Most brand voice documents say the same thing. Friendly but professional. Confident but not arrogant. Playful but smart. Every brand wants to be all of those, which is why the adjectives never help anyone write a caption at 6pm on a Friday. A useful brand voice is a set of decisions, written down so that anyone on the team makes them the same way.
Decide what you sound like
Start with the basics and make them concrete:
- Sentence length. Short and punchy, or long and flowing? Pick one as the default.
- Person. Do you say “we”, “I” or neither? Do you talk directly to “you”?
- Formality. Contractions or not? Slang or not? Swearing never, sometimes or always?
- Humour. Dry, warm, absurd or none at all. Humour is a decision, not a garnish.
Write your word lists
Every strong voice has words it loves and words it refuses to use. For Loam Living, “slow”, “hands”, “made” and “light” appear constantly, while “luxury”, “must-have” and “elevate” are banned. Two short lists will do more for consistency than any adjective.
Your banned words list says more about your brand than your mission statement.
Plan for the hard moments
Voice is easy when you are announcing a launch. It is tested when a delivery is late, a product fails or a comment turns nasty. Write example replies for the five hardest situations your brand faces. Decide how much you apologise, how quickly you move conversations to private messages and where humour stops.
Show, don’t describe
The most useful page in any voice guide is the before and after. Take ten real captions and replies, rewrite them in the new voice and put them side by side. People learn a voice by example far faster than by definition.
Keep it alive
A voice guide that lives in a forgotten folder is not a voice. Review it every quarter, add new examples from your best performing posts and remove rules nobody follows. The goal is a living reference that makes writing faster, not a document that makes people nervous.
