How to build a strong brand voice on social media (and beyond)

A strong brand voice is what makes your content feel recognizable, intentional, and unmistakably you. 

Defining it pushes you to get clear on who you are as a brand and what you really stand for. Keep reading to find out how to define your unique brand voice and incorporate it into your social media strategy.

What is a brand voice?

Brand voice is the consistent, distinct way a brand portrays itself through words. It’s essentially your brand’s personality, expressed through tone, language, and style.

A clear brand voice helps keep messaging consistent, builds trust with your audience, and reduces the risk of off-brand or awkward moments on social media.

Creating a brand voice should start broad, and then get very detailed. The broad strokes define your overall tone — such as formal, friendly, jokey, or serious — while the details spell out specific words, phrases, and language choices to use (or avoid) in everyday communication.

We’ll walk you through all the steps of creating a brand voice later in this post. For now, start thinking about your brand and what you want it to represent.

Why is having a consistent brand voice important?

Having a consistent brand voice is important because it ensures your brand sounds intentional, trustworthy, and cohesive, no matter where or how people encounter it.

Here’s exactly why a strong brand voice matters:

Makes your brand more recognizable

Just like a great brand aesthetic (a.k.a. visual identity), a solid social media brand voice makes your content more recognizable. When people scroll past your posts, they know it’s you before they even see the logo.

When your personality is clear and repeatable, you’re not just building brand recognition. You’re also protecting your brand from being impersonated by fake social media accounts.

When your social posts look and feel consistently like you, fake accounts and copycats tend to stick out fast.

Gives teams a communications blueprint

A well-defined brand voice keeps everyone aligned, even when content is coming from different teams.

Think about all the teams across your organization creating public-facing content — from product slides to email marketing campaigns. This usually includes:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Customer service
• Public relations
• Investor relations
• Tech support
• Product documentation

While tone may vary somewhat depending on the context, the overall language and voice should remain consistent at their core.

This is also important for new staff and external partners, like freelancers, agencies, and content creators. They can get up to speed quickly, confidently communicate on your brand’s behalf, and avoid endless revisions.

As a freelancer, I’ve written for organizations ranging from motorcycle brands to municipal governments. It’s much easier to create content that sounds “right” for the brand in the first draft if they provide me with a brand voice document.

Avoids social media missteps

A clear brand voice reduces the risk of off-brand social media posts or comments that just miss the mark. This is especially crucial if multiple team members manage your social content.

This matters most in high-pressure moments, like responding to negative feedback. It’s why we recommend including guidelines for responding to negative comments and posts in your brand voice documentation.

Connects better with customers and prospects

A distinctive brand voice makes your company seem more human. And a more human brand is easier for customers, prospects, and social media followers to relate to.

Especially on social media, people don’t want to follow or engage with a random corporate entity. They want to follow and engage with brands that amuse, entertain, inform, and/or align with their values.

That’s true when it comes to purchasing, too. A well-defined social media voice ensures your social content resonates with the people you want to connect with most.

How to build a strong brand voice

Building a brand voice means deciding how your brand should sound, documenting it clearly, and applying it consistently across channels.

Here are seven steps to make it happen:

1. Research your audience

2. Define your mission

3. Describe your brand personality

4. Put together brand guidelines

5. Use a social media management tool

6. Allow for differences between platforms

7. Test and tweak

1. Research your audience

Before you can decide how you should speak to your audience, you need to know who your audience is.

We’ve got a whole post on using social media for market research, but the short version is that you need to know what your target audience thinks about you, your products, and the competition. 

You also need to understand where and how they communicate with each other so you can use the right messaging on the channels where they are most likely to be.

2. Define your mission

Now you need to define what you want to do for them. When it comes to social media brand voice, this one’s a two-parter. 

1. First, you need to define the mission statement of your brand. What does your brand stand for? What are its core values? What do you most want to achieve?
2. Next, think about how that relates to your social audience. How does your mission improve the lives of your social followers? How do you make their lives better, easier, or more entertaining?

Working through this discussion will help you clarify your brand messaging and communication style, which, in turn, helps you understand the language to use when you talk to them.

3. Describe your brand personality

Buyer personas help you picture your audience as real people, making it easier to craft social content that speaks directly to them.

A brand persona does the same thing for your brand. Once you have a clear brand identity, you can create social content that feels natural and intentional.

Start by imagining your brand as a person. Would they be friendly or aloof? Funny or formal (or both)? Young and hip or established and reserved? Dig into the adjectives to fully round out your brand’s unique personality.

If you’re not sure where to start, the Brand Personality Framework, developed by professor Jennifer L. Aaker, is a popular place to start. It breaks brand personality down into five traits: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.

Source: Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of Brand Personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347–356.

The goal isn’t to mirror your audience exactly. It’s to build a brand persona your audience relates to, respects, and trusts.

4. Put together brand guidelines

Every good brand should have a style guide. Your style guide includes your brand colors, logos, and — most importantly for this post — your brand voice guidelines.

You can get really detailed here, even nailing down specific words to use and others to avoid. Be especially detailed about specific terms and word choices to use when referring to your products, your services, your company, and your employees.

The most important factor is tone. Make sure the tone you describe aligns with the brand personality you defined in the last step.

Include a list of branded hashtags and guidelines for creating new hashtags for future campaigns.

5. Use a social media management tool

If your marketing team manages multiple social media accounts, use a social media management tool to make sure your brand voice stays consistent across channels. 

With Hootsuite, you can set up approvals and easily collaborate on post drafts to always publish approved content and keep the quality of your conversations with followers on brand.

Here are a few ways that Hootsuite can help you streamline your workflows:

• Manage all incoming messages and comments from one centralized inbox
• Assign messages to team members as tasks
• Collaborate on post drafts in Hootsuite Planner
• Set posting permissions for individual team members
• Set up easy approvals so the right people have final say

Hootsuite’s approval tools will help you take your social media workflows from “too many cooks” to “teamwork makes the dream work.”

6. Allow for differences between platforms

While your brand voice should feel consistent everywhere, you can (and should!) make adjustments for each social channel. 

After all, different channels have different vibes, formats, and expectations, and your voice needs to flex accordingly. What works in a blog post won’t land the same way in a Tweet or an Instagram Reel (and that’s a good thing).

The key is making sure each post still sounds like you, even when the wording, length, or delivery changes.

When your brand guidelines are clear, this gets a lot easier. They give you a steady foundation so you can adapt your brand’s content to platform demographics and trends.

7. Test and tweak

Just like a human personality, your brand voice can evolve over time and shift with new information and learning.

As you roll it out, keep a close eye on your social analytics. Notice which posts land, which ones fall flat, and whether certain tones or formats consistently perform better.

At the same time, watch for any unexpected flops. Maybe your audience finds the content too stiff, too jokey, or too casual. That’s useful data, not a failure.

Brand voice can also evolve as social channels evolve. For instance, when brands started to join TikTok, they had to figure out a new way of speaking to younger audiences that still aligned with their brand guidelines. 

Be willing to test, learn, tweak, and test again.

Social media brand voice examples

Let’s take a look at how a few well-known brands bring their brand voice to life on social media — and how committing to a personality can become a key differentiator.

Liquid Death

Andy Pearson, Liquid Death’s Vice President of Creative, once described the brand as “a character we’re writing for.” 

That mindset shows up everywhere, especially on social. Treating the brand like a fully formed persona or character makes it much easier to stay true to its voice across platforms.

Source: Liquid Death

Remember that this is a company selling water. Their branding, especially their brand voice, is the differentiator. It’s why Liquid Death feels worlds apart from brands like Smartwater or Evian.

That’s the power of a clearly defined, confidently applied brand voice.

On to another drink brand…

La Croix

If Liquid Death is all heavy metal energy, La Croix is the complete opposite. Think bubblegum colors and literal puppies. Terms like BFF and Bestie appear often in their captions, along with lots of emojis, exclamation points, and puns.

Source: La Croix

Using Aaker’s brand personality framework, Liquid Death is bold and rugged, while La Croix is cheerful and charming. Different tones, but same strategy: each brand commits fully to a distinct character. That clarity makes the voice easy to recognize.

Calm

Calm’s branding is cohesive from top to bottom. Visually, their social feeds lean into soothing blue tones, nature imagery, and clean layouts that instantly feel, well… calm.

That same energy shows up in their brand voice. Calm’s captions are grounded, supportive, and gentle. And they often use infographics and bullet points to share helpful information in a way that feels approachable, not overwhelming.

Source: Calm

Once you notice it, the consistency is hard to miss. The posts sound like a mix of your thoughtful older sister and an inspirational poster. The result is a cohesive experience where the visuals reinforce the message, and vice versa.

For comparison, let’s look at another brand in the mental wellness app category.

Headspace

There’s a striking visual difference between Calm’s posts and those shared by Headspace. 

While Calm uses muted blues, Headspace shows up in bold colors and playful illustrations. You’d never mistake one for the other, even though the apps operate in the same general market.

Source: Headspace

That contrast carries straight into the voice, too. Both are encouraging and inspirational, but Headspace comes across more casual and lighthearted in tone.

Source: Headspace

Whole Foods

Whole Foods keeps their captions short, letting the visuals do most of the heavy lifting.

Many posts are just a few words and a couple of emojis, but it’s enough to convey Whole Foods’ brand voice. The tone of voice comes through as light and friendly but still polished.

Source: Whole Foods

Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s uses much longer captions than Whole Foods. Posts are broken into sections with line breaks, and they follow a conversational rhythm that feels like a friendly crew member explaining what’s new.

Instead of sharing short product descriptions, Trader Joe’s zooms way in. Each post tells the story of a single product — what it tastes like, how to use it, and why it’s special.

Source: Trader Joe’s

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