How to Write a Brand Tone-of-Voice Guide (That People Actually Use)

22 September 2026·5 min read

Quick answer: A tone-of-voice guide is a one-page document telling anyone writing for your business how it should sound in words — not colours or fonts, but actual language: what you'd say, what you'd never say, and a few before-and-after examples to make it concrete. Most brands only document the visual side and leave voice to vibes, which is why the same business can sound like three different companies depending on who's typing. ✨

Ask most small business owners for their brand guidelines and you'll get a PDF full of hex codes, a logo lockup, maybe a font pairing. Ask how their brand should sound in a caption, an email or a product description, and you'll get a shrug — "just, you know, us." The trouble is "just us" lives entirely in the founder's head, and the moment someone else starts writing — a new hire, a freelancer, an agency — that shared understanding doesn't transfer automatically. Voice is actually harder to keep consistent than visuals, because there's no swatch to check against. It just drifts, post by post, until nobody can say why the brand feels off. 💖

What most businesses get wrong

The assumption is that a style guide covering colours, fonts and logo usage has the brand "covered." It doesn't — it covers what the brand looks like, and skips what it sounds like, which is arguably the part customers interact with more. People read your caption, subject line and product description far more often than they study your logo spacing. And because voice feels subjective — "that just sounds like us" — most businesses never write it down. They rely on one person's internal sense of the brand, which works fine until that person's on leave or a second writer joins.

The one-page tone-of-voice template

1. We are / we are not (pick 3-5 pairs)

Warm, not stiff
Direct, not blunt
Confident, not arrogant
Cheeky, not unprofessional

2. Words and phrases

Use: contractions, short sentences, real words a customer would actually say out loud.
Avoid: corporate filler ("synergy," "solutions-driven," "leverage"), exclamation-mark stacking, and jargon your customer wouldn't use themselves.

3. Before and after

Off-brand: "We are pleased to announce our exciting new range is now available!!!" → On-brand: "New stuff just landed. Go have a look."
Off-brand: "Please don't hesitate to reach out." → On-brand: "Got a question? Just message us."
Off-brand: "We value our customers and strive for excellence." → On-brand: "We actually care whether you're happy. Tell us if you're not."

4. One punctuation rule

Contractions are always okay. Maximum one exclamation mark per post, and never stack them. No title case in captions.

A business with multiple people writing social captions: Three team members took turns on the socials, and it showed — one wrote in exclamation marks and emoji, one wrote like a LinkedIn post, one wrote like a text to a mate. Followers weren't consciously clocking it, but the account felt inconsistent in a way nobody could pin down, until a one-page voice guide got handed around and the posts started sounding like one business again.

A founder handing off content to a new hire: Every piece of copy the new hire wrote technically covered the right information, but it kept getting rewritten line by line because it "didn't sound like us." The founder couldn't articulate why beyond gut feel, so every handover cost more time than it saved. A one-page guide with real before-and-after examples fixed it in a week — the new hire finally had something concrete to write against instead of guessing.

How to actually write yours

Don't start from a blank page — start from your best existing content. Pull five posts or emails that genuinely sound like you at your best, and five that feel off. Read them side by side and ask what's different: sentence length, word choice, how blunt or soft it is. That comparison gives you your "we are / we are not" pairs almost for free, because you're describing something real rather than an aspirational voice nobody writes in. Keep the whole document to one page — a guide nobody reads is worse than no guide at all.

💡 Concrete beats aspirational. "We are friendly" is useless to a new writer. "We say 'that's on us' instead of 'we apologise for any inconvenience'" is something they can use on their very next sentence.

Mistakes to avoid

Writing adjectives with no examples attached — "playful" means nothing without a before-and-after to show it.
Making the guide so long nobody opens it before writing — one page, genuinely.
Copying another brand's tone wholesale instead of describing how your best content already sounds.
Treating the guide as a one-off instead of updating it as your voice naturally matures.
Assuming a visual style guide already covers this — it almost never mentions voice at all.
Writing it alone and never testing it on the person who'll actually use it.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate tone-of-voice guide if I already have a brand style guide?

Yes, almost always. A visual style guide covers colours, fonts and logo usage — it rarely says anything about how the business should sound in writing, which needs its own short document.

How long should a tone-of-voice guide be?

One page. If it's longer, the people who need to use it day-to-day won't read it, and a guide nobody reads doesn't fix anything.

Who should write it — the founder, or a copywriter?

Either can, but it should be built from real examples of the business's existing best content, not written from scratch as an aspiration. A copywriter can help pull out patterns objectively, which founders sometimes find hard to see in their own writing.

Will a tone-of-voice guide make everyone's writing sound identical?

Not identical, and that's fine — a good guide sets boundaries, not a script. Two people can follow the same pairs and still write with slightly different personalities, as long as both stay inside the same brand voice.

Keep reading 🤍

Written by

Kate, founder of Chronically Online

I help Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses grow with branding, websites and marketing that actually works.

Work with me ✦