How to Define Your Brand Voice for Social Media
By Amauri, Partner, marketing · · 6 min read
Define your voice with three or four traits, each paired with its opposite, add short lists of words to use and words to avoid, and lock it in with before-and-after examples. Then you can hand it to a person or an AI and check that everything sounds like the same brand.
What is brand voice and why does it matter?
Brand voice is the consistent way a brand writes, and it matters because it makes a post recognisable even without the logo. Two companies can say the same thing (we're open on Saturday) and sound like different people: one warm and playful, another measured and precise. That difference is voice.
It helps to separate two things that often get mixed up:
- Voice: the brand's personality. It changes little or not at all over time.
- Tone: how that personality adapts to the situation. An apology for a delay doesn't sound like a launch announcement, yet it is still the same brand.
If several people on your team write for the brand, or you use AI to draft, putting this in writing stops being a luxury. Without it, every piece sounds like whoever wrote it.
The examples here use one brand: Taller Lumbre, a craft woodworking shop.
How do I define voice with adjectives and their opposites?
Pick three or four adjectives and write next to each one what you are not, because a lone adjective can be read a hundred ways and its opposite pins it down. "Friendly" might mean chatty and joking, or simply approachable; "friendly, but not a buddy" already says a lot.
Use this format, one line per trait:
| We are | But not | You can see it in |
|---|---|---|
| Direct | Curt or blunt | Short sentences, the useful fact first |
| Warm | Syrupy | Plain, personal address, no gushing |
| Expert | Pedantic | We explain the why without needless jargon |
| Quietly funny | Jokey at any cost | Gentle irony, never at the customer's expense |
Three rules to make it work:
- Every trait must be able to fail. "Professional" is useless: nobody calls themselves unprofessional. A useful trait is one another brand could lack.
- The opposites must be real. If you write "serious, not boring", make sure that is a genuine risk for your brand and not two words that merely sound good together.
- Four traits at most. With six, nobody remembers them.
To find them, look at what you already write when you're comfortable: emails to clients that went well, replies to comments, how you introduce your business. Underline whatever sounds like you.
Which words do I use and which do I avoid?
Make two short lists of ten or twelve words each: the ones you use because they sound like your brand and the ones you avoid because they don't. Lists turn a vague impression into something you can check at a glance.
An example for Taller Lumbre:
- Words we use: wood, made to measure, piece, joint, finish, grain, workshop, "we make it here".
- Words we avoid: "end-to-end solutions", "industry leaders", "premium quality", "innovative", "synergy", strings of exclamation marks.
- Phrases we don't use: "dear customer", "do not hesitate to contact us".
Add limits too, meaning what the brand never says or never promises: no delivery dates you don't control, no comparisons with other workshops, no talking about prices without specifics. In igroui these limits live alongside the voice, in each brand's Brand Brain, which includes a list of banned words and restrictions; but the idea works equally well in a shared document.
What does voice look like in a before-and-after example?
You see it by rewriting one generic message until it sounds like the brand, and those pairs of sentences are the best training tool you can give anyone. A description of tone on its own is abstract; a before and after is not.
Three pairs for Taller Lumbre:
A product announcement
- Before: "Discover our new collection of premium quality tables, designed to give you the best experience."
- After: "Three oak tables leave the workshop this week. Each has its own grain, and no two are alike."
A reply to a complaint about a delay
- Before: "We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We are working to resolve the issue."
- After: "You're right: the delivery is late and we didn't tell you in time. The varnish needs two more days to cure. We'll write on Thursday with a firm date."
An educational post
- Before: "Essential tips for taking care of your wooden furniture in today's world."
- After: "Three things that quietly ruin a wooden table: direct sun, plastic tablecloths and too much water when cleaning."
Notice what changes: there are concrete facts, shorter sentences, no catalogue adjectives, and in the complaint the humour dials down because the situation calls for it. The personality is the same; the tone has adapted.
Keep five to eight pairs like these. They are your best reference material.
How do I explain my voice to an AI?
You explain it to an AI with the same sheet you'd give a new colleague: traits with their opposites, word lists, limits and a couple of good examples. An instruction like "write in a friendly, professional tone" gets you generic text; a concrete sheet gets you something recognisable.
Practical steps:
- Paste the traits with their opposites, not just the adjectives.
- Include both word lists and the limits.
- Add three or four before-and-after pairs. Examples weigh more than descriptions.
- State the context of each request (the network, the goal and who it is for) and ask it to adapt the tone to that context without changing the personality.
- Check the first result against the sheet and fix the sheet, not only the text: if the AI misses, an example is probably missing.
In igroui, this work is done once per brand in the Brand Brain (identity, audience, tone, pillars, banned words) and the ideas and the text for each destination start from it; there are details in brand voice. Even so, the AI proposes and you review: no piece goes out without your approval.
How do I check that the voice is consistent?
Check it with a periodic review of a sample of posts, using a fixed list of questions, rather than trusting your gut on the day. Consistency erodes slowly and you almost never notice from the inside.
A checklist for each piece:
- Does it sound like one of our traits and none of their opposites?
- Does any word from the "avoid" list appear?
- Could it be pasted onto another brand's account without changing anything? If so, it is too generic.
- Does it respect the limits (promises, comparisons, prices)?
- Does the tone fit the situation (celebration, complaint, explanation)?
And a very effective ear test: take three posts from last month, remove the brand name and ask someone outside the team whether the same person wrote them. If they hesitate, the voice isn't set.
Every quarter, revisit the sheet: are there new words to add, examples that no longer represent the brand, a trait nobody follows? A voice holds because someone looks after it.
Once you have the sheet, the natural next step is to use it inside a realistic calendar; we cover that in how to plan a month of social media content.