In marketing, we often speak of personas: who’s the customer? Taking individual customer segments or verticals and defining them into actual “people,” certainly has value in understanding who you’re talking to, why and information about the consumer based on qualitative data from segment interviews and quantitative data based on survey data and research statistics. But once you’ve defined who you’re talking to, who’s doing the talking?

Is it a guns-up Texan who likes beer and cigars or is it a busy working mom? Who will the audience identify with, come to like, and engage with?

Whenever multiple writers are involved on a project, one of them will typically develop a “voice” for the client establishing their vocabulary, tone, any regional-isms based on accent, and examples of what the voice might say in a given situation. When working on social media accounts here at BrandExtract, as we develop a voice, we strive to make it consistent among writers — we accomplish this with a persona much like you’d make for an audience. The “voice” gets a name, photo, quote, motivations, likes/dislikes, some bullet points to give backstory details, information about their education and employment, hobbies and other details that give you the ability to put any outgoing message in the frame of “the voice.”

On social networks, there’s a lot of sales talk coming from companies. “Buy my product, it’s on sale!” “We’ve just released our new summer line into Macy’s!” or “The show starts at noon, will we see you there?”  I’ll be the first to say that kind of content has a time and a place, but will it keep your customers paying attention to what you’re saying?

So what’s the point? Better story telling. When customers engage with your brand, they’re not just interested in your product offerings or industry news. Let them fall in love with your company through a story the audience can relate to, engage with and remember.