Last week, I led an AMA workshop for more than 40 marketers, walking them through my step-by-step process for defining a differentiated brand voice.

To make the workshop and accompanying workbook practical, I used my own gluten-free website as a real-world example. That included dissecting its brand voice and auditing content I published nearly 10 years ago that's still among the site's top performers.

As usual, the questions participants asked gave me plenty to think about after the session ended.

Three themes kept bubbling up:

1. Differentiation: How do you stand out when businesses in your niche all seem to sound alike?
2. Consistency: How do you maintain a recognizable brand voice without making every piece of content sound the same?
3. Adoption: How do you get everyone working from the same guidelines when content chaos has become business as usual?

These are questions worth exploring because defining a brand voice is only the beginning. The real challenge is making it distinctive, flexible, and usable across your organization.

Differentiating in a Crowded, Beige Market

One question that stuck with me came from a marketer who works with multiple businesses in a very specific niche. Her challenge? How do you create a distinctive brand voice when all your clients essentially do the same thing for the same audience?

Voice differentiation starts with understanding what genuinely makes the business different. Why did its founders start the company? What do customers appreciate most about them? Why would someone choose this company over someone else?

During the workshop, I pointed to Salesforce and Oracle. Both compete in enterprise technology, but their brand voices are dramatically different.

Before defining your brand voice, examine how your competitors communicate. Identify the language, claims, and personality traits they share. Then look for what your organization can do differently.

Keeping a Consistent Voice Without Boring Your Audience to Death

Another workshop participant asked how to maintain a consistent brand voice across three very different industries: mining, oil and gas drilling, and civil construction.

Each audience has different priorities. Does that mean the company needs three different voices?

I don't think so.

At the San Francisco Mart, I communicated with both large home furnishings manufacturers and Bay Area interior designers sourcing products for high-end projects. Those audiences needed very different content. But it still came from the same organization, with the same voice.

Similarly, your CEO's content shouldn't sound identical to a product manager's technical explanation. Each brings their own expertise and personality. Your brand voice guidelines should establish what's consistent while explaining how tone, terminology, and examples can flex.

Consistency doesn't have to come at the expense of relevance or personality.

Getting Buy-In to Tame the Content Chaos

Of course, even the most thoughtfully developed brand voice guidelines won't accomplish anything if nobody uses them.

One attendee asked how to get a brand voice and tone guide approved in a corporate environment where everyone has their own ideas about what the brand should sound like.

My advice? Involve those stakeholders from the beginning.

I've facilitated brand voice workshops with CEOs, heads of content, communications leaders, and marketing executives all working through the same exercises together. Those conversations can get contentious, but they're far more productive than sending draft guidelines around for approval.

The other important element is making sure the guidelines are practical, not merely aspirational. That means building out brand voice charts with specific definitions, do's and don'ts, and examples. Paired with templates, intake processes, review criteria, and accessible documentation, the chart helps everyone understand what's expected before they start creating content.

Getting agreement on three adjectives is easy. Building shared understanding of what they mean in practice is the real work.

Conduct a Brand Voice Audit to Evaluate How Well You Are Putting Your Brand Voice to Work

Whether you're bringing on more freelancers, working with an agency, or introducing AI into your content workflows, you need to know whether your current content consistently reflects your brand voice. Otherwise, you're at risk of amplifying the content chaos you already have.

That's why I made brand voice the first essential content foundation I discuss in my book. Your documented voice provides essential context for human contributors and AI tools alike.

One of the best ways to start developing a more distinctive brand voice is to look closely at how your competitors communicate. What language and personality traits keep showing up? Where do their voices differ? And, most importantly, what opportunities does that reveal for your own brand?

A competitive brand voice audit can help you answer those questions. But the goal isn't to sound different just for the sake of being different. It's to identify what makes your organization genuinely distinctive and find ways to express that consistently, without losing the flexibility and personality that make your content worth reading.

That's where today's #ContentChat conversation picks up. I hope to see you there!

Coming Up on #ContentChat

Content Chat is my weekly LinkedIn Live video chat where I share expertise and ideas with the content marketing community. Join the conversation on Mondays at noon Pacific / 3 p.m. Eastern. RSVP for our upcoming conversations by clicking the chat date below to get a reminder and to access the chat.

• ​Today on #ContentChat, I'm building on last week's AMA workshop, Build a Brand Voice That Scales, with a practical walkthrough of How to Conduct a Competitive Brand Voice Audit. We'll explore how to evaluate the way your competitors communicate, identify the voice characteristics that set brands apart, and uncover opportunities to make your own brand more distinctive. I'll share a step-by-step approach you can use to turn those insights into practical brand voice guidelines.
• ​Next week, 10/26, on #ContentChat, we're exploring The Unsexy Side of Content. I'll be joined by Aimee Rodriguez, Senior Director of Intelligent Content Strategy at Infios, to discuss why taxonomy and data standardization are essential for content reporting that actually helps teams make decisions. We'll talk about where to start, how to establish consistent classifications, and why getting your content data organized is increasingly important for AI-enabled workflows.

Until next time, stay safe and be well!

Cheers,

Erika

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​Erika Heald, Founder & Chief Content Officer​
​Erika Heald Marketing Consulting​
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LinkedIn: @erikaheald​
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