Finding your Voice

Posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 8:45 am by Engine Communications

Last week I promised to provide you with a questionnaire to help give you insight into who you are and exactly what you are trying to achieve. You can find the questionnaire here.
The Questionnaire

The questionnaire is by no means all-encompassing. The sole purpose is to get your ideas flowing about how you should go about spending your time in the social media space.  In the end, time becomes your largest constraint.  There is a method to my madness! Answering the questions will allow you to reflect and establish your voice accordingly.

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What do you mean by voice?

It is a term that has been popularized in the blogging community, but I believe it to be pertinent to your social media efforts as a whole.  Voice is the sound your writing makes when other people read it in their head.  Your voice is what brings your writing to life!  It is how you style your writing, the rhythm and flow that are created when you share your message.

It may take some time to find your voice. On one hand, you need to juggle tone, and on the other, you need to juggle your ideas in order to to deliver the right content. It is important to understand your audience. Some readers may accept nothing less than complete professionalism; the other may not mind some slang or cursing. I would usually recommend that you avoid the latter. You cannot be all things to all people.

Looking back to the questionnaire, the questions can guide you in how you should go about creating and responding to content.  The personal section can help you think about how others will see your content, for there may be a disconnect between your understanding and your perceived credibility.  The section also highlights time as being a key factor to how much effort you can put into social media for you or your organization.  Working with this medium requires time.

The internal section gives insight into the current state of your organization as it applies to social media.  You may find that you are working for a larger company and everything needs to go through a PR firm, putting a restriction on response time. Or, you may be in the “creative class” and have all the freedom in the world to say or do what you want for your business.  Both scenarios have their challenges.

The external section is created to see if you are thinking about social media in terms of your competitors, technology and industry trends.  All of these are important, and I would strongly suggest benchmarking companies that you noticed have made a splash in social media. I’d advise to be aware of emerging technologies, but I seriously would not waste too much time searching them out.

What do you think about this Methodology? Do you find it helpful?

PDF: Finding your Voice – Questionnaire to help give insight into who you are and exactly what you are trying to achieve

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  1. The link does not work is there any other way to access it?

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