Defining your tone of voice: sound the same everywhere

What tone of voice is, and what it is not

Tone of voice is the way your organisation talks. It is about word choice, sentence length, how you address people and the tone you strike. So it is not about what you say, but how you say it. Two organisations can say the same thing and still sound very different.

A tone of voice is also not a list of nice words like ‘committed’ and ‘innovative’. Those describe what you want to be. A useful tone of voice describes what you do when you write.

Start with what you already write

You do not have to start from scratch. Gather texts your organisation already uses: the website, newsletters, social media posts, quotes and a few emails to customers or members.

Read them through with a few colleagues. Which texts really feel like you? Which do not? This shows you the tone that already exists, and where it goes off track.

Also involve people who have a lot of contact with customers, members or donors. They know which words go down well and which raise questions.

Five agreements you need to make

These agreements lay the foundation of your tone of voice:

• Formal or informal. Choose one way of addressing people, such as first names or titles. Note when you might make an exception, for example in legal texts.
• Three traits with an explanation. For example ‘direct, warm, expert’. For each trait, write what it means and what it does not mean. Direct is not the same as blunt.
• Words you do and do not use. Jargon, foreign terms, abbreviations and your own product names: record what the choice is.
• Sentence length and structure. For example: short sentences, the most important information first, and active rather than passive sentences.
• Tone per situation. You answer a complaint differently from a festive announcement. The personality stays the same, the tone adapts.

Examples work better than rules

People read a list of rules once. They remember a good example. So put a sentence that gets it wrong and a sentence that gets it right next to each agreement.

For example: not ‘We kindly request that you return the form’, but ‘Could you send the form back?’ That way everyone sees at a glance what is meant.

Choose examples from your organisation’s real work. A standard email, a LinkedIn post, the text on an invitation. The closer to daily work, the more often someone uses the example.

Make sure everyone can find it

A tone of voice in a folder on a shared drive gets forgotten. Put it in the same place as your logos and colours, in your brand manual. Then it naturally belongs there, and everyone finds it the moment they start writing.

In the MarkBase online brand manual you record your brand story, with mission, vision, core values and tone of voice. If you schedule your posts in the Social Planner, you can have them checked against your tone of voice there before publishing.

On top of that, set aside a short moment each year to reread the agreements. Does your organisation still sound like this? Or has something changed in your audience or what you offer?