How to write a brand voice guide
Write a brand voice guide a small store will actually use: traits with limits, a tone map, word rules, before-and-after rewrites and the claims you never make.
What this is for
A brand voice guide is a short document that lets anyone who writes for your store, a freelancer, a new hire, an agency or a writing tool, sound like the same brand. Without one, the product pages sound like the founder, the emails sound like whoever wrote them that week, and the support replies sound like a template.
Most voice guides fail because they are a list of adjectives. "Friendly, fun, authentic" describes almost every brand and tells a writer nothing. When you finish this guide you will have a document of two to four pages built from your own best writing, with rules a writer can check a draft against.
Time needed and what you need
Time needed: about 5 hours. Two hours gathering and sorting examples, two hours writing the guide, and an hour testing it on someone who has not written for you before.
- Around 20 pieces of your own writing: emails, product pages, social captions and support replies
- A handful of customer reviews and messages, for the words customers use
- A clear idea of who your main customer is
- Anything legal or regulatory you must or must not say about your products
The steps
Build the guide from evidence, not from a blank page. Every rule should point back to something you already wrote or something a customer said.
1. Gather and sort your own writing
Collect around 20 pieces across channels and sort them into three piles: sounds like us, does not sound like us, not sure. Do this with one other person if you can. The first pile is the raw material for everything that follows; the second shows you what to warn against.
2. Write down who you are talking to
Describe your main customer in a paragraph: what they know about your category, what they worry about, what words they use for your product. Pull phrases from reviews. A voice is always a voice towards someone, and a guide that skips this step produces copy that sounds right but talks to nobody. If you have not done this yet, start with finding your customer personas.
3. Pick three or four traits, each with a limit
Read the "sounds like us" pile and name what those pieces have in common. For each trait, write what it is not, because the limit is what makes it usable: warm, not gushing; expert, not lecturing; funny, not silly. Shopify's own advice on voice charts makes the same point, recommending examples of what the voice should and should not sound like. source, checked 28 September 2026
- Trait: one word
- What it means in one sentence
- What it is not, in one sentence
- One real line from your writing that shows it
4. Separate voice from tone
Your voice stays the same everywhere; your tone shifts with the moment. A launch email can be playful, an apology for a late order cannot. Make a small table of the situations you write for most and how the tone moves in each while the voice stays put. source, checked 28 September 2026
- Launch or new product: more energy, still specific
- Delay or mistake: plain, direct, no jokes
- Complaint reply: calm, own the problem, give the fix
- Sale: clear about terms, no false urgency
5. Set the word-level rules
This is the part writers use most. List the terms you always use and the ones you avoid: what you call your products, your customers, your ingredients. Add the small decisions that otherwise get made differently every time: spelling standard, how you write prices and dates, product name capitals, emoji, and exclamation marks. source, checked 28 September 2026
If you are unsure about exclamation marks, the default most style guides land on is to leave them out. Google's writing guide, for example, advises avoiding them in general. A brand that saves them for rare moments makes those moments count. source, checked 28 September 2026
6. Show the same message on-voice and off-voice
For each of your main channels, take one factual message, such as a restock, a shipping delay or a new flavour, and write it twice: once the way your brand would say it, once the way it would not. Writers learn more from one before-and-after pair than from a page of adjectives. Keep the facts identical so the only difference is the voice.
7. List the claims you never make
Add a short section on what the brand does not say: health or medical claims you cannot back, "best" or "number one" without proof, sustainability claims without evidence, invented urgency. In some categories this is a legal matter, not a style one; the guides to marketing a skincare brand without medical claims and marketing a supplement brand within the rules go further.
8. Test it on a new writer, then read drafts out loud
Give the guide and a short brief to someone who has never written for you, and compare what comes back with your "sounds like us" pile. Every place their draft drifts shows a rule that is missing or unclear. When you review drafts after that, read them out loud: awkward or off-voice sentences are much easier to hear than to see. source, checked 28 September 2026
9. Put it where people write and review it twice a year
Store the guide next to your email templates and product page drafts, and send it with every brief to a freelancer or agency. Twice a year, reread it against what you actually published. Voices drift, and the guide should follow the brand you have become, not the one you were at launch.
A worked example
For a small-batch hot sauce brand with two part-time writers
Worked example (an invented brand, with invented numbers)
The founder gathers 24 pieces: 9 emails, 10 product descriptions and 5 support replies. The team sorts 11 into "sounds like us", 8 into "does not" and 5 into "not sure".
From the 11, they name 3 traits: bold, not loud; funny about food, never about customers; precise about heat. The word list gets 14 entries, including "heat level" instead of "spice rating" and "small batch" only when a batch is under 500 bottles.
They test the guide on a freelancer with a brief for a restock email. Her first draft breaks 4 of the 14 word rules and uses 3 exclamation marks. After one round of edits against the guide, the second draft breaks none.
Common mistakes
Listing adjectives without limits. "Friendly" alone lets one writer be warm and another be childish. Give every trait a "not" and an example.
Writing the guide from what you wish the brand sounded like. If nothing you have published sounds that way, writers have nothing to copy. Build from your best existing writing and stretch from there.
Treating voice and tone as the same thing. A guide that only describes the cheerful launch voice leaves writers stuck when they need to apologise. Include the tone table. source, checked 28 September 2026
Making it forty pages long. Nobody reads it, and the rules that matter get lost. Keep the core to what fits on a few pages and link out to anything longer.
Doing this with Tilly
Tilly starts with a free brand audit from your store URL: it reads your storefront, reviews and marketing and builds customer personas, which covers the evidence-gathering in steps 1 and 2. All 8 of Tilly's agents then write from that one brand profile, so the voice is shared across email, ads and pages.
The decisions in this guide, the traits, the word list and the claims you never make, are still yours to write down. Nothing Tilly writes publishes without your approval, which is where you check it against the guide.
Questions people ask
How long should a brand voice guide be?
Two to four pages for a small brand. Long enough to hold the traits, the tone table, the word list and a few before-and-after pairs; short enough that a freelancer reads all of it before starting.
What is a quick exercise to find our voice?
Write a short biography of the brand in the voice you are aiming for. Shopify suggests about 250 words, which is long enough to show how the brand describes its products and mission, and short enough to rewrite a few times. source, checked 28 September 2026
Should the voice change between email and social?
The voice should not; the tone and length can. A caption can be looser than a product page, but a customer who follows you on both should recognise the same brand.
See this on your own store
Paste your store URL. The first pass takes about a minute and needs no account. Save a card (nothing is charged) and Tilly reads the whole store and works out who buys from you.