Should your content marketing follow Brand Voice Guidelines? (TL;DR NO)
Most companies treat their content writers like brand ventriloquists. Every blog post, every report, every ebook gets filtered through the same voice guidelines that make everyone sound identically on-brand. The result? Content that reads like it was written by a committee—or increasingly, by AI.
So, I want to pose the question today: Should content writers continue to be constrained by Brand Voice guidelines? My answer is a definitive NO.
First, a distinction: Copy versus content
Before we go further, let me be clear: I’m talking about content here i.e., blogs, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, newsletter emails, etc. I am not talking about copywriting.
Copywriting lives in the following places:
Your website and its associated landing pages
Email drips apart from your content newsletter (e.g., product announcements, account notifications, onboarding drips, etc.)
Ad copy like PPC and SEM campaigns, affiliate banners, and offline ads, if you buy that
In-app messaging and UX writing
Copywriting should absolutely adhere to Voice & Tone guidelines because it’s the brand speaking directly to the market, so it should be writer-agnostic.
I know the job of copywriter and content marketer are often combined into some general ‘wordsmithery’ person, but they are distinctly different tasks and have different guiding principles. Brand voice is essential to one, but not necessarily to the other, yet somehow it has crept into both.
Content should ‘host’ voices, not subsume them
So while copywriting requires uniformity among voices, my belief is that content should be treated differently. With content, we shouldn’t seek to unify our blogs and other assets under one brand Voice, but rather allow individual voices to comingle without losing their identity. The reasons are pretty simple:
1. People follow people
I feel this is fairly uncontroversial. I don’t follow Hubspot on LinkedIn; I follow
. We don’t go around saying things about how smart Orbit Media is; we say how smart Andy Crestodina is.
But even looking at content more broadly: In magazines and newspapers most of us have certain columnists and writers we follow and cultivate interest in and loyalty towards. Our go-to voices on certain topics. And whether we’re hate-reading or reading from a sense of deep affinity, that connection always ties back to a person.
2. Hosting different voices expands your reach
I tend to think of content marketing as a suave dinner party that the brand is hosting—just as a publication like the NYT will have different writers, viewpoints, and styles of expression all living under a single masthead. The more voices around the table, the more variety there is in the conversations being had.
This isn’t just more fun, it’s pragmatic too: Few of us read every story in every publication we buy. More of us turn to the page with the writer we love. The more writers and different voices you have, the more readers you can reach and resonate with.
But there’s also a beautiful cross-pollination that can happen. You can expose readers to ideas and voices they might not otherwise have read. You can challenge them with ideas (and complexity) that might not have elicited that first click. Hosting a ‘party’ of writers creates an environment where readers can also see themselves at the table. It’s not some brand proselytizing, it’s a group of humans in dialogue.
3. Brand as gracious host > Brand as assimilator
Shifting from this perspective of assimilating every voice into one bland voice to hosting a party of eclectic, interesting, lively, and sometimes opposing voices does not have to result in chaos.
Your brand is still the host, so it controls which voices are invited. Obviously, you’ll invite ‘well-behaved’ guests so the whole thing doesn’t spiral into chaotic and risky behaviour. This isn’t about reneging control altogether; it’s about exercising it in a different way (from brand policing to editorial responsibility).
A good host creates the conditions for interesting conversations but doesn't script what everyone says. They might set some ground rules (no politics at dinner, keep it respectful), but they want their guests to be themselves because that's what makes the party interesting. The host's reputation is built on consistently curating good conversations, not on controlling every word spoken.
Yep, AI will magnify all of this
If I already believed content should remove itself from Brand Voice constraints, I believe it more in today’s AI frazzle. Everything that we’re seeing points to giving space to individual opinions, quirks, and styles in your brand:
E-A-A-T importance: We have long known the importance of E-E-A-T for SEO, but we know that it’s even more important for GEO (or whatever you’re calling it).
Brand voice easily becomes bland AI voice: AI is going to be a better assimilator of ‘voice’ than your brand can ever be. It will consume and subsume and reproduce that bland brand voice at mind-boggling velocity.
What’s left that’s truly special? Actual voices. Voices with their weird turns of phrase, their unexpected ideas juxtapositions, their ability to be serious and playful in the same paragraph, and on and on…
AI can mimic your brand guidelines perfectly, but it cannot:
Conduct new original research, interviews, or investigations
Express heartfelt, strong opinions
Make those random, eclectic connections that come from lived experience
When you flatten your writers into brand voice compliance, you're training them to sound no better than what AI can already do.
How did we end up here in the first place?
If you’re with me that content marketing becomes much more exciting (and future-proofed) this way, you may start to wonder why we went along with the brand-assimilation mindset for so long. As with most things, I think there were a few forcing functions:
The visual-first Creative Director: Brand Guidelines usually come from a Creative Director, and these talented individuals generally come from a visual design background. This not only explains the flimsy articulation of voice we often see in brand guidelines but also the emphasis on visual systems over linguistic ones. They’re often just not thinking about the ins and outs of content marketing at all.
The CEO-as-controlling-voice: CEOs (particularly in SaaS/D2C) often see themselves as the primary thought leader and embodiment of the brand and want all content to essentially be an extension of their own voice and perspective. This immediately establishes a level of control that’s very different from a media company where the Managing Editor understands they're in the business of curating and elevating other voices.
The inexperienced content marketer: Falling in line with a prescribed Voice and Tone may be a more comfortable place for an inexperienced Content Marketer. As said, you need a strong vision to play host to talented writers with developed perspectives on things. You need to be able to check egos when they threaten to run riot. Sticking with Brand Voice may provide a feeling of powerful gatekeeping without the actual responsibility of really tough calls.
Distribution channels and KPIs that didn’t ‘care’: SEO never cared about voice, and vanity metrics never gave qualitative feedback. So nobody was really hung up on the fact that the writing was becoming a bland informationapedia. Even now that everybody is saying E-E-A-T a lot more, they’re still trying to figure out how to do it the grey-goo way.
Unfounded risk aversion: All the what-ifs. Like: What if this writer/employee leaves? What if they post something on their social media that we disagree with? Again, I think an experienced content marketer knows how to navigate these situations. Yeah, it’s a bummer when a ‘voice’ leaves your org, but shit happens. Jimmy Daly was synonymous with Animalz for many years. Then he left for Superpath. They all handled it like a win/win.
Start now: How to move to the Brand as host mindset
So, how do you actually make this shift? Here are some key steps:
1. Swap voice guidelines for editorial standards
Whereas Voice and Tone Guidelines typically include:
Personality attributes (conversational, authoritative, friendly)
Writing mechanics (sentence length, use of contractions, formality level)
Vocabulary choices (industry jargon vs. plain language)
Perspective (first person vs. third person)
Editorial Standards would focus on:
Accuracy standards (fact-checking requirements, source verification)
Disclosure requirements (AI assistance, conflicts of interest, sponsored content)
Ethical boundaries (what topics to avoid, how to handle sensitive subjects)
Quality benchmarks (research depth, originality requirements)
Legal guardrails (avoiding claims the company can't support)
Basic mechanics (AP style, grammar, formatting)
Publication standards (headline conventions, meta descriptions, tagging)
And those standards, along with a managing editor with a strong vision, should suffice to keep your ‘content party’ civilized.
2. Choose writers who are a ‘voice add’, not a ‘voice fit’
The other thing that has to change is how you look for writers. It’s no longer just about basic writing ability—it’s about voice.
When I worked in print, my writers were an eclectic bunch. I had one writer who was my attack dog, one the great humanizer of every story, one who was the pragmatic voice of reason, helping people make smart life decisions. I had another who was the moral compass and one other who was an unbiased explorer of topics, capable of occupying multiple viewpoints at once.
When we ideated stories, we knew almost instantly what voice would best bring those ideas to life. Interestingly, my best voice wasn’t my best writer by content marketing standards. This wasn’t about the cleanest copy or the tightest structure. Editing was a hands-on back-and-forth, not a Grammarly plug-in.
In content marketing, we tend to think about our writers differently. We prioritize Brand fit, copy hygiene, and SEO/GEO checklists above anything related to individual voice. But what if thinking about ‘brand fit’ instead of ‘brand add’ was part of how we got ourselves into so much grey goo content in the first place? And what if we started to look at writers differently—as voices first?
Here are the steps to navigating that transition:
Take stock: Start by taking stock of your current writers. Go back to their portfolio and look at their actual writing chops (not necessarily what they’ve been writing for you).
Talk to them: Set up a coffee date with them and talk them through this pivot. They’ll either get excited and start to spill ideas and perspectives they’ve been keeping hidden, or they’ll blanch at the idea that they can’t just regurg desktop information anymore. You’ll probably weed out some of your current freelance writers as a result of this. But they’re probably the kind of writers who would increasingly struggle to outmatch AI anyway.
Seek out writers in unusual places: Your best voices may not be actual writers. Listen to the people in your org who are impassioned and full of perspectives and controversial opinions.
Swap ‘brand onboarding’ for ‘product onboarding’: Then steer them to worthy topics and work collaboratively with them on structure, supporting information, and all the other things good editors do.
3. Build brand around your writers
Instead of choosing writers that fit your brand, build your brand around the voices you choose. This means:
Amplify their personal brands: Amplify content from their social channels, promote their speaking gigs, celebrate their wins, even when they're not directly about your product
Make bylines matter: Prioritize prominent author bios, headshots, social links, maybe even author pages that showcase all their work for you
Get them in front of audiences: Work with your PR team to get them on podcasts, panels, speaking at events, and quoted in industry publications
Let them be the face of your expertise: When reporters need quotes about your industry, your writers should be the ones providing them, not just the CEO
Yes, some writers may eventually leave and take their relationships with them. But that's how media companies have operated successfully for decades.
Great voices also bring great ideas
The loveliest thing about expanding your content to welcome all these eclectic voices isn’t just about what they’ll do for your content execution; it’s the richness that they’ll bring to your actual content strategy.
They’ll offer up ideas and opinions that you might never come across in your keyword research or competitive analysis. They'll surface trends and insights you'd never find in keyword research because they're living and breathing these topics, not just mining them for content ideas. This will lend so much originality to what you produce.
And the best news of all is that if you start making this change now, you’ll have a massive advantage. While everyone else is focused on gaming algorithms and prompt-hacking LLMs, you’ll be building a set of content contributors who add value on top of the things AI lets you automate.
It’s not about 10x-ing your content production, it’s about 10x-ing your content’s originality, diversity, and reach.
🍓 Sweet treats before you go…
If you read one thing…
Read
’s most recent Substack, chock-full of amazing insights on style, brand, and substance. One part that really spoke to me: “a lot of people are trying to find ways to keep their favorite, most beloved things protected from the algorithm, or curate environments and circles that aren’t necessarily ‘exclusive’ but also aren’t algorithmically ‘discoverable’ per se”.If you buy one thing…
I’m doing a “No Buy July” because I have my eye on some bigger prizes that I need to save up for. That said, I get untold pleasure browsing art galleries, and I just spent an entire hour clicking through the amazing collections at Jenna Burlingham and picking out a few fantasy favourites. The curation alone is worthy of admiration (this is the gallerist's home if you’re into that kind of thing).
