While one aspect of your brand voice is the language that you use, it is actually the core and the personality of your message. It is what makes your brand recognizable, reliable, and memorable to your audience. People who relate to your brand personality will therefore most probably trust you and want to be a part of what you do. However, if you hire external writers to take care of your content, your distinctive voice may disappear in the process.
Outsourcing is a popular option for a large number of companies in need to expand content production, to have access to specialized expertise, or simply to release internal resources. In any case, the content produced by the outsourcing can seem to be a bit of a stretch, inconsistent or even in the worst case, off-brand, if the proper measures are not taken internally. The positive point is that being able to communicate a coherent brand voice in all your content is still possible, which means that external contributors can be used without any problem.
This guide walks you through actionable strategies to preserve your brand’s unique voice while reaping the benefits of outsourced content writing.
Why Brand Voice Consistency Matters
Maintaining the same brand voice throughout different channels is more than just a characteristic of the brand; it is a strategic tool that influences the results of the business directly.
Consistent communication, language, and manner of presenting content through articles, social networks, newsletters, and web pages result in the audience being able to associate the brand with the company immediately. Trust is the basis of this recognition. Customers get to know the brand through you, hence, it gives back credibility and makes the emotional bonds firmer.
On the contrary, an inconsistent voice confuses people. For instance, if your blog reads like a formal and corporate type of communication whereas your social media is fun and casual, your audience may wonder whether they are dealing with the same brand. This gap can result in loss of trust and brand perception getting weaker.
Besides voice recognition and trust, voice consistency is the main thing that keeps all your marketing pieces financially viable through linking them with your brand values and core message. Any content then becomes the literal brand identity, which is inevitably reinforced by what you say and why it matters. This alignment not only changes brand perception but also has a direct influence on conversion rates. Thus, when your communication is real, your audience will more likely be responsive.
Define and Document Your Brand Voice
No matter how much you train them, if you do not have your brand voice perfectly clear, external writers will never be able to capture it. This means that everything really starts with defining your brand’s core personality traits. Is your brand a professional and authoritative one? Maybe a playful and irreverent one? An empathetic and supportive? A bold and disruptive one? The brand personality becomes the basis for communication in your company.
After figuring out these characteristics, write down the exact details: the tones that are preferred, the words that are chosen by the vocabulary, the kind of sentences and the emotive words that connect with your audience. This writing is your Brand Voice Style Guide – a complete guide which helps external writers maintain the same style.
Building Your Brand Voice Style Guide
The key components of your style guide are the things that it must have. The initial point can be voice attributes that delineate your brand’s character in straightforward, viable terms. For instance, rather than simply stating that your brand is “friendly,” clarify what it signifies: a conversational style, but not too casual, a warm tone, but still a professional one.
After that, delineate the mood of the writing.
Their tone might change depending upon the situation – maybe they would be more formal in a white paper and more casual in a social media post, but these differences should still seem to come from the same basic voice.
embed rules for grammar and formatting, which are also practical.
Are you a fan of contractions or full words? Do you like your sentences to be short and punchy or rather long and flowing? Would you use an Oxford comma or not? These little things are important.
Maybe more than anything else, be sure to give definite instances of dos and don’ts. Present pieces of brand and off-brand communication so that the writers can understand the variation in the manifestation. Concrete instances are by far more educational than the intangible descriptions.
Choose the Right Outsourcing Partner
Different writers have different capabilities, and thus it is very important to find the right outsourcing partner to keep the same voice. Firstly, you should thoroughly evaluate the samples of writing. Don’t just check the grammar and spelling of the text – decide if the writer’s usual style matches the tone of your brand and if the writer shows knowledge of your field.
The top outsourcing partners will never dive into writing right away. They will always inquire about your brand values, target audience, and content goals. Such an inquiry is a way for them to express that they want to tailor the content to your specific voice and not just produce standard content.
Effective On-boarding
The tone of your collaboration is mainly determined by the onboarding process that you have with the partner. It’s a good idea to provide your brand voice style guide, audience personas, and important brand materials such as brand messaging frameworks and previous content examples. Just give two or three pieces of content that are the best to represent your perfect tone—these are used as the main reference points for the external writers.
It might be helpful to have a call to set things in motion where you can talk over the expectations, answer questions, and build rapport. The writers getting to know the people behind the brand in this way usually results in them creating more authentic content.
Before committing to big projects, try out paid test assignments to see if a writer is really able to convey your tone. Just one blog post or a set of social media posts can show you if they are suitable without you having to make a considerable investment.
Create a Strong Review and Feedback Process
External writers, no matter how skilled, require direction if they are to be able to capture your brand voice correctly regularly. Setting up a strong system of review and feedback is the way to go for both quality control and ongoing enhancement.
Introduce a “brand voice editor” or a contact person from your in-house team whose role will be to protect your brand voice. Before publication, this person should check the content created by external sources to make sure it corresponds to the style guide and the usual of the brand.
Design a feedback loop with several stages, each stage dealing with different content facets. The first feedback round should concentrate on the correctness of the tone and the general suitability for the brand. Detailed edits should deal with brand consistency, clarity of the message, and compliance with the style guide. The last proofreading should find the technical errors and give the text a final touch.
If you have to give feedback, then do it thoughtfully and helpfully. Instead of writing “this doesn’t sound like us,” point out the exact thing that is incorrect and give a few examples to show how to correct it. Comments such as “empathize more here” or “don’t use industry jargon—our audience prefers plain language” provide writers with the specific way to improve.
Use voice and tone checklists to monitor consistency that is maintained over time. Besides being a tool to support standards, it also gives you the possibility to recognize trends – maybe certain content types or topics need more instructions.
Scale Content Production Without Losing Voice
Keeping the same tone in your writing becomes more difficult, but still very necessary when your content needs increase. The main thing is to create processes that allow you to grow without losing your standard of quality.
Try to gather as many consistent teams of freelancers as you can so they can get to know your brand voice very well over time. These writers make a deep and natural connection with your style, thereby they have fewer changes to make, and consistency is at the same level even with large amounts of text.
Creating templates and content frameworks that are in harmony with your style guide would be a great idea. These frameworks are support structures that allow writers to have a safe space within which they can still exercise their creative skills and thereby, not be restricted by the frameworks.
Continuous training of writers ensures that they are always aware of the changes in the brand, the new objectives of the campaign, and the changes in priorities. You can arrange quarterly meetings or training sessions as a means of reminding the staff of the voice guidelines and also to solve the issues of any drift that you may have noticed.
Think about a hybrid outsourcing model that merges in-house strategists with externally hired writers and a devoted brand editor. Strategists make sure that the content fits the business objectives, external writers give you the scalability that you need, and the brand editor keeps the voice going characteristically from all the pieces of output.
Use technology to keep consistency going at a large scale. AI-based tone-checking tools can identify a potential mismatch of the brand voice without the content being sent to your brand editor, thus, the review process gets faster and the issues that are left are found at an early stage.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Great brands with good intentions also sometimes make mistakes that can be avoided when they outsource their content. Recognizing these mistakes helps you keep away from them.
Not giving proper detailed briefs is maybe the mistake that is most frequently thrown. If a writer does not receive a clear brief regarding the target audience, goals, main points, and expected tone, he/she will have to guess the answers, and their guesses may not be the ones that you have.
The absence of a person responsible for checking the brand before it goes public allows brand-off messages to make their way silently. Content that your audience consumes without your brand’s proper supervision can be a source of losing your brand’s trust and making your audience puzzled.
Dependence on a single writer or agency to such an extent that you are blind to any other option is a risky move. In case that partner is no longer available or his quality deteriorates, you will have to act quickly. Having a diversified pool of writers ensures you a certain level of comfort and at the same time that your standards are respected.
Just as it would be a very serious error to turn a blind eye to the analytics that show that your audience is not interested in what you are producing. If metrics indicate that engagement is declining and sentiment is becoming negative after the start of outsourcing, then you should definitely check whether inconsistency in the voice might be the cause.
Last but not least, the failure to brand voice guide your brand as your business changes is the main reason for the outdated brand voice guidelines. Your brand is developing and changing—your style guide should be the one to reflect that growth.
Bringing It All Together
Your brand voice is the mainline that runs through each content piece you produce. It really characterizes your company in the eyes of your target audience, decides if they would trust you, and determines what kind of feelings they experience when interacting with your brand. So, this voice is not something you can simply lose in the process of outsourcing content creation.
It is very much possible to keep brand voice when outsourcing if you treat it like a problem to be solved. Get a very clear idea of the voice you want to have and then write it down in great detail. The companies you want to outsource your work to should be the ones which not only share your values but are also similar to you in terms of communication style. Create very thorough check processes that allow for catching those parts or pieces that are not consistent with your voice before they are seen by your followers. Keep scaling in a good way by creating processes, templates, and relationships that will be able to maintain consistency regardless of the amount.
Keep in mind that consistency is what connects an externally performed brand story with the real one of your brand. In a case where external writers manage to imitate your brand voice effectively, your audience will not have to be informed that the content is not your company’s creation. Hence you get effortless, extendable content that is not only in harmony with your brand but also a great driver of tangible business outcomes.
