A unique brand voice can help your company stand out and connect with its audience. When you have many writers working for you, it can be not easy to maintain a consistent voice across your content.
This article will share some tips on how to create a clear tone of voice guidelines. I’ll also teach your team about them and measure their performance.
What is the reward? Your customers will be able to recognize you and your company, which will make them feel closer.
Find your brand voice
Let’s first understand your voice tone.
- Decide what makes your voice unique. Also, think about how you would like people to perceive you. You may want to appear authoritative, relaxed, optimistic, or analytical. Make a list with adjectives that capture the traits and emotions you wish to convey.
- Check your existing content. Search for similar styles, tones, and word choices. What phrases really sound like you? Consider, for example, Microsoft’s description of its voice as “clear and crisp,” “ready and willing to lend a helping hand,” and “warm and relaxed.”
- Highlight the sections of your content that best reflect your desired tone.
- List the key parts of your voice. You can give feedback to writers on whether their content is in line with your brand voice by creating a list.
- Include a typical sentence structure.
Writers need the right tools.
If you use the right tools, it is much easier to write in your brand’s voice. Set up your writers to succeed.
- Provide your team members with resources to help them write in the tone of voice of your company. Create a detailed style guide, which includes all special words, formatting rules, and writing basics. Give concrete examples of how to use your voice in various contexts, such as long-form articles and video scripts.
- Share examples of good and bad writing. Explain why these samples are successful or not based on the voice list. Share the best content so that writers can reference it easily. You can annotate examples in order to show how they reflect your desired tone of voice.
- Create editorial calendars and lists of words to fit your voice. Include go-to adjectives and verbs to make your tone come alive. Make sure these tools are easily accessible and easy to use. Set up a central repository for writers to access resources at any time, like a shared drive.
Train your staff and encourage collaboration.
It’s one thing to have the right tools, but it’s another to use them effectively. Your team will be on the same page if you train and collaborate.
- Hold workshops where you can discuss your voice and tools. Allow writers to ask questions so that they understand why the voice is important. To achieve a consistent tone of voice, you need to have your content creators on board. Consider breaking up into smaller groups to analyze the tone of voice in the example copy.
- Provide feedback to help writers find the right tone of voice. Instead of imposing strict rules upfront, let them experiment with their voice. Celebrate when the tone is perfect. If they fail, try to correct the tone together. Feedback should empower and educate, not criticize.
- Ask team members to review each other’s content. They will be able to point out whether the content is in line with the tone of voice used by the company. Learn from bad examples and celebrate the good ones. Track when and how guidelines are used to guide decisions. Peer reviews can promote collaboration and reinforce the tone of voice standard.
- Refresh your voice guidelines regularly. Visit your team periodically to answer questions and provide new examples. Consistency will become second nature if you keep your voice tone in mind. You could try gaming by creating contests to match your copy examples with your tone of voice.
Measure brand voice consistency.
How can we tell if we are on track? Check-ins regularly help us maintain our brand voice.
- Check your content regularly to ensure that it is in line with the tone of your company. You can check things like tone, sentence length, and terminology. You can get feedback from your entire team to help identify areas of improvement.
- You can get feedback from readers about the consistency of your content by asking them. Surveys and interviews are a great way to find out what you may have missed. You can benchmark your content quality by using studies that evaluate brand attributes both before and after adopting a voice guideline.
- Analyze data about reader engagement. Analytics will tell you if your tone of voice resonates with your audience. Don’t just rely on the numbers. Teamwork is key to maintaining a consistent voice.
- Use AI to analyze your writing. Machine-learning models such as ChatGPT evaluate different dimensions like sentiment and complexity to determine how well your content matches your guidelines. However, the results may be inconsistent. Always validate them with a human’s perspective.
- You can change your guidelines at any time. They are not set in stone. Your tone and language will evolve as your brand does. Gather feedback from your team to decide when and how you should update your voice.