How to create a tone of voice
Follow these steps to establish a tone of voice that matches your product brand personality and conveys how you want it to be.
Review your existing content
- Gather all your examples
- Group them into related clusters on how they sound
- Label each cluster of content with a descriptive tone label such as friendly, professional and trustworthy. Think about the personality traits of real people
Brainstorm positive tones
- Spend three minutes on new positive labels that represent the desired personal traits
Brainstorm negative tones to avoid
- Write down the negative tones, that you do not want your product to be associated with such as unprofessional, dismissive and sarcastic.
Discuss tone
- Point out any similarities or differences
- Group them in two columns and label them positive and negative
- Decide on three positive tone labels that reflect the personality you want in your product and three negative tone labels that you could be mistaken for.
Test your copy with real users
- Write a shorter plain copy and place it in a low-fidelity wireframe
- Ask end-users to read the plain copy
- After reading, give them a list of words that describe the product reactions, and ask them to select the words that best describe the copy.
- Modify the content until you reach your goal