A brand's voice is evident in everything it creates - products, marketing, public relations, client relationships, corporate partnerships, events, and more. It should be one of the first things you write in your strategy documents when starting a new venture, and it should be heeded and ingrained in all marketing and communication efforts thereafter.
Goal: Support Your Identity
Shaping your brand voice goes hand in hand with determining your identity. I recommend laying the foundation for your identity first - "we are x type of company" or "we exist to do x,y,z." Beginning with your mission, vision, and values statements will help make this clear from the get-go. Once the corporate strategy is nailed down, your brand voice should be formulated and documented, then shared with anyone who writes or communicates on behalf of your organization.
Success: Unity and Clarity
An effective brand voice means that all of your content is consistent, regardless of the author, topic, purpose, strategy, audience segment, or any other factor. Straying from your brand voice will hurt your credibility to your audience and will also hinder your effectiveness, since your brand voice has been strategically set up to align with your objectives and audience.
Let's walk through some of the elements that contribute to brand voice:
Objective(s)
Do you want to be more educational or promotional? If you'd prefer a mix of both, can you pinpoint which situations are appropriate for each? This should be one of the first items you explore when setting up your content strategy. What is your actual goal? Wording it is a verb makes it more actionable and easier to implement in your writing:
To inform
To educate
To entertain
To promote
To collaborate
To empower
To reinforce
To support
To coach
To contradict
To surprise
etc.
Content Focus
What is the heart of your content? What one or two things - subjects, nouns, topics - do you need to talk about?
Examples:
A technology provider may want its marketing to focus on its technology rather than its service.
A retail store may want to show events in its store rather than product, since its content focus is the experience - not the item.
A florist may want to focus on weddings above all other types of events because those bring in the most money.
A musician may want to focus on live jazz events rather than ballads (topic) or lessons (product).
This one should be central to your company overall and should support your mission statement.
Tone
Where do you want to fall on the "Informal - Formal" scale? Are you hoping to exude an air of professionalism or do you want to be viewed as friendly? Is your writing matter-of-fact and to the point, or do you like a bit of flourish? Are you confident and edgy, or are you accommodating and warm? One trick is to take a few pairs of opposites, create a spectrum for each, then identify where you'd like to fall on each spectrum. Here are a few to try:
Formal 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Informal
Professional 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Friendly
Cold 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Warm
Serious/Sophisticated 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Funny/Quirky
Edgy/Contradictory 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Respectful/Safe
To-the-point 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Fluff allowed
Language
More specifically, what language do you use? Is it complex or simple? Are there lots of acronyms and technical jargon, or is it plain and clear for wide-spread consumption? Do you ask leading questions that people may be thinking and answer them, or do you state your opinions as fact? Do you try to simplify your content and construct concise, impactful quips, or do you need to create longer form content in order to explain complex details? The words you write matter, and the way in which you write them - the language you use - contributes heavily to your brand voice.
Point of View
Do you use first, second, or third person narrative? Is it ever okay to say "I" when writing an opinion piece or do you prefer to use "you" and put your audience in the driver's seat of your content? Or do you need to reconstruct your sentences so the product is the subject? This seems nuanced but will help you be consistent across all of your efforts and resonate with your audience in a trusting way.
And as always...
Consider Your Audience
Will you change your brand voice if your audience changes? Or do you identify your audience and require your brand voice to support that direction? Ensure that whatever you choose for your strategy to reach your audience is focused and is clearly communicated, both internally (to whomever will be applying it) and externally (to your audience and public).
Don't forget to actually state who your audience is. Perhaps you have a few different segments; your brand voice should be the overarching, guiding force across all efforts and should help employees navigate how to tailor their communication to each segment.
Bonus: Dos and Don'ts
Explaining what you don't do is sometimes just as important as including what you do do. In other words, if there is a topic that is taboo from your external marketing, that should absolutely be noted. While your brand voice document will benefit from being largely descriptive (our voice is x y z), which is a positive guide to help yourself and others make decisions, noting what not to do provides an explicit boundary and takes the guesswork out of where lines should be drawn.
Bonus: Validating Questions
To check yourself, take any content asset, email, conversation, slide, etc. and ask yourself a few questions:
"Does this communication support our content strategy and align with our brand voice?"
"Is this what (insert company name here) wants to say?"
"Does this sound like (insert company name here) or (person's name)?" (Answer: It should sound like the company - not an individual person.)
Your brand voice is what your audience hears/reads/experiences every time it interacts with your company; the above elements build your voice into one, clear, cohesive, strategic entity. It won't always be easy, but checking your work will allow you to objectively decide whether your company's personality is being portrayed appropriately or whether some changes have to be made for proper alignment.
Lastly, write it down!
Documenting your brand voice will provide a reference to guide and align all future efforts. Even if you are working for yourself, creating a brand voice document will help you organize your thoughts and make decisions efficiently. Once it's written, it must be heeded! And it will be easier to check your work and others' projects against your brand voice when it is formatted as a strategy document or a profile, as the document has made concrete the abstract identity it worked so hard to create.

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