Originally published by Tara Hunt on LinkedIn: Finding Your Online Voice

I get the following question from both brands and individuals all the time:

"How do I find my online voice?"

It usually comes when they've been posting for a while without any real engagement and witness other people or brands who are highly pleasurable to read. They know that these accounts have a 'personality' and want to know how to find their own.

The unfortunate answer that many experts offer is a 'Voice and Tone Document'.

The first time I saw a voice and tone document in the wild (around 2011), I scratched my head. It said nothing, offered very little guidance to anyone wanting to implement it, and it came across as incredibly 'safe' and 'generic'. The 'personality' that was written on the page translated into a very bland, neutered individual.

Since then, I've seen dozens of these documents and very few actually have any personality that I could map back to a human being, especially one I'd want to socialize with. A very rare exception is MailChimp, who actually own the url VoiceandTone.com, but even though their voice is strong, they leave it very open to personal interpretation on the part of the author.

The voice and tone document was invented to quell fears and try and give a semblance of order to a brand's 'voice' on social. I believe these documents are another holdover from the brand-centric thinking of yesterday's marketing, which is why they fit like a square peg in a round hole. Along with all sorts of other process exercises introduced to social and digital marketing since around 2009, it tends to work against any potential of being truly social.

Truthfully, companies who have a strong culture don't need or create these types of documents (and MailChimp, consequently, has a strong culture). This week's video is all about finding a better way to find that voice.

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