Written by Katya Firyan, co-founder of Writitude
Companies with consistent communication and branding boast higher revenues and steady growth — this should be enough reason for your company to also develop a tone of voice guide. Let’s go!
In this publication we will talk about:
- What is a corporate “tone of voice”
- Why a company needs to develop one
- What a good tone of voice guide does
- What the stages of the brand style guide development are there
- Grab your detailed free template!
- What your company’s tone of voice guide should (and shouldn’t) include
- What challenges do tone of voice guides solve
What is “tone of voice”
Everybody has their own personality, as unique as their DNA. Some people talk little and are scrupulously polite. For others, every sentence is like a firework. For brands and companies, tone of voice works in the same way that personality does for people.
So, in short, tone of voice is a personality of your brand that is expressed through the texts it produces: including ads, social media posts, e-mails and many more.
Why a company needs to develop a tone of voice guide
The tone of voice is an integral part of brand identity. In most cases it manifests itself visually (through logos, brand colours and fonts) and verbally — through the texts a company produces.
It includes everything from one-word texts such as product names, to large-scale web pages, brochures, or books, from mundane letters to very special investment proposals.
The need for effective and consistent communication of a brand’s unique character and its core values in every interaction with its clients, employees, partners, and wider society — this is why companies create tone of voice guidebooks.
What a good tone of voice does
The tone of Voice guides, or ToVs, as they are commonly known, are designed with one main purpose in mind — to ensure that customers have great experience with a company through time, on all subjects and across all platforms.
Whether you outsource the development of your brand’s tone of voice guidelines or do it yourself, remember that a well-tuned tone of voice:
- establishes the personal character of your company
- helps your company to stand out in the competition
- enhances recognisability and raises the value of your brand
- facilitates the setting and achieving of strategic goals
How to develop a tone of voice guide
There are many different methods out there, but our years of experience have enabled us to develop an approach that has proved to be the most efficient for our clients.
It consists of six important stages:
- Communication audit (which is a useful thing on its own!)
- Research, which may include focus groups and polls of your customers, or analysis of the data you already have
- Interviews with relevant executives — a “personality test” for your company’s team, bringing to light the “big idea” behind the business, mission, vision, core values, brand stories etc.
- Preparation of a structured tone of voice guide (there’s a free template for download below — don’t miss it!)
- Presentation and Q&A for the executive team
- Training sessions for communicators
Grab your free template download!
We at Writitude have gathered a lot of our own experience with brand communication style guide development and structured it all for you in this comprehensive detailed template. Enjoy!
What your company’s tone of voice guide should (and shouldn’t) include
To put it shortly, the guidelines should include everything you need to create a beautiful and appealing verbal identity.
Value your own and your employees’ time, so don’t go for hefty opuses or empty marketing-speak. Go for a concentrated guidebook that will change how your company communicates.
Your tone of voice guide should include:
1 to 3 adjectives for the tone definition with a more detailed specification for each of them. Those few words will become your mantra when writing.
Main principles of your tone of voice.
Description of your target audience(s), audience personas and their anticipated responses in communication.
Writing markers — examples of writing that will help you create texts and adjust them to different media more confidently.
Recommended use of words (adjectives/verbs/action-words) and rhetorical techniques for the tasks your company typically deals with.
Demonstrations of variations of the tone of voice, depending on the audience, mood, goal and medium.
Advice on don’ts and an outline of what constitutes fine style.
What challenges does a detailed tone of voice guide solve?
The clear tone of voice guidelines solve these main challenges in the communication of any company:
Formalising the ToV rules in the form of detailed guidelines is the best way to ensure that the most important principles are clear to everybody.
As a company’s communication serves different purposes (sales, customer support, image-building etc.) the style and tone of texts the company uses also tend to vary.
Setting a minimum subsistence level of basic rules that need to be followed at all times helps tackle the natural human tendency to switch tones from friendly to defensive when faced with challenging situations.
If the only agreement that binds a company’s communication is in the form of mutual understanding of certain people, there is a risk of disruptions when new people are hired.
It also makes integrating a new employee slower and costlier as unwritten rules are hard to convey.
Yes, it looks like a lot of information to understand, structure and put in use. That’s why Writitude’s tone of voice guidelines is such a great stepping stone to have.
Don’t be a stranger and start using it now!
