How do you create a content voice and tone guide for your team or organization?

2 Identify your content voice

Your content voice is the expression of your brand personality, values, and beliefs through your content. It is how you sound to your audience, and it should be consistent across all your content types and channels. To identify your content voice, you can use adjectives, nouns, or verbs that describe your brand. For example, your content voice could be friendly, professional, witty, authoritative, or inspirational. You can also use examples of brands or influencers that have a similar voice to yours, or create a brand voice chart that lists your voice attributes and their opposites.

3 Establish your content tone

Your content tone is the variation of your content voice depending on the context, situation, and purpose of your content. It is how you adapt your voice to suit the needs, emotions, and expectations of your audience. For example, your content tone could be more formal, serious, or empathetic when you are addressing a sensitive issue, or more casual, humorous, or playful when you are engaging with your fans. To establish your content tone, you can use modifiers, scenarios, or dos and don'ts that illustrate how to adjust your voice for different content situations.

4 Write your content voice and tone guide

Once you have defined your content goals, identified your content voice, and established your content tone, you can write your content voice and tone guide. This is a document that summarizes and explains your content voice and tone principles, guidelines, and examples to your team or organization. It should be easy to read, understand, and apply by anyone who creates or edits content for your brand. You can use headings, subheadings, bullet points, tables, or visuals to organize and present your information. You can also use tools or templates to help you structure and format your guide.

5 Share and update your content voice and tone guide

Your content voice and tone guide is not a static document that you write once and forget. It is a living document that you need to share, implement, and update regularly. You can share your guide with your team or organization through email, intranet, cloud storage, or online platforms. You can also create training sessions, workshops, or webinars to explain and demonstrate your guide to your content creators and editors. You can update your guide as your brand evolves, your audience changes, or your content goals shift. You can also collect feedback, suggestions, or questions from your team or organization to improve and refine your guide.

6 Measure and evaluate your content voice and tone

The final step in creating a content voice and tone guide is to measure and evaluate its effectiveness and impact on your content performance and audience engagement. You can use analytics tools, surveys, reviews, or social media metrics to track and analyze how your content voice and tone influence your content quality, consistency, relevance, and appeal. You can also use benchmarks, goals, or best practices to compare and contrast your content voice and tone with your competitors or industry standards. You can use these insights to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or challenges, and to make adjustments or improvements to your guide as needed.