your brand voice isn't what you think it is

Perception vs intention

You know what your brand sounds like in your head. Confident, approachable, maybe a little witty, professional but not stuffy….but that's not what your audience hears.

There's almost always a gap between how you think you sound and how you actually come across. And that gap is where trust gets lost.

I've audited dozens of accounts where the team described their voice one way and the content read completely differently. Some said "authentic and relatable" but the posts read corporate and stiff. Or they said "bold and confident" but every caption was hedged with qualifiers.

The problem is that we're too close to our own content to see it clearly. We know what we meant. We hear the tone we intended. But the audience only sees the words on the screen.

Here's a test: pull your last ten posts. Read them out loud. Not in your head — actually out loud. Does it sound like a human talking? Does it sound like the human you want to be? Or does it sound like a press release wearing a casual t-shirt?

Even better: have someone who doesn't know your brand read your content and describe the personality back to you. Their description is your actual brand voice. The gap between that and what you intended is what you need to fix.

Brand voice isn't about picking adjectives in a strategy document. It's about how those adjectives show up in actual sentences. "Friendly" means nothing until you define what friendly sounds like in practice. What words do you use? What do you avoid? How long are your sentences? Do you use contractions? Do you ask questions?

The brands with the strongest voices are ruthlessly specific about these details. They don't just say "we're conversational" — they have rules about exactly what conversational means.

And voice isn't just about words. It's about what you talk about, what you don't talk about, and how you respond when things get hard. Voice is values made audible.

Stop describing your voice and start defining it. Get specific enough that anyone on your team could write a post and it would sound the same.

Your brand voice is what your audience hears, not what you think you're saying.