a party than at a funeral - without becoming a different person. Similarly, your welcome email can be peppy while an outage message is calm and matter-of-fact. The voice is the same, the tone changes.
Why does this matter?
Toconsistency creates recognition, and recognition creates trust. When your website, your emails and your posts sound like the same company, you feel stable and reliable. When the texts jump between rigid official Swedish and peppy emoji accounting, the customer becomes confused.
It becomes especially clear when several people write: the founder, an employee, a freelancer. Without a common description of the voice, each text sounds like a new person. With a description, everyone pulls in the same direction.
How do you define your voice?
You don't have to be a copywriter. Here's how to get there:
- Choose 3-4 wordswhich describes how you want to sound. For example: knowledgeable, straightforward, helpful, down-to-earth.
- Add the opposite pole.For each word, write what younotis. "Skillful but not masterful." "Straight but not cold." It makes the words concrete.
- Write a couple of example sentences– one that sounds right and one that sounds wrong. Examples say more than adjectives.
How to adjust the tone without losing the voice?
Consider a simple scale from lighthearted to serious and place different types of text on it:
- Easy:welcome email, social media, thank you messages.
- Neutral:product descriptions, regular pages on the website.
- Serious:error messages, price increases, complaint handling, privacy issues.
The voice – your 3–4 words – accompanies you all the way. What changes is how much levity you allow. A good test: read the text out loud. Does it still sound like your company, but in the right mood for the situation?
A concrete example
Say your voice is "knowledgeable, straightforward, helpful". Same message, two tones:
Peppy (Welcome): "Glad you're here! Now let's get started – it only takes two minutes."
Matter of fact (error message): "Something went wrong while saving. Please try again in a while and we'll let you know if it persists."
Both are straightforward and helpful. The tone is different, the voice is intact.
Write it down - otherwise it will be forgotten
A voice that exists only in the founder's head disappears as soon as someone else writes. Collect the words, opposites, example sentences and tone scale in a short document - preferably as part of your brand manual. Half a page goes a long way in the beginning.
Do you want to sound like yourself, everywhere?
At ZORC, we help Swedish companies to find and write down their voice, and to make the text on the website sound consistent from the first headline to the last button. If you want everything you publish to feel like the same company, get in touch and we'll go through how you sound today and where it rubs off.
