The opening eBook of the Brand and Messaging category. It treats brand the way a small business owner actually has to think about it: not as a logo project, but as the small set of decisions that make a stranger pick you over the next three options on the list.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 50 minute read
Chapter 3
Your Brand Personality and Voice
Pinning down the personality and voice so the business sounds like the same person across every email, page and post.
Strangers don't only judge a brand on what it says. They judge it on how it says it. The same words, written in two different voices, can read as a serious business or an amateur one. A brand personality is the small set of traits that make your writing recognisable. A brand voice is the everyday expression of those traits in the actual sentences you publish. Get those two pinned down and a stranger reading any three pieces of your writing should feel they were written by the same person.
The cost of leaving voice undefined shows up on every surface. The website sounds careful and professional. The Instagram caption sounds like a different person on a Friday. The customer email sounds rushed. The invoice template sounds like a template. None of them are wrong on their own. Together they read as a business that hasn't decided who it is, which is a quiet but persistent reason strangers don't return.
This chapter gives you a five-word personality, a one-paragraph voice description and a small set of writing rules. By the end your brand summary page will have a personality and voice section a contractor could use to write copy that fits without needing to ask you.
The full chapter shows you the three-axis personality model, the do-and-don't voice list and the five-word test that keeps writing on tone for years.
Personality is a short list of traits
A brand personality, kept usable, is a list of three to five adjectives the business is willing to be held to. "Calm, plain-spoken, dryly funny." "Warm, encouraging, quietly serious." "Crisp, confident, never breezy." Each adjective should rule something out as well as ruling something in. "Calm" rules out exclamation marks. "Dryly funny" rules out slapstick. "Quietly serious" rules out manufactured urgency. The exclusions are where the personality earns its keep.
Owners often want eight or ten adjectives. Resist. A long list is the same as no list - nothing is excluded, so nothing is decided. Three adjectives is plenty. Five is the maximum. Anything more becomes a poster on a wall nobody re-reads.
The three-axis personality model
Three axes cover most of the personality work for a small business. Pick a position on each and the personality is largely written.
Axis one: warm or cool
Warm businesses sound like a person on the phone. Cool businesses sound like a well-edited document. Neither is better. A children's nursery probably wants warm. A solicitor probably wants cool. A bookkeeper for tradespeople might be warm at the personal level and cool at the technical level. Pick a position and hold it.
Axis two: serious or playful
Serious doesn't mean humourless. Playful doesn't mean unprofessional. The axis sets the willingness to be light. A funeral director should be serious. A children's birthday photographer should be playful. Most small businesses sit somewhere in the middle and benefit from being explicit about which side of the middle they're on.
Axis three: confident or modest
Some brands assert themselves loudly. Some understate. A brand that does excellent work and understates it tends to age very well in a small market. A brand that overstates and under-delivers gets quieter every year. Pick a position you can keep without embarrassment.
The five-word personality summary
Pick three to five adjectives, no more.
Each adjective must rule something out as well as ruling something in.
Test against the three axes: warm/cool, serious/playful, confident/modest.
Read the list aloud. If you wouldn't say it to your last ten customers, rewrite.
Voice is the everyday expression
Voice is what the personality sounds like in the actual sentences you publish. A small business voice description fits in a paragraph. "We sound like a calm, experienced person explaining something to a friend at the kitchen table. We use plain words. We avoid exclamation marks. We don't pretend things are easier than they are. We're allowed a dry joke once or twice a page. We don't address the reader as 'you guys.' We use British spelling. We never use jargon without explaining it."
That paragraph does more practical work than a fifty-page tone-of-voice document. A new contractor can read it in thirty seconds and write a passable first draft. Re-read it before any longer piece of writing and the work stays on tone.
The do-and-don't list
Underneath the voice paragraph, write a small do-and-don't list specific to the business. "Do call customers by their first name. Don't use the word 'partner.' Do explain numbers in plain English. Don't use jargon. Do show up early. Don't apologise for being early." Five of each is plenty. The list is most useful when it pins down the things you've privately corrected in your own writing more than once.
Three real voice paragraphs
The bookkeeper
"We sound like a calm accountant explaining a number to a tradesperson over a mug of tea. Plain words. No jargon without a one-line explanation. Numbers shown in pounds, never abbreviated. We don't make customers feel stupid for not knowing the difference between a deduction and an allowance. We're British, lightly dry, allergic to exclamation marks."
The personal trainer
"We sound like an encouraging coach who has worked with hundreds of bodies that have a history. We never compare clients to each other. We celebrate the person who walked in today over the person they think they should be. Light humour is welcome. Aspirational gym-bro language is not. We use 'you' and 'your', never 'guys'."
The freelance designer
"We sound like a thoughtful designer who respects the customer's time and money. Short sentences. No design jargon unless we've earned it in the paragraph above. We're confident about craft and modest about the business itself. We don't use the word 'passionate.' We don't end emails with 'cheers.' We do end them with the next concrete step."
The five-word test
Once a quarter, take three things you've published recently - a website page, a newsletter and a social post. Read them out loud. Pick five words you'd use to describe the voice in those pieces. Compare those five words to the personality list on your brand summary page. If they match, the voice is holding. If they drift, schedule an hour to bring the writing back into line. The test takes ten minutes. It saves a thousand small inconsistencies.
When the voice changes by surface
It's fine for the same voice to be expressed slightly differently on different surfaces. A website tends to be more measured. A weekly email is allowed to be a little more personal. A social post can be more conversational. The personality and the rules don't change. The dial moves a little. What you don't want is a different personality entirely showing up on Instagram than on the website. The companion eBook Messaging That Sells goes deeper into the surface-by-surface adjustments once the personality and voice are pinned down.
A recurring principle: build trust before asking for action
Strangers trust businesses that sound like the same person every time. The principle ran through the chapter on consistency in Designing Your First Offer and underpins every later messaging eBook. A consistent voice across every surface is one of the highest-return brand investments a small business can make - and one of the cheapest.
What to do this week
Add the personality list and the voice paragraph to your brand summary page. Then take the last three things you published and edit each one to bring it into line with the new voice. The first edit pass is where the voice becomes real. After that, every new piece of writing has a much shorter route to the right tone.
In the next chapter we'll set the small set of visual decisions a tiny business needs to look composed without spending five thousand pounds.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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