Tone of voice brand guidelines: why you need to sort it out 

Your brand’s voice needs to be unique, sure, but it also needs to be consistent. Your brand tone is how you express the personality of your brand, and it reflects your values, mission and vision. 

Without a clear and consistent tone of voice, your messaging can become confusing and lack authenticity, which will ultimately damage your brand.

To ensure a consistent and authentic tone of voice, you need tone of voice brand guidelines, or a tone of voice style guide.

These guidelines are a set of rules and best practices that help you maintain consistency across all communication channels, including social media, marketing materials and customer support.

Why your tone of voice guideline is so important

  • Consistency: Consistency is key to building a strong brand. By having a uniform tone of voice across all communication channels, you can build trust with your audience and increase brand recognition. Tone of voice guidelines ensure that every communication on every platform is on-brand and consistent, no matter who in your organisation is creating it.

  • Authenticity: Your brand's tone of voice is an essential part of your brand's identity. Tone of voice guidelines ensure that your brand's messaging is authentic and reflects your brand's personality, values, mission and vision

  • Efficiency: Tone of voice guidelines can help save time and resources by providing a clear framework for creating communication. With a set of guidelines, writers and creators can quickly create on-brand messaging without having to make style decisions every time.

  • Differentiation: A unique (yet consistent) tone of voice can help differentiate your brand from others in your industry.

How to write a tone of voice guide

In order to write a tone of voice guideline, you’ll need to have a clear brand position and strategy in place (if you don’t, check out my guide to branding here). Your audience, core values, brand promise, mission statement and philosophy will inform your tone of voice, so refer back to them as you build your tone of voice style guide.

Ask yourself these questions and note your answers as you go. You can change your mind later, for now just focus on getting ideas down. 

A note on style guides: It helps to start with an official style guide as a foundation. This will help you stay consistent with how you write dates, whether you use en dashes or em dashes, what you caplitalise and more. As I’m based in Australia, I like to use the ABC Style Guide. Other popular guides include the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, but you may also find country- or industry-specific ones better suit your purpose. 

  • Language: Will your language be formal or informal? Will you use industry-specific jargon or plain language? Will you use contractions or avoid them? Does it make sense to drop in words from another language? Do you need to keep words to a certain reading level?

  • Tone: Will you be serious or humorous? How do you feel about wordplay? Is your writing approachable or authoritative? Are you snappy and efficient, or warm and empathetic?

  • Style: Can sentences be long and complex, or do you need them to be short and simple? Will you use active or passive voice? Will you use colloquial expressions or avoid them?

  • Audience: How will you address your audience? Do you call them “lovely” or “Mrs Client”? Do you sign off with kisses or a formal “Best regards”? Does your social media call out to “babes”, “members”, “Swifties” or “esteemed clients”?

By defining these elements, you can create a set of guidelines that reflect your brand personality and resonate with your audience. Remember that the answers to these questions should be the same across all platforms. Your tone of voice social media guidelines are the same as your email marketing guidelines and your website guidelines. 

Once you’ve addressed the above, as well as any specific situations that will come up for your organisation, provide examples of how your tone of voice should be used in practice. 

Include examples of approved social media posts, email templates, blogs and website copy that use the preferred language, tone, style and personality. This can help your team members and partners understand how to apply the tone of voice brand guidelines in real-world situations. 

Revising your tone of voice brand guidelines 

As your business or brand evolves, you should review and revise your tone of voice guidelines to ensure they remain relevant and effective.

Get feedback from your audience, analyse metrics on your content performance, check in with your content creators and stay abreast of changes in your industry or among your audience. Language is constantly changing, and you should too.

Need guidance with tone of voice guidelines? I can help you create tone of voice brand guidelines that will help you maintain an audience-appropriate and consistent tone that makes your brand sparkle.

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