For a recent Sprout Social survey, consumers shared what made brands stand out to them. The most popular responses included memorable content (40%), a distinct personality (33%), and compelling storytelling (32%). Having a fully established brand voice makes all these things possible. 

Defining your brand voice isn’t enough, though—it is essential to provide employees with the tools they need to adhere to it and craft materials that present it well. You want your company to stand out to customers in every way possible, no matter where the message is coming from—marketing or sales, customer support or the C-suite. But you can only do so if your brand voice remains vivid, memorable, and consistent. Creating brand voice guidelines protects your brand.

Let’s explore what your company needs to know about documenting strong, compelling, and actionable brand voice guidelines.

Defining brand voice guidelines

As your business grows, more people will be speaking and writing on its behalf. Without brand voice guidelines, they’ll struggle to maintain a unified voice. Providing standards will hold your team—and your voice—together.

A good starting point is a clear definition and explanation of the four essential elements of brand voice.

Basic components of a brand voice

• Character: A brand voice is the gateway between your business and your customers. Character is the way your audience perceives you. It typically aligns with the values and beliefs of your workforce and reflects the internal culture of your business.
• Purpose: Brand purpose, or mission, is the reason behind your company’s existence. It goes beyond revenue goals and focuses on the central motivation of your work.
• Tone: Tone and voice are commonly mistaken as the same thing. They’re not. Tone is a part of voice and is the style in which you communicate internally and externally. It is essentially the expression of your brand persona and is easily affected by word choice and other factors.

• Language: Language is the body of words, phrases, and terms that an organization uses to describe its purpose or refer to its products. Essentially, it’s the vocabulary you use to market your product or service. 

Those basic components are the foundation for your brand style. The next step is to document it.

Compiling brand voice guidelines

Documenting your brand voice guidelines in a company style guide is essential to keeping teams on the same page. You can either write a style guide from scratch or customize a pre-written one to suit your brand voice.

Begin compiling your brand voice guidelines with the following steps:

1  Set a goal for your guidelines: Whether you’re boosting brand loyalty, fostering a close-knit company culture, or simply trying to update and strengthen your company’s presence, you must establish clear goals that you will support through your guidance.

• First, consider what your company stands for and what sets it apart. If you pride yourself on your excellent customer service, you can convey that by establishing a congenial, friendly tone. If, on the other hand, innovative products are your selling point, then you may want a more energetic, visionary tone to your writing. 
• If you can, refer to your existing material (a mission statement, for example) and try to use that as a starting point for these guidelines. Remember, the easiest story to tell is the one you’re already committed to.

2  Consider your employees: The success of your brand voice starts with your internal teams. They rely on the standards you set to represent your company consistently and correctly, so make sure the needs of your staff are addressed—for everyone to be able to act on the same guidance. 

• Brand voice guidelines ensure consistency and are especially helpful when onboarding new hires. Try to imagine what questions you would ask as a new employee, and answer those questions in your documentation. 
• Documented guidelines will also help external partners, such as marketing agencies, present your brand voice well in anything they produce on behalf of your company. 

3  Define the rules: Break down the components listed above (character, purpose, tone, and language) for your employees.

• What kind of language should your employees use? What should they avoid?
• Is there any specific terminology they’ll need to use?
• Consider the kinds of situations they’ll be facing, and include specific examples to give everyone a detailed, comprehensive picture.  

4  Choose a format: Brand voice guidelines can be presented in many formats. Consider what format is right for your company culture. What will be most helpful to most people?

• Given our increasingly paperless world, we recommend a central online platform available for all employees in real time. 

5  Assemble the guidelines: Everything you’ve gathered should be assembled into a comprehensive guide.

• Keep in mind that your brand is constantly evolving, and your guidelines need to align with any changes. As your company develops, you’ll want to have an easy way to update everyone quickly and easily.

Once you’ve completed these steps and successfully compiled your brand voice guidelines, it’s time to distribute them.

Implementing brand voice guidelines

Documentation is only useful if it’s used. Employees need access, training, support, and perspective.

• Availability is essential. Make the guidelines easy to find. If you circulate the guidelines online, put them in an obvious location where your team can quickly access, update, and use them.
• Disseminate the guidelines broadly. Employees, managers, and external partners all need your guidelines in order for your brand voice to be consistent.
• Update and communicate. A digital format makes updating easy, but you also need to make sure to communicate those updates to everyone with access. 
• Train for success. After doing an initial rollout of the guidelines, it’s important to follow that with regular meetings to cover brand voice components and guidelines. This will help make sure new employees have the knowledge they need and long-standing employees are continually up-to-date.
• Be transparent. Just as important as creating implementation guidelines is explaining the thought process behind the brand voice. This will help both internal teams and external partners understand and engage with the brand. Along with the what and how, tell them the why.
• Give your employees a voice. Setting up an online forum, for example, is an easy way for people to leave feedback.

Perfect your brand voice guidelines with Grammarly Business

Now that you’re equipped with more information about brand voice guidelines and how to document them, it’s time to create your own. Need more inspiration? Grammarly Business has the tools you need to document your style, polish your phrasing, and express your unique brand voice. 

To learn how you can create, perfect, and distribute your brand voice guidelines with Grammarly Business, contact us to request a demo or upgrade now.