How to Define Your Brand Voice: A 7-Step Framework
Most brand voice exercises fail for the same reason: they end with three adjectives on a slide ("authentic, bold, human") and no rules anyone can apply. A real brand voice is operational, specific enough that a new freelancer or an AI tool produces on-brand copy without hand-holding.
The seven steps below get you there.
1. Audit the copy you're already proud of
You probably already have a voice, just an undocumented one. Pull together 10-15 pieces of writing that felt unmistakably you: a launch email that landed, a product page that converted, social posts people quoted back to you.
Read them out loud. Highlight the patterns: recurring phrases, sentence lengths, the level of formality, the jokes you let yourself make. This raw material is more honest than any aspirational adjective.
2. Name your brand's personality
Describe your brand as if it were a person. Pick 3-4 personality traits and, for each, a one-line explanation of what it means in practice:
- Confident: we make clear claims and don't hedge.
- Warm: we write to one person, like a helpful friend, rather than to "users."
- Witty: we'll take a joke, but never at the customer's expense.
Three sharp traits beat ten vague ones. If a trait could describe any brand in your category, cut it.
3. Put each trait on a spectrum
Traits are easier to apply when they're relative. For each dimension, mark where you sit:
| Dimension | Where you sit |
|---|---|
| Formal · · · · · Casual | Casual, but not sloppy |
| Serious · · · · · Funny | Mostly serious, occasionally playful |
| Respectful · · · · · Irreverent | Respectful of the customer, irreverent about the category |
| Matter-of-fact · · · · · Enthusiastic | Enthusiastic, not hyperbolic |
This prevents the most common failure mode: "funny" turning into "trying too hard."
4. Build a "we say / we don't say" table
This is the single most useful artifact you'll create, because it's unambiguous:
| We say | We don't say |
|---|---|
| "Grab your spot" | "Register for the event" |
| "Here's the deal" | "Please be advised that" |
| "It's on us" | "Complimentary" |
Give 8-12 rows. These concrete swaps make the guidelines enforceable, whether the enforcer is a human or a machine.
5. Define signature vocabulary and banned words
- Signature words/phrases: the language that's distinctly yours.
- Banned words: clichés, jargon, and off-brand terms ("synergy," "revolutionary," "game-changer," or whatever doesn't fit you).
- Product naming: capitalization, trademark usage, the exact spelling of features.
A banned-words list is the fastest way to catch off-brand copy, and it's trivial to enforce automatically.
6. Write the guidelines, with examples
Turn everything above into a short, skimmable document:
- One paragraph describing the voice.
- The personality traits and spectrums.
- The say / don't-say table.
- Vocabulary and banned words.
- 2-3 full before/after rewrites: the examples do more teaching than the rules.
Keep it to a few pages. A 40-page brand bible nobody opens is worse than a one-pager everybody uses. Our free brand voice guidelines template gives you this structure to fill in.
7. Operationalize it everywhere
Guidelines only matter if people apply them. That means:
- Per-channel rules. The voice is constant, but the format changes; your SMS needs different rules than your blog. See keeping a consistent voice across channels.
- A review step. Score copy against the guidelines before it ships, even informally.
- Trained tools. If you use AI, skip the generic model that averages the whole internet. Feed it your guidelines and examples so it writes in your voice by default.
Make it stick
The brands that win on voice treat it as living infrastructure and keep maintaining it. My Brand Voice is built for exactly this: it turns your guidelines and best examples into a Voice DNA profile, then generates and scores copy against it automatically, so consistency stops depending on whoever happens to be writing that day. Start a free trial or read what brand voice actually is first.