Written by Olga Procevska, co-founder of Writitude
I personally use Writitude Matcher or Writitude Wizard to start thinking about tone of voice for a brand. It takes into account such things as
- Formality
- Inclusivity
- Politeness and assertiveness
- Complexity
- Nativeness and regional differences
- Readability & flow
- Emotionality
- Relationship building
I tend to think about a brand's tone of voice as its unique fingerprint. It's what sets a brand apart in a sea of competitors and builds a connection with its audience.
But how does one build a unique tone of voice? In this article, I will look at two new tools that help brand marketing managers and brand owners define their desired tone of voice.
Why Tone Matters
Tone of voice for a brand is more than just a stylistic choice — it’s a strategic tool for effective communication.
The way you frame a message can have a significant impact on how it’s received.
A friendly tone can foster a sense of connection and rapport, while a more formal tone can convey professionalism and authority.
Basically, brand tone of voice is its personality conveyed through communication. It's how a brand speaks to its audience, reflecting its values and ethos.
A consistent tone of voice fosters trust and recognition, making it an essential component of brand identity.
For instance, Mailchimp has mastered the art of a friendly and approachable tone. Their communications are casual yet informative, making complex email marketing concepts accessible to all users.
This approach has strengthened their brand identity and made their communication easily recognizable.
Maintaining a consistent tone across all platforms — whether it’s in emails, social media posts, or customer service interactions — is essential for brand consistency.
Consistency in tone helps to create a cohesive brand image, which in turn strengthens brand loyalty. Writitude is specifically designed to achieve the necessary level of consistency with less effort.
Defining Your Brand's Tone of Voice the Old-Fashioned Way
Designing a tone of voice used to be a long and costly process, consisting of several stages:
Defining Brand's Core Values
Before you can define your tone of voice, you need to understand your brand's core values. These values are the foundation upon which your tone is built.
They guide the way you communicate and interact with your audience.
Consider Nike, a brand synonymous with inspiration and empowerment.
Their tone of voice is bold and motivational, reflecting their core value of encouraging athletes to push their limits.
This consistency reinforces their brand message across all platforms.
Audience Analysis
Understanding your audience is crucial in defining your brand's tone of voice.
Conduct thorough research to identify your target demographic's preferences, pain points, and communication styles.
This insight will guide you in crafting a tone that resonates with them.
For example, Dove has successfully tailored its tone to promote body positivity and self-esteem.
By understanding their audience's desire for authenticity and empowerment, Dove has created a tone that speaks directly to their consumers' values.
Creating a Tone of Voice Guide
A tone of voice guide (get a free template here!) is an essential tool for maintaining consistency across all brand communications.
This guide should outline the key characteristics of your tone, including language style, vocabulary, and emotional undertones.
- Language Style: Define whether your brand's language is formal, casual, or somewhere in between.
- Vocabulary: Identify specific words or phrases that align with your brand's identity.
- Emotional Undertones: Determine the emotions your brand wants to evoke in its audience.
Slack, for instance, has a tone of voice guide that emphasizes clarity and warmth.
Their guide ensures that all communications are straightforward and friendly, reinforcing their brand's approachable nature.
Old Spice has reinvented its tone of voice to appeal to a younger audience.
Their bold, humorous, and slightly irreverent tone has revitalized the brand, making it relevant and appealing to a new generation of consumers.
Crafting a brand's tone of voice is a strategic endeavor that requires a deep understanding of your brand's identity and audience.
But what if you are a new brand and your pockets are not deep enough for such an elaborate process? Can you still have a unique tone of voice?
At Writitude we say: yes, you can.
Defining Your Brand's Tone of Voice with Writitude
Writitude offers two easy ways to start defining your brand’s tone of voice: Writitude Matcher and Writitude Wizard. Let’s take a quick look at both of them:
Writitude's Tone of Voice Matcher
Writitude’s Tone of Voice Matcher is a tool that helps users match their written content with a predefined tone guides.
There are seven predefined tone of voice guides on Writitude that cover the most popular brand personalities:
Empathy first demonstrates empathy and acknowledgement of other peoples' feelings. It puts emphasis on building trust, creating and maintaining relationships.
It is best suited for customer support texts, apologies, layoff and crisis management communication.
Friendly and easy-going is best suited for consumer brands with wide appeal. It is informal, bouncy, approachable, conversational, easy to read and understand.
Polite and dignified is a tone suited for an embassy, a reputable international organization or a government institution.
It’s formal, respectful, and diplomatic, characterized by a clear and concise articulation, courteous language, professionalism and maintaining a neutral and objective stance.
Self-confident and slightly formal is best suited for banking, premium and luxury brands, legal businesses and similar industries.
Conservative, articulate, elegant and assertive, it allows slight informality.
Specialist talk emphasizes clarity, structure, and factual accuracy, aiming to inform or instruct a competent specialist reader without relying on emotional appeal.
The best of the best exudes authority, reliability, confidence, competence, clarity and assertiveness, without appearing aggressive or arrogant.
Vivid and unconventional is, a the name suggests, unusual and vivid. It is best suited for fashion brands, niche brands or disruptive startups.
Non-conservative, intense, imaginative, playful, it avoids cliches and aims at creating a vivid and lasting impression.
When you paste a piece of text — it could be your own copy, or a text by a brand who’s style you want to emulate, Writitude matches it will all of these tones of voice to find the one closest to your text.
After that even free Writitude users can copy and customize the closest-matched tone to make it uniquely theirs.
This allows businesses to tailor their communications to the specific nuances of their brand’s voice.
Customization — adding a Glossary of forbidden terms or enforcing speciffic spelling or product names — ensures that your communication always aligns with your unique brand identity, making it more authentic and recognizable.
Another option to create your first tone of voice guide is to use Writitude’s tone Wizard.
Writitude Tone of Voice Wizard
Writitude’s Tone of Voice Wizard makes navigating over 100 customizable tone of voice rules an easy game.
Unlike other platforms that offer limited options such as mood or formality (e.g., formal, informal, friendly), Writitude provides a more nuanced approach.
With Writitude, you’re not just selecting a general tone; you're defining the exact style, complexity, emotional intensity, and inclusivity of your messaging.
This means that you can manage everything from formality to handling marketing clichés, all while ensuring readability and flow.
And the best part? You can fine-tune these parameters over time to keep your messaging fresh and relevant.
For beginners, it’s recommended to start with an Essential tone guide for your brand, covering the core tone and style rules that all of your brand’s communications should adhere to.
You can always create separate guides for specific channels later, such as for newsletters or social media posts, to reflect the different nuances of each platform.
The Wizard is broken into five key parts, each designed to give you control over multiple aspects of your brand's tone.
Each toggle or tick in the Wizard activates multiple rules in the backend, offering detailed flexibility.
Rather than simply feeding sample text into a black box and hoping for the right output, Writitude gives you clear parameters and control.
The first section of the Wizard tackles the overall text style, where you can determine the formality level, text complexity, and how marketing clichés are handled. You’ll also address readability and flow.
One of the great advantages of Writitude’s Wizard is that if you’re unsure about certain aspects, you can opt for the "Do not control" option.
This gives you the flexibility to leave certain elements undefined and fine-tune them later.
For example, if your brand sometimes uses simple language for certain messages but more complex language for others, you can choose not to control text complexity initially.
You can create a separate guide for more complex content, such as articles, at a later stage.
The second section helps you navigate emotional tone, which can vary greatly depending on your industry.
Some brands, particularly those in customer support or mental health industries, may opt for more emotional or empathetic language, while others may prioritize a neutral or formal tone.
The Wizard allows you to balance these emotions, ensuring you don’t overuse or underplay them.
For example, in Writitude’s own guide, the team forbids urgent-sounding calls to action, balancing negativity with positivity, to reflect their brand’s style of communication.
Additionally, Writitude allows you to embed inclusivity into your tone of voice by forbidding certain words that could be considered discriminatory and might alienate or offend people.
You can also attach a custom glossary of required or forbidden words, ensuring that your communication always aligns with your values.
Once your tone of voice guide is set, the next step is to attach glossaries of forbidden or required words you have, or create new ones from scratch.
We even made a detailed video tutorial to help users make the most of this feature. Once glossaries are attached, your guide is complete.
Testing a Tone Once it’s Ready
After creating the guide, you can enter editing mode to view and adjust the rules that were activated.
You can paste a sample text that exemplifies your ideal tone, compare it to the rules in your guide, and fine-tune accordingly.
All you will need to do is click on Check tone to get targeted feedback on where a piece of copy does not allign with your desired tone of voice.
Instead of manually editing content to achieve the right tone, Writitude offers immediate feedback and suggestions, saving time while also ensuring that the communication remains on point.
You can delete or add rules as needed, but it’s generally a good idea to work with the guide for a while before making any major adjustments.
With time, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of how your tone can evolve to suit your brand's needs.
Your Brand Deserves a Unique Tone of Voice Too
Finding your brand's unique voice might seem overwhelming, especially for new businesses with tight budgets.
But remember, every brand, no matter how small, can discover a voice that truly connects. Even the smallest brands can form real bonds.
In fact, they have an advantage over big, well-established brands that have a lot of baggage and less freedom to make changes without upsetting their audience.
Uncovering your brand's voice is more than a strategy; it's a heartfelt journey. It's about finding what truly matters to your brand and speaking in a way that touches hearts.
When you do this, you create a space where people feel heard and valued, strengthening their connection with your brand.
As you embark on this journey, remember that consistency is key. A steady voice across all platforms makes your brand familiar and trustworthy.
Be there for people, whether they're reading your posts, emails, or chatting with customer service.
Tools like Writitude can help make this easier, ensuring your brand's voice stays true and aligned with your values.
