The Perfect Post

When your audience reads and listens to the content you produce, they’re not only hearing your message, they’re hearing the voice of your company—your tone, language and delivery (i.e., formal vs. conversational).

So each time they hear your brand voice, they subconsciously size you up, deciding whether you’re a company they can rely on, and more importantly, do business with. In this post, I provide the four things that make up a brand's voice and how you can achieve this within a post. Enjoy! 

UF/IFAS Voice - Friendly, relevant and educational

Character/Persona (Objective, Trustworthy, Caring)

·         Like This: Although the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred five years ago, the effects are still present. A community event will focus on utilizing our experience to better prepare Gulf coast communities for future disasters. Visit http://healthygulfcoast.org/ for more information.

·         Not This: Don’t miss the Gulf coast community event, unless, of course, you don’t love your community!

Tone (Personal, Honest, Humble)

·         Like This:  More than 750 UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences bachelor’s degrees will be awarded this weekend! Are you going to receive one of them?

·         Not This: CALS students are graduating this weekend! Share this or miss out.

Language (Simple, Fun, Savvy)

·         Like This: Whoa! Several statewide meetings have been scheduled for Florida growers interested in planting new, promising citrus varieties.

·         Not This: There are lots of fab stuff scheduled for Florida citrus growers.

Purpose (Engage, Delight, Educate)

·         Like This: #‎DYK Fireweed is notorious for causing a burning sensation when it makes contact with bare skin? The good news: this weed can be controlled rather easily with the right herbicide.

·         Not This: Fire weed is bad. Send us a pic.

The most important takeaway is to establish an online company voice that reflects your business values and matches your customers’ expectations. This will help your business build overall trust. 

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Swamp Head Brewery's "got 99 problems, but good beer ain't one."

Swamp Head Brewery was founded in 2008 and prides itself on being Inherently Floridian. They started up in Gainesville, and make their love for Florida apparent in their logo, brand, and mission to be "Florida's brewery." The short bio description I used in the blog post title was found on Swamp Head Brewery’s twitter page. I love it because it's a great attention-grabber for those who have never been exposed to the brand - it shows a little attitude, helps tell their story, and includes a reason for people to follow their account. This is just one example of how I find them to be successful in using multimedia communications to reach their customers.

The three things that I really appreciate about Swamp Head Brewery are how they focus on telling their story, they work to keep fans up to date on their social media platforms, and focus their energy on the local Gainesville community. Their website not only shares their story, staff and upcoming events, but also includes ongoing promotions, tasting room selections, and photos (posted by company AND customers). They've realized that is a starting point to inform the consumer and they immediately make it known that the company can be followed on social media with one-click widgets on their homepage (see below). 

 

In terms of social media, Swamp Head creates lots of opportunity for dialogue and the tone and voice of their messaging highlights their passion for the brewery and its products. You cannot mistake having reached their company/business pages because they use the cover photo function to keep their pages consistent with their website. They often use the platforms to promote new products and share across platforms by linking to their social media accounts within posts. This makes it very easy for people to follow them on their preferred platform (or all of them).  

Swamp Head understands the importance of making sure posts show up in people’s feeds, letting people get involved in their story and communicating with them one-on-one.  They share great content like pictures and videos from the Brewery, messages about brewing beer, notifications about events (on and off premise), and local community events that they’re involved in. The 5th Annual Taste of Gainesville post below showcases their official beer sponsorship. 

Swamp Head's marketing department is obviously doing their job very, very well. Not only has the company expanded to selling merchandise like t-shirts, hats, and frisbees, but you can find their craft brews served in bars and restaurants across the state of Florida. They are doing so well for themselves in fact, that they are looking to relocate and double in size. A lot of this has to deal with Swamp Head's online presence via social media platforms, as it's consistent with their goals and brand. Their approach is interactive and entertaining,  and they understand "it takes a village" and its involvement to get their brand recognized as Florida's brewery.

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