Most brand voice guides are aspirational documents that sit in a Notion page nobody opens. A useful brand voice guide is 1 page, has specific examples, and actually changes how people write. Claude can help you produce one in 60 minutes if you brief it right. Here is the workflow.
Most brand voice guides are aspirational and abstract: "We are confident, approachable, and innovative." That tells you nothing about how to actually write.
A useful brand voice guide is operational: specific words to use and avoid, sentence patterns, opening conventions, closing conventions, examples of "us" vs "not us." 1 page maximum.
1. Collect 5-10 examples of your best-voiced content. Blogs, emails, social posts, sales decks, founder LinkedIn posts. Whatever sounds most "you."
2. Collect 3-5 examples of content that sounds wrong. Drafts that got rewritten, agency outputs that did not land, anything that felt off-brand.
3. Ask Claude to extract patterns. Use the prompt below. Claude finds the voice signature in your examples.
4. Edit the resulting guide into 1 page. Most teams want to expand the guide. Resist. 1 page that gets used beats 10 pages that sit unread.
I am building a 1-page brand voice guide for [COMPANY]. Here are 5-10 examples of content that sounds like us at our best: [PASTE EXAMPLES] Here are 3-5 examples of content that sounds wrong for us: [PASTE EXAMPLES] Extract the patterns: 1. Voice characteristics (3-5 specific descriptors with proof from the examples) 2. Words and phrases we favor (with examples) 3. Words and phrases we avoid (with reasoning) 4. Sentence-length patterns (do we vary, do we use short sentences for emphasis, etc.) 5. Opening conventions (how we typically start pieces — and how we never start them) 6. Closing conventions (how we end pieces) 7. Tone register (formal/casual range and where we sit) 8. 3 examples of "us" vs "not us" — same idea expressed two ways Format the output as a 1-page guide. Tight. Specific. Usable by a writer who has never worked with us before.
Load the voice guide into every Claude Project you build. Without it, every team output drifts.
Use it as the FIRST step in every new hire onboarding. New writer reads it before writing anything for you.
Reference it in editorial reviews. "This sentence does not match the voice guide" beats "this sentence feels off."
Refresh quarterly. Your voice evolves. The guide should keep up.