Your tone of voice profile is…
The Grounded Pathfinder
At your company, you adopt a formal, serious tone while questioning the status quo and offering innovative solutions. Your irreverent approach is balanced by a matter-of-fact communication style that presents practical, data-driven strategies for problem-solving.
Your tone-of-voice pillars
In a nutshell, your tone of voice is:
Formal (rather than casual)
Serious (rather than funny)
Irreverent (rather than respectful)
Matter-of-fact (rather than enthusiastic)
We refer to it as FSIM for short.
Keep in mind that your tone of voice should be a natural reflection of your brand's personality, allowing for occasional variations and flexibility as needed to best convey your message. For example, even if your tone is generally formal, there may be occasions when using a more casual tone is appropriate and adds value to your message. See our tone of voice examples for inspiration.
Your brand peers
Do these brands feel similar to one another? No brand is exactly the same, but you might notice that they use comparable language, convey a consistent tone, and even structure their sentences similarly. Perhaps the common thread that connects them is their tone of voice!
While these brands may showcase similarities, it's important to recognise that each has its own distinct flavour. So draw inspiration from these examples to refine your own communication style, but remember to stay true to your brand's essence. Mastering tone of voice means blending inspiration with authenticity.
The Grounded Pathfinder in practice
Oracle is a global tech company known for its advanced database software and cloud services. Note how the language is formal, the tone is serious and the message is practical.
Get the full copy style guide
Incorporate the Grounded Pathfinder tone of voice into all your written content with a style guide that you can share with your whole team.
✔ AI assistant prompt (NEW!) to help generate copy matching your startup’s tone of voice using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI writing assistants.
✔ Microsoft Word version that you can edit and customise as you grow.
✔ PDF version that you can quickly and easily share with your writers.
✔ One-page summary to help your writers understand your tone of voice in minutes.
✔ Detailed tone of voice guidelines that explain every aspect of your tone of voice and act as your single point of truth.
✔ Writing examples with explainers to help you understand and communicate your tone of voice easily.
✔ Writing guidelines to help you create compelling and professional content that resonates with your audience.
✔ Tone of voice formula to help you turn any text into your own tone of voice in four simple steps.
Every startup and small business needs a copy style guide, but far too few have one! Stand out from the crowd with well-written copy that's on brand.
✔️ Create a trustworthy brand
Elevate your company’s reputation with a style guide that ensures a consistent, professional brand identity.
🧘 Streamline your writing process
Maximise operational efficiency with a style guide that empowers everyone to write on brand, from customer support to CEO.
✋ Eliminate tone of voice debt
Avoid time-consuming revisions later on with a style guide that enables your team to write on-brand content from the start.
💪 Boost team productivity
Eliminate uncertainty with a style guide that provides clear, easy-to-follow guidelines everyone can follow confidently.
⏩ Accelerate employee onboarding
Boost employee and freelancer productivity with a style guide that helps them quickly understand your brand’s communication style.
🤖 Leverage AI tools like ChatGPT
Improve the output of tools like ChatGPT with a style guide that includes high-quality prompts that ensures the tone of voice is on brand.
Recommended by founders
“We’re saving so much time getting freelance copywriters to write in our brand’s language now that we can hand over a style guide rather than spend time explaining how we want them to sound.”
Ed Schofield, Founder of Digital People
“These style guides are a perfect example of doing more with less - you no longer need a big budget to sound like a professional brand! We’re now encouraging many of our smaller clients to get one to match the visual work that we do.”
Rupert Mason, Founder of Sidekick Studios
“As an SEO agency, it’s imperative that we understand our clients’ tone of voice. These style guides are a game-changer, allowing us to write on-brand content for our smaller clients without needing numerous revisions.”
Yaser Ayub, Founder of Yaser UK
Hi, I’m Oli West
For over 10 years, I've written copy for some of the UK's most successful startups and small businesses. I’ve led content teams and have developed multiple brand guidelines.
Countless times I’ve grappled and dealt with the common thread that unites all new companies: the challenge of building trust with a new audience.
A consistent writing style can help build trust, but many businesses don’t have a style guide in place.
I created CopyStyleGuide.com to help.
Discover your company’s tone of voice
Empower your team to write consistent, compelling, on-brand copy by investing just 10 minutes of your time.