Your tone of voice is how your brand communicates its personality to the world. Next to your visual brand assets, your tone of voice is one of the most important tools you have to set yourself apart from your competitors and stand out in your industry.
When it comes to rolling out a tone of voice across an entire business or company, your voice guide is absolutely essential. It’s the source of truth that can be used by everyone, from your copywriting team to those higher-ups sending out important emails.
To make your tone of voice guide effective, though, you need to know how to communicate all aspects of your guide in a way that’s easy to understand and easier to implement.
We’re taking you through it 👇
- Your tone of voice guide is how you keep things consistent. It captures how your brand sounds and brings together your key messages, personality, and writing style — all in one place.
- It helps people actually use your tone of voice. From creatives and customer service to senior leaders and agency partners, a clear guide makes it easier for everyone to write on-brand, every time.
- It’s not just a branding tool. It shouldn’t just be a brand document that collects dust, but more of a go-to resource your whole team can rely on to write with clarity and confidence.
- The best brands use tone to stand out. Brands like Who Gives A Crap, ahm, and Go-To Skincare use their tone to build trust, stand out from competitors, and actually connect with their audience.
What is a tone of voice guide
A tone of voice guide is a document that outlines exactly what your voice should be and sound like. It generally lives in a broader brand guidelines document and brings together all aspects of your copy and content, like your unique selling point, key messages, brand values and purpose, and your voice and tone.
It details what kind of words your brand uses, how far you might push traditional language, and the sentence structure you use, as in, how your copy is paced. In our tone of voice guides, we love to add some examples of language we might use and some Dos and Don’ts, so everyone can understand what consistency looks like in your tone.
A good tone of voice guide brings together:
- Your unique selling proposition (USP)
- Key messages
- Brand values and purpose
- Voice and tone
- Sentence structure, vocabulary, and stylistic preferences
- Dos and don’ts for consistency
Why tone of voice guides are important
Your tone of voice guide is the source of truth for all copy and content created in your business. It’s how you can create consistency across all of your channels — from internal documents to your website, and through to your social media channels and email marketing campaigns.
It’s really important to maintain that consistency. By being consistent, you can improve the levels of trust your audience has in you and ensure that your brand feels like you, no matter where you’re turning up online.
Brands that don’t have clear guidelines can risk having different writers or team members wash out their brand. It can feel clunky and lead to really important aspects of your brand becoming lost along the way.
How teams can use tone of voice guides to stay consistent
The thing about your brand’s tone of voice is that so many members of your team (and even non-team members) need to use it daily. We can often overlook the writing our non-writers do…
The Operations Manager sending an email to your client base, your HR team that whacked together a ‘We’re Hiring!’ post for LinkedIn, and even your marketing partners — the assets they create for you need to match up.
The reality is that your voice should be consistent across every piece of material you put out. And having a team that knows the guidelines (and ideally lives and breathes them) can be the secret to creating a consistent, cohesive brand that your audience really loves and trusts.
Creative teams
When your in-house creatives are working on a new campaign, a clear tone of voice guide gives them a playbook to keep to. Whether they’re writing a headline, scripting a video, or drafting Instagram captions. It keeps the messaging sharp, cohesive, and unmistakably on brand.
Agency partners
External partners —like web design agencies— don’t know your brand inside out like you do. A tone of voice guide gets their copywriters up to speed fast and helps avoid the back-and-forth. It means you spend less time editing and more time getting work out the door. And it sounds like you.
New hires
Bringing on someone new? A tone of voice guide is like a crash course in how your brand talks. Instead of learning through osmosis (or old Google Docs), they can start contributing faster, with confidence that their writing fits in with your brand from day one.
Customer service teams
Tone matters in support conversations, too. Whether they’re replying to emails or sending live chat messages, your customer service team represents your brand. A tone of voice guide helps them strike the right balance — clear, helpful, and aligned with the rest of your messaging.
What to include in a tone of voice guide
So, you get why you need a tone of voice guide. Now, how do you even explain a tone of voice? There are a few key elements that make up how you should write for your brand. By outlining who you’re speaking to and how, the messages and benefits you want to put in front of them, and the words and pacing you use as you write, encapsulating a tone of voice is easier than you might think.
Here are some of the key elements we include in every tone of voice guide, to keep your brand consistent no matter the content.
Audience insights
Who are you speaking to, and what do they value? If there are a few cohorts of people, it should touch on each of them.
USP
What makes your brand different? What’s the big reason they should choose you?
Tagline
Your go-to line that sets the tone for your brand. This should explain what you do, who you are, and why people choose you — all in one succinct, snappy sentence.
Key messages
What do you always want to communicate, no matter the platform?
Voice description
A breakdown of your brand voice and tone, including keywords (e.g. warm, bold, down-to-earth). Are you talking with an equal or someone below you? If your brand were a person, how would you describe them?
Sentence style
Short and punchy? Or longer and conversational? Maybe a mix of both, for creative impact? Use example lengths of sentences and how you want them arranged so your team can easily pick up your voice.
Wording preferences
Think commonly used phrases and examples of on-brand vs off-brand language here. You can also include a bank of words you might use for different scenarios. Like words you use to celebrate or adjectives for great things.
Grammar and punctuation rules
Do you use contractions? The Oxford comma? Any words to avoid? Include them all in the guide.
Dos and Don’ts
Include some quick reference points that help writers stay on-brand. Sometimes, quick examples of what your brand is about (or not about) can be the most effective.
How does a tone of voice explanation come together practically?
Let’s take a look at two different tones we’ve created. One is for an IT company and one is a business advisory company. You can see how these different tones come together in a real, tangible way.
Tone of voice
| IT Company | Business Advisory |
|---|---|
| [Business Name] is a friendly advisor. We know our stuff, so we don’t speak in riddles. We know the IT industry and what we do is convoluted, so we make it simple and a little bit fun. | [Business Name]’s tone of voice is confident, empathetic, and conversational. We’re storytellers – it’s how we let the reader know we’ve been where they are. For the not-so-serious business struggles, we engage the reader through tongue-in-cheek descriptions of common experiences. For the more serious struggles, we’re serious, too |
|
Our sentence structures are punchy. We may use longer sentences to explain complex concepts, like this one here. But ultimately? They’re quick. They’re punchy.
“Our Business Continuity service is about keeping your business safe. What’s Business Continuity? Basically, a plan and the supports we put in place so that if something happens to your tech, you can skip past the downtime and lost profits.” |
We’re targeting business owners, so we have room to use complex or bigger words throughout the copy. We won’t use these words if it compromises the flow and readability of the sentence, though. And we definitely won’t use corporate jargon or acronyms. |
|
We also incorporate fun and Aussie words into our content when it’s appropriate.
“G’day! We’re Connected Platforms, the IT team connecting businesses with smart IT solutions.” |
We’re on the same level as the reader. We’re business owners, and so are they. So, the phrasing is conversational. |
|
We’re empathetic too.
“Managed IT Services can sound overwhelming. We know. But it doesn’t have to be.” |
Messages
| IT Company | Business Advisory |
|---|---|
| We do IT better. | We’re anti-corporate. |
| We make IT simple. | We’re not like other advisory boards. |
| We create certainty in your IT and your IT partner. |
We’re the tool every business owner should have in their toolbox.
We’re upfront, honest, and aligned. |
Taglines
| IT Company | Business Advisory |
|---|---|
| IT, done right, done bette | No fluff. No ego. Just serious value. |
Why strong tone of voice works for different brands
Your tone of voice is what can set you apart from your competitors. A good tone of voice will be different, without being jarring, and it’ll appeal specifically to your target audience. It doesn’t have to talk exactly how they talk — just in a way that they enjoy being spoken to.
Here are some of our favourite Aussie brands that have nailed doing their tone of voice a little differently.
Who Gives A Crap
Tone of voice: Quirky, cheeky, and irreverent with a strong ethical undercurrent.
Who it appeals to: Socially conscious consumers who value sustainability but don’t take themselves too seriously.
Why it works: Who Gives A Crap turns something mundane —buying toilet paper— into a fun, values-led experience. Their playful language lowers the barrier to engaging with ethical purchasing and makes their brand really memorable. By wrapping serious issues and statistics in light, playful humour, they make their message and doing the right thing more accessible.
ahm Health Insurance
Tone of voice: Straight-talking, down-to-earth, and refreshingly casual for an industry often seen as complicated or stale.
Who it appeals to: Younger Australians and busy professionals who want health insurance without the jargon or hard sell.
Why it works: ahm strips away the corporate tone typically found in health insurance, replacing it with simplicity. This sets them apart in a busy sector and builds trust, making their offering feel more human and accessible, especially to those overwhelmed by comparison fatigue.
Go-To Skincare
Tone of voice: Fun, friendly, and self-aware with a mix of cheek and genuine care.
Who it appeals to: Predominantly women aged 20–40 who want effective skincare.
Why it works: Go-To makes skincare feel less clinical and more relatable. The tone reflects the founder’s personality (Zoë Foster Blake), and that personal touch builds brand loyalty. Their blend of transparency, humour, and warmth makes them feel like a trusted friend in the beauty industry, which can often feel intimidating.
Need a hand with your tone of voice? Our copywriting team can help with that 👋
