How to write content that sounds like you: Tone of voice explained

I have two cookbooks living on my kitchen shelf that could not be more different if they tried, and every time I catch sight of them next to each other, I think about how perfectly they explain the thing I'm about to explain to you.

One of them is covered in bright colours with a big grinning photo on the front, and inside it's all "bosh," "pukka," and "job done" in five ingredients or less. The other is moodier and more considered, full of pomegranate molasses and sentences that read like the writer genuinely wants you to understand why seasonal food matters, not just how to bung it in a pan and call it dinner.

Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi. Same industry, same basic job (get you to cook something nice), and yet wildly, unmistakably different voices.

And that's exactly what I want to talk about, because I think tone of voice is the single most underrated part of personal branding, and also the bit people find hardest to actually pin down and do something with.

Two chefs, two totally different businesses

Jamie Oliver is fun and accessible, all fifteen-minute meals, one pot, five ingredients, and the odd "pukka" thrown in for good measure. His cookbooks are colourful and loud, his tone is warm and a bit cheeky and endlessly encouraging, and the whole brand is built around one idea: cooking is for everyone, don't overthink it, have a laugh while you're at it.

Ottolenghi is a different proposition entirely, even though he's still rooted in fairly simple, real food underneath it all. The emphasis shifts towards richness, seasonality, and craft, and his tone treats you like someone who actually wants to understand food, rather than someone just trying to survive dinner. Food as an experience, in other words, not just a function.

Neither one is "better," they're just different answers to the same underlying question of who am I, and who am I actually talking to. And crucially, everything about how they write matches who they actually are, which is why you couldn't swap their voices and have either brand still make sense. Jamie writing like Ottolenghi would feel stiff and slightly performative. Ottolenghi writing "pukka" would feel like he'd borrowed someone else's coat.

That's tone of voice doing its job properly. It's not decoration, it's positioning, and it's doing more work for their businesses than most of their actual marketing.

So what actually makes up a tone of voice?

This is the bit people tend to skip past, mostly because "just be yourself" is lovely advice and almost completely useless in practice, so let's get a bit more specific than that. Your tone of voice is really made up of a handful of things, all working together without you necessarily noticing:

• The words you use, because every industry has its own jargon, and every person has their own go-to phrases beyond that, so whether you say "team" or "gang," "honestly" or "no cap," it's a small choice that sends a surprisingly big signal.

• The words you'd never use, which is just as telling as what you do say, and if a word or phrase would make you cringe reading it back to yourself, that's useful information worth paying attention to.

• Your rhythm, meaning whether you naturally lean towards short, punchy sentences, or whether, like me, you tend to drift into one long, winding sentence that loops around a few ideas before finally landing somewhere, by which point the reader has forgotten where it started but has hopefully enjoyed the ride.

• Where you're from, and I mean that quite genuinely, because someone from the North East is going to naturally reach for different words, different warmth, and a different kind of bluntness than someone from the South East chatting to their mates, and your regional voice doesn't (and shouldn't) disappear just because you've switched from talking to typing.

• Your sense of humour, or the lack of one, since some people are naturally funny on the page, some are naturally dry or sincere or a little chaotic, and all of that is valid, whereas forcing jokes that aren't really you tends to land far more awkwardly than simply not being funny in the first place.

  
  

None of this is about performing a personality you don't have. It's about noticing the one you already do have, and then actually letting it show up on the page instead of editing it out in the name of sounding "professional."

Why bother? Because it's how people buy into you, not just the post

Here's the actual point underneath all of this: tone of voice is what makes your content feel like you, specifically, rather than a generic, interchangeable version of "professional person working in your industry," and that matters for a couple of reasons that are worth sitting with.

First, and most obviously, it makes you stand out. If everyone in your industry is writing in the same clean, safe, faintly corporate voice, then the person who actually sounds like a human being with real opinions and a real way of talking is the one people remember on a Thursday afternoon, three scrolls later. Sameness is, quietly, the enemy of memorable.

Second, and more importantly in my opinion, it's what makes your offline self match your online self. If your LinkedIn voice is polished and formal, but you're actually blunt and funny and a bit chaotic in real life, you've created a mismatch without realising it, and when someone finally gets on a call with you, or meets you at an event, there's a small gap between who they expected and who you actually are. That gap costs you trust, even if neither of you can quite put your finger on why the vibe suddenly feels a little off.

Get your tone of voice right, though, and there's no gap to fall into. People read your posts, then they meet you, and they think "yep, that's exactly who I thought you'd be," and that consistency, more than any single well-crafted post, is what makes people buy into you rather than whatever you happened to publish that particular week. People who buy into you tend to be more forgiving, more loyal, and considerably more likely to become clients than people who simply liked one post and scrolled on.

How to actually find yours

You don't need a brand workshop to get at this, although if you fancy one, you know exactly where to find me. A handful of honest questions will get you most of the way there, so it's worth actually sitting down and answering them properly rather than skimming past:

• How do you actually talk to a friend about your industry, over a coffee, with no filter on and nobody watching? That's usually much closer to your real tone than anything you've been carefully typing out for LinkedIn.

• What are three words or phrases you say constantly, in real life, that you'd never in a million years see written into a corporate brand guideline?

• What's a word or phrase you see other people in your industry use that makes you wince, just slightly, every time you read it? Good. That's one to avoid.

• If a client described you to a friend after meeting you properly, what would they say about the way you talk, and does your writing actually sound like that person?

  
  

Write your next post as though you're answering those questions honestly, rather than auditioning for a job you already have.

Voice plus formula, that's the whole thing

If you read my last post on the 50/25/20/5 content formula, think of the two as a pair, because the ratio tells you what to post and how often, while tone of voice tells you how to actually say it once you get there.

Get the ratio right with no real voice behind it, and you'll post consistently but sound like everyone else in your industry. Get the voice right with no ratio underneath it, and you'll sound brilliant but slightly random, with no real structure pulling it all together. Nail both at once, though, and you end up with content that's structured enough to actually build a following, and personal enough that the following sticks around, because at that point, it's genuinely you they're following, not a template with your logo stamped on top of it.