Tone of Voice: Imitate How Your Members Interact

Look at a few dozen recent posts to the community. What tone of voice are they written in?

Are they laced with sarcasm and good humour? Are they direct and confrontational? Are they helpful and compassionate? Are they formal and well-reasoned? 

Your tone of voice, especially when creating content, should match the community's. You're reactive here. You study and imitate. You understand what the tone of voice is and embrace that tone of voice in the community.

Too many communities embrace a rigidly polite customer service of voice. This is fine for customer service, but it's terrible to give a community its own sense of identity. Members want to feel this is a place for them. The content on the platform has to show that this is a place for them, you're building a group identity. 

Naturally, oganizations will hate this. They will have strict guidelines. Be compassionate and helpful. Don't be rude. Never swear. These rules might work great in one to one interactions. But they're ill suited to developing a sense of community amongst members.

Comments

[LCreasy]

Wonderful. So the trolls get to be rude, confrontation, and intolerant. Managers get to be rude right back, and soon we've attracted a rude, confrontational, intolerant community, because those are the people we've been giving positive feedback.

Which leaves the people who might be interested in the community -- people who may not be rude, confrontational, or intolerant -- out in the cold.

Wouldn't it be much better to mimic the tone of the community you want to build, rather than the tone of the one you have?

Because, really, rude, confrontational, and intolerant always devolves into a train wreck, no matter who's driving.

[Jamiebillingham]

You make a good point and I completely agree that matching the tone to be part of and reflect the community ethics/norms is important. NPL taught us that lol

And I also think that once you have that rapport and respect you are in a position to influence community members to communicate in a way that is more effective in the long run.

Matching tone doesn't mean you have to directly reflect like a mirror either. You can parallel and rephrase to soften an approach without losing the message.

[Richard Millington]

LCreasy (Laurie?),

If you've created a community of trolls then you have bigger problems to worry about than the tone you use to communicate with them. Remove the trolls.

Imitate the personality of the community, not the rude, confrontational outsiders.