The absolute tidal wave of AI generated content that’s about to hit the internet (experts predict about 90 percent) is breaking on its shores. Entire articles, websites (and yes, books) written entirely by bots are already here.

What that means: "While content is more plentiful than ever, trustworthy content that includes a valuable human perspective is becoming incredibly rare."

Audiences are starting to become a whole lot smarter about sussing out the generic, poorly cobbled stuff—and are gravitating toward creators/brands who create trustworthy original content from a real human perspective. 

By the same token, search engines have also gotten a lot savvier about identifying those posting mass-produced, unedited AI-generated copy. In some cases, they’ve even stopped sending traffic to many of those sites that rely exclusively on bot-generated content. 

Voice & Tone: Setting Yourself Apart from AI Spam

Along with original thought and perspectives, one of the most important elements that almost differentiates AI content from human content is a strong and unique voice and tone. Simply put, voice and tone refer to the style of the writing or the way a piece sounds to you when you read it. 

AI may be pretty good at synthesizing and regurgitating other people’s work—but it’s still pretty terrible at developing anything truly original. At best, it creates copy using a voice that’s stiff, formulaic, and cliched. At worst, it spits out melodramatic, metaphor-laden prose that any high school English teacher would immediately flunk. And it certainly won’t gain any traction with the audiences you care about most.

Put another way, even a “well-trained” AI often does a pretty poor job of using an authentically human voice and tone—and that deficiency will become increasingly obvious to readers as time goes on.

One of the most powerful, impactful ways your brand can rise way above the glut of AI content—and build a real sense of connectedness and trust with your audiences—is to develop a brand voice and tone strategy that guides every piece of the content that you produce for your brand.

Whereas a strong, clearly identifiable voice and tone was once a “nice to have” (meaning your content could still win the SEO game without it), now it’s absolutely critical to the health of your content—and the long-term relationship with your audience. 

What’s the Difference Between Voice and Tone?

I’ll admit, I used to use these terms interchangeably—but I got much more focused on the nuances between the two as our company was rebranding. 

It’s definitely worthwhile for you to understand the distinctions between voice and tone as they will affect how you develop content across different mediums and for different audiences.

• Voice is the consistent (non-changing) personality or character of your brand across communications. It remains stable across all channels and touchpoints and directly reflects your brand's values and mission. Imagine it as your core personality that exists regardless of where you are and who you’re talking to at any given time.

• Tone is the emotional inflection or style of communication that varies based on the platforms, audiences, and contexts. Leaning into tone allows you to adapt your messaging based on the situation or context while maintaining a consistent voice. Think of it as subtle changes to how you might communicate (and your energy/vibe) depending on the situation (e.g., chatting with friends over lunch vs with your boss at a morning meeting). Your personality doesn’t—but your tone probably would.

A large part of your voice and tone strategy will probably focus on how your tone differs across content channels. 

Examples of Strong Brand Voice & Tone

When crafting a strategy for your brand, it can help to get inspired by others who have really made their mark with a super recognizable voice and tone. Here are a few who stand out to me. 

• Duolingo: The language-learning app is the MVP of the internet, often going viral for mike-dropping one-liners—many of them in the comments section of other people’s brands. Duo isn’t afraid to lay on the guilt to motivate users to complete their lessons—but does so in a cute/cheeky kind of way.

• Mailchimp: Known for its friendly, approachable tone, Mailchimp's voice is like that of a helpful friend guiding you through email marketing. It strikes a balance between professionalism and warmth, making users feel supported and encouraged in their marketing efforts. The tool is a great example of letting comedy happen naturally within your tone.

• Belmond: The brand behind 47 hotels, trains, cruises, and safaris, speaks to audiences as if they were a cultured art curator. The voice is sophisticated, refined, and evocative, without seeming condescending. 

• Reformation: Few brands nail a newsletter subject line quite like this one. The clothing brand’s self-deprecating humor balances out its cutting-edge, trendy vibe to help it come across as more approachable.

• Robinhood: The investing app has nailed democratizing tricky financial jargon into easy-to-digest tidbits, most notably in its daily newsletter, Snacks. It shows that bringing humor to even the more niche topics can be done—and done well.

• Wendy’s: The fast food giant expertly toes the line between the absurd and the still-on-brand. It knows its audience well and speaks to them in a somewhat snarky way that they love, jumping with commentary on trends that push things right to the edge—without going too far. Wendy’s paved the way for many food brands on social and are still emulated today.

Steps to Creating a Voice & Tone Strategy

Defining your brand voice and tone can be both a fun, creative process—and a challenging one that can take serious focus. 

Not only does it require some “soul searching” to really figure out the personality of your brand, but you and a team of stakeholders should agree on character traits, values, and quirks for a non-human entity (as much as brands can take on a life of their own, they’re still not quite human beings yet!)

Here’s how to get started—and put together a strategic deliverable that makes your brand voice and tone clear to every person who uses it. 

Step 1: Set the Project Up for Success

• Establish a project (and a timeline): Treat your Voice & Tone Strategy as you would any other high-priority company project. I recommend assigning a project manager (PM) whose role it is to keep the project moving forward and communicate with stakeholders. Use project management software, if it’s already a part of your company’s workflow. Even if it isn’t, you should always create a production timeline for the voice and tone deliverable (typically that’s a document or presentation). 

• Set up the Team: Beyond the project manager, you should appoint:

  • A content strategist to facilitate to ask key questions and shape the overall strategy

  • A writer to draft the Voice & Tone Strategy deliverable and make revisions

  • A designer if you’re sharing your work as a deck with several people

If you choose to work with a content marketing agency, they’ll provide all of the project management, strategic, and creative talent. You’ll just need a point person from within your brand to collaborate with the agency and facilitate stakeholder conversations.

• Block Out Time: I recommend giving yourself ample time to develop your voice and tone strategy. You definitely shouldn’t attempt to knock it out in a single afternoon in order to get right into the business of content development. I’d recommend providing at least a few weeks—if not a month or more—to conduct stakeholder interviews and develop a Voice & Tone Strategy that can be routed or presented for modification and final approval.

• Identify Key Stakeholders: For a Voice & Tone Strategy to be successful (and to facilitate adoption) it’s important to have at least 4-5 carefully selected stakeholders contributing to the thinking behind the brand’s personality and audiences. These stakeholders should come from diverse backgrounds and include employees who both oversee and work directly on communications and messaging for the brand—as well as those outside of the marketing team. For instance, you may want contributions and feedback from the customer service, sales, HR, and executive teams.

Step 2: Conduct Stakeholder Interviews

Schedule 1:1 Time with Your Voice & Tone Stakeholders

Once you have stakeholders onboard to participate in the process, you’ll want to set up time to speak with each of them—approximately 60 minutes—to learn more about their perspective on the brand. Your conversations can be conducted in person, or remotely over Zoom (or your preferred video conferencing app). You may want to interview people individually or in small groups, depending on how many you have. 

My recommendation: use an AI transcription tool (like Otter.ai) to capture the insights your stakeholders share about the brand. Even if you’re taking careful notes, it’s always helpful to go back and listen to the recorded conversations. AI can also help you locate something that was said more quickly or even pull out direct quotes for you. 

Conduct the Interview with Voice & Tone Stakeholders

Start the conversation with a short introduction about the project and what you’re hoping to achieve through this voice and tone strategy exercise. 

You may want to lead the interview with a few “easier” questions about the brand—like how long your interviewee has worked there, or what they knew about the brand when they first joined the company—before diving into your deeper questions about brand voice. 

I find it’s easiest to get stakeholders talking with more colorful, creative questions that help them envision the brand as a real person.

You’ll craft your own questions—or use some of the ones below to get started. Let your interviewee know that there are no right or wrong answers—the goal is to explore different perspectives and perceptions that can shape your brand’s voice and tone.

Sample Voice & Tone Interview Questions

• If the brand were a character in a book, show or movie, what defining traits would it have? When might the brand have a real hero moment—and what does that look like? 

• Where would you be likely to encounter the brand in everyday life? What qualities would leave a lasting impression on you?

• If you were describing the brand’s personality and values to another friend or colleague, what words would you use? 

• How would the brand act differently in different situations, like at a business conference, at the office, at a sporting event, or a night out? (You’ll want to give a range of examples to draw out unique responses)

• How do you think your audiences perceive the brand right now—and how would you want them to see them differently? 

• What are the distinguishing characteristics or traits that set the brand apart from others? What are its unique qualities and strengths the people might not already know about?

By incorporating these questions into your stakeholder interviews, you'll encourage participants to think creatively and provide insights that can shape your brand's voice and tone in a meaningful way.

Step 3: Develop the Strategy Documentation

Now that you’ve completed your voice and tone interviews, you can begin developing the strategy itself. Before you dive into writing, you’ll want to outline the various sections that are important to your brand. 

I’ve included the Voice & Tone Strategy outline that we used here at Masthead when developing our own documentation for leaders and team members. You may find the need to add other sections—or delete some of the items that aren’t as useful to you as you prepare your strategy.

Sample Voice & Tone Strategy Outline

1. Purpose

   1. Primary Goals: Define the specific objectives and outcomes expected from the strategy.

   2. Intended Users: Specify who within the organization will use this strategy (e.g., marketing team, customer service representatives).

   3. Alignment with Brand Values: Illustrate how the strategy supports broader business goals and aligns with the brand’s core values.

2. Brand Insights

   1. Brand Mission and Core Values: These should already be established by the brand; you’re restating it here for context

   2. Target audience(s): Define the primary and secondary audiences your brand wants to engage

   3. Messaging Channels: This lays out where your voice and tone guidelines will be applied (e.g., website content, social media, customer service interactions). 

   4. Brand Persona: This standalone section provides a short description of who the brand would be if he or she were a “real person.” 

3. Voice

   1. Defining Brand Voice: This is an explanation of what brand voice is—and how it differs from tone. It’s not specific to your brand

   2. Snapshot of Your Company Brand Voice: This is a paragraph or two that clearly defines your brand voice

   3. Core Voice Attributes: This can be a word cloud or a list of words associated with your brand voice

   4. Competitive Set: Analyze how the brand voice differentiates from competitors.

   5. Dos and Don’t of Brand Voice Offer specific examples of appropriate and inappropriate voice usage

4. Tone

   1. Defining Tone: Explain the concept of tone and its distinction from voice.

   2. Tone by Channel: Depending on how you present voice and tone (and your desired channels), you’ll create a page or slide that demonstrates how tone differs slightly across your brand:

      1. Website pages (landing pages, product pages) 

      2. Blogs and articles 

      3. Email

      4. Social Media Channels

      5. Podcasts

      6. Thought Leadership Content (article on other’s sites)

      7. B2B Content (white papers, etc)

      8. Other channels

5. Practical Guidelines

   1. Content Creation Tips Provide best practices for creating content that aligns with the voice and tone guidelines.

   2. Voice and Tone Examples Offer concrete examples and case studies to illustrate the guidelines in practice.

   3. Style and Formatting Specify preferences for grammar, punctuation, and stylistic elements. Link to a more in-depth style guide and/or writer’s guidelines, if/when you have them ready

Step 4: Gather Feedback

Now that you’ve locked in the first draft of your Voice & Tone Strategy, it's time to get some all-important feedback from stakeholders. 

Review and Refine Your Strategy

• Share the current draft of your Voice & Tone Strategy with stakeholders—those who offered you insights during the interview process, as well as other key team members who will use or be affected by the guidelines. This can include the marketing team, customer service representatives, content creators, and senior leadership.

• Encourage feedback and ask open-ended questions as part of a follow-up conversation through email. You might ask: In what way could you better capture the spirit of your brand’s personality? Was there anything that felt “off” about the voice or tone? What other dos and don’ts would the stakeholder add? 

• Provide a deadline: Don’t forget to set a clear deadline for sharing feedback; that will allow you to incorporate everyone’s responses at the same time—and determine if there’s any conflicting info in need of more clarification.

• Incorporate the feedback:  Review any feedback that you received and identify common themes or areas that need adjustment. Make revisions to the strategy document accordingly. You’ll want to make sure that the final version of the document incorporates the diverse perspectives and insights gathered during the feedback process.

Step 5 Implement Your Strategy

Once you’ve incorporated all of the feedback from key team members and have a final document you feel happy with, it’s time to share the Voice & Tone Strategy broadly across the organization. You can bring the work to life with a presentation, workshop, or training session. 

Regardless of the format, make sure the Voice & Tone Strategy document is easily accessible to all team members—if not before, then immediately following your presentation (you can do this by hosting it on a shared drive or cloud-based app). 
When presenting or training, it’s really helpful if you can share real-world examples of how your brand’s voice and tone is evolving and make yourself available for lots of questions and coaching. Voice and tone is far from an exact science—more like an art!—so it can take a while to really process how things are changing. 

You should offer ongoing support and resources, such as a dedicated Slack channel or an FAQ document, to address any questions or challenges that pop up as people get the hang of the new “sound” of your brand.

Monitor and Adjust

Once your Voice & Tone Strategy is out there in the world, it’s essential to keep an eye on how well the guidelines are being followed across different channels and touchpoints. 

If people aren’t actually adopting the new Voice & Tone guidelines, you likely need more training or workshops with the people creating content. If there’s another barrier to implementation, it’s good to find out now so you can help overcome that.

Gather feedback from both your internal teams and your audience to see how the new strategy is resonating. Don’t be afraid to tweak things as you go along—your brand's voice and tone should evolve with your goals and audience expectations.