Tone of voice: the questions we get asked most

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. The questions about tone of voice that come up most often on our calls.

Pages that answer a real question outlive pages written to fill a slot in a sitemap. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Do we need to care about this?

Write like a knowledgeable person talking, not a brochure. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

How do we know it is working?

Jargon signals insecurity more often than expertise. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

The short version

Content is the part of a project most likely to be underestimated and most likely to delay a launch. Three things worth confirming about tone of voice before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Consistency builds recognition — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.