Striking a balance between professionalism and personality is one of the essential skills of effective online copywriting — too much of the former and your content might be dry and uninspiring; too little, and you risk sounding flippant and unreliable.

Here are some easy ways to liberate your inner voice and write like you mean it.

Be you

That you are you and nobody else is, at once, a useless platitude, a truism, and an immensely useful piece of advice. Don’t forget it. The best way to write genuinely is, unsurprisingly, to write from your own perspective and experience. Trying to sound like somebody else is a shortcut to sounding like nobody.

Write how you talk

If you’re one of the many people who find conversation easy but writing difficult, one of the most obvious ways to make your writing feel natural is to write as though you were speaking. By this, I don’t mean that you should speak in slang or be overly familiar (unless that’s the effect you want), but that you should always try to express yourself as simply, clearly, and succinctly as possible.

Write to your audience

There are few aspects of writing that don’t benefit from thinking more about your audience and authenticity is no exception. We all talk to different people in different ways, so if you’re communicating with a specific group of people, make sure you’re using the right sort of language. You wouldn’t speak to a friend the same way you’d speak to your boss, so why would you treat your customers differently?

There are lots of ways to develop a more authentic voice, but one of the easiest is to gain more confidence in your writing. The more free you feel to express yourself, the more likely you are to capture something genuine.

If you need a bit of help to uncover the tone of voice for your business, drop us a line.