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Most teams either never define their tone of voice, or they did it once with the outside help of a consultant or creative agency, and now they have a couple of adjectives waiting to come to life.

This issue is all about turning “our brand is bold, friendly, and innovative” into something you can actually apply when you write a post, reply to a customer, announce a product, handle a negative review, or write literally anything without starting from scratch.

The goal isn’t to sound more professional. It’s to sound more like you, consistently. Because the moment your posts read like a press release, people stop paying attention. And when you’re a small team, attention is kind of the whole point.

In this issue, I’ll walk you through:

At the end, you’ll get a 3-step process on how to easily define this for your brand with examples.

As a company, you are always speaking with your customers. If you are a founder reading this, you may think you mostly do this on sales calls or during pitch deck presentations.

If you are a marketer, you probably do this in newsletters and content on social media.

But, as if this wasn't enough, there is so much more. Every interaction a customer, a lead, an investor, a vendor, or a potential hire has with you is telling them something, and therefore using a voice to do so.

The really great brands know this. And are really good at being consistent and authentic to their tone of voice.

And authentic brands feel recognizable.

A strong voice cuts through the endless ads and AI slop and builds trust faster than trying to be everything to everyone.

Here’s a breakdown of how tone of voice fits into your company DNA:

Today, we’re focusing on the first part - voice.

By far the downfall of content writing, at least in my opinion, is this:

You can have your facts right, you can have your graphics and fun facts. But if the piece of content you shared reads stiff, inauthentic, or clearly written by someone/something else, your audience will not buy it.

A founder posts something like:

“Thrilled to announce we are revolutionizing the space with our innovative solution.”

Meanwhile, anyone who’s met them knows they talk like:

“Ok, so we shipped this because customers kept asking for it, boom.”

When you are starting out, most people who follow you know you. Your friends, customers, and team. So that mismatch is what makes people scroll instead of becoming your first loyal supporters.

If you already defined your company's personality and you know how you want to sound, but are having a hard time actually writing in that narrative, you probably need a more actionable guide to help you through.

Say your tone is casual + smart, but when you sit down to write, you default to corporate: long sentences, passive voice, vague words like “leverage” and “synergies.”

That’s usually not a tone problem. It’s a you need writing rules + examples problem. What to say, what to avoid, and how a real post should look in your voice.

I'll cover how to create those in the next section.

Your tone of voice will only take you so far. If you are creating content about ideas that are not relevant to your audience, your content is not going to land.

Imagine you’re building a product for product managers, but you spend your content talking about generic productivity tips like “wake up at 5 am and journal.”

Even if it’s written beautifully, it’s not what your audience came for. You might get some polite likes and zero business impact.

When thinking about how you write, how you want to sound, I would suggest imagining your brand as a person. How would they greet a customer? Share exciting news? Handle a complaint? Write an article?

If your answers here feel a bit scattered, chances are you don’t have a tone of voice yet.

As this is a content marketing newsletter, I'll mostly focus on giving you a better idea of how your voice shows up in your content.

Content is where you get to capture people, educate them, and explain something to them, while leaving an impression. Think about the experiences your audience will have with your voice:

These are all the stop points where you can make an impression and build the persona of your company in your customer's eyes.

Once you are able to hear your united voice striking through, all you need to do is write down your own guidelines that both you and your team can follow.

In this exercise, you’ll be able to take whatever brand adjectives you currently have (or pick new ones) and turn them into something you can actually write with. The goal is simple: you’ll end up with a few clear rules for how you sound, plus a couple example posts you can reuse as a reference.

Quick side note: I’m not a brand marketer, and there are amazing folks out there who can take you much deeper than this. But if you want a solid quick start now, or you’re short on budget, this will get you 80% there.

If you’re planning on getting your brand designed (or you already have one), you’ve probably covered step 1 of this exercise already. Now we’re making it usable.

Pick three words that should describe how your brand sounds most of the time. If there is an adjective you already have in mind, great!

If you’re stuck, pick a bunch at first, then cut ruthlessly until you’re down to three.

For each adjective, write:

These will essentially become your tone of voice writing rules. You should have a simple statement of what your brand is and isn't. Something like this (example for a tech startup):

👋 At Acme Labs, we are:

Once you are happy with your writing rules, try to look at them from the other side and write down what you definitely don't want to see in the way your brand speaks. This part helps to paint the full picture and will be particularly helpful when others are creating content for you.

🙅 We are not:

This is where the tone stops being a list of adjectives and becomes usable.

A tone of voice becomes real once you can start writing with it.

In this last step, try to write tiny samples you can reuse as a reference. These become your tone examples. Once you are done and re-read your work, you should be able to think to yourself yes, this is us.

Write down these in your tone of voice:

Here's an example for Acme Labs, using their curious, playful, and technical tone of voice.

💻 Here’s what we do

Acme Labs helps product teams understand what users actually do inside their product — not what they say they do. We turn messy behavioral data into clear answers: where people drop off, what they click, what confuses them, and what to fix first.

🚀 Product announcement

We just launched Acme Diagnostics. It’s a lightweight audit of your onboarding + activation funnel. We’ll look at:

Check out our documentation to learn how to run Acme Diagnostics in under 5 minutes.

❤️ Celebrating a positive review from a customer

One of my favorite messages this month:

“Acme made our onboarding problems painfully obvious. In a good way.”

That’s basically our product in one sentence.

For context: this customer thought their issue was pricing. It wasn’t. It was one step in onboarding that looked clear internally… and confused 70% of new users.

To make this easier to digest, here’s the quick recap of today’s issue:

If all three sound like the same person wrote them, congrats - you have a voice!

If they don’t, that’s okay. This takes practice. And with practice, you’re building a writing muscle.

Two things that I personally find helpful:

Your tone of voice shouldn’t be a one-time brand exercise. It’s a tool that helps you articulate your brand’s personality and makes you feel confident while writing.

Good luck typing!