Brand Voice Guide Template

Start from evidence, not a brainstorm. Pull 10 to 30 published pieces that did their job: emails people opened and clicked, posts read to the end, pages that converted. If you don't track results, pick the pieces your team agrees sound most like you.

Cover each channel you write for: the website, email, product screens and support replies. A voice drawn only from blog posts won't tell anyone how to write a cancellation email. Keep your five weakest pieces as well. They supply the "before" half of your examples.

If you already have brand guidelines, read their voice section now. Treat the adjectives there as claims to test against the pieces you collected, not as rules.

Read the pieces side by side and count choices instead of describing moods. "Friendly" is an impression. "Talks to the reader as you, almost never as users" is a pattern a new writer can copy.

Keep a pattern only if it holds across most of your strong pieces and breaks in the weak ones. Take claims per sentence: Digital.gov, a US government site, tells writers to express only one idea in each sentence¹. If your best copy does that and your weakest piles three benefits into one line, you've found a pattern worth keeping.

Group the patterns into three or four traits, and give each one a limit. Nielsen Norman Group, a UX research firm, advises choosing no more than a handful of tone words² and suggests adding "anti-tone" words for what to avoid. Mailchimp's content style guide draws that kind of line: its humor is weird but not inappropriate, smart but not snobbish³.

Then prove each trait with a pair: a sentence you published that misses, and the same sentence fixed. Microsoft's style guide teaches each of its top 10 writing tips with a before-and-after example⁴. Under "Write like you speak," the message "Invalid ID" becomes "You need an ID that looks like this: someone@example.com."

Your traits describe the voice, which stays put. Tone is what moves. Mailchimp's style guide illustrates the difference with a person whose voice stays the same while their tone shifts³ between dinner with friends and a meeting with the boss. Tone also follows the reader's emotional state: a customer whose payment just failed needs a calmer tone than one reading about a launch.

Be careful with humor. In a 2016 Nielsen Norman Group study, 100 US adults rated pairs of nearly identical web content⁵ that differed only in tone. A playful car insurance page seemed friendlier than its serious twin, yet less trustworthy, and people were no more likely to recommend it.

Trust mattered far more than friendliness. On average, trustworthiness explained 52% of the variation in people's willingness to recommend a brand, and friendliness added only 8%. Casual, conversational and moderately enthusiastic tones did best overall. If you're unsure, Mailchimp's advice holds: keep a straight face.

A word list turns the edits you keep making into rules anyone can check. Google's developer documentation style guide sorts problem terms into two tiers, "use with caution" and "don't use"⁶. For cautioned terms it suggests an alternative or a more specific word: its entry for "leverage" says to avoid it if you mean "use."

GOV.UK, the UK government's website, keeps a list of words to avoid⁷ because plain English is mandatory there. Most entries say what to write instead, and some name an exception: "robust" is fine for a sturdy object, but otherwise it suggests "well thought out" or "comprehensive." Build your entries the same way, from words your weakest pieces lean on, and give each one four parts:

• The term, as writers actually use it
• Its tier: don't use, or use with caution
• The reason, tied to your own writing
• What to write instead

Give product and feature names their own list, with the correct form and the common mistakes. Spelling, capitals and number formats belong in a house style guide, which keeps this one about how you sound.

A voice guide works if a writer who has never met you can use it. Before you share yours, give it and a brief to someone new, then compare their draft with your best pieces. Wherever they had to guess, add an example.

Once it's in use, review drafts against a short checklist in a fixed order. Run the word list first: banned words are quick to find and always have to go. Leave product names for last, so you don't correct a name in a paragraph you later cut.

Log each failed check with the exact sentence. When the same correction turns up on two different drafts, add it to the guide. A one-off preference stays out.

Send the guide with every content brief, so freelancers have it before their first draft, not after the first round of edits. The template on this page gives you the guide, word list and review checklist, and Edit with AI has River draft the patterns from your strongest pieces.