Why Do You Need a Brand Voice Style Guide?

In a recent interview, I was asked about the bottom line of having a brand voice:

How does defining our voice make us money?

It’s a good question.

I’m a big believer that you shouldn’t be doing things in business just because somebody else says so. You shouldn’t be blogging if you don’t know why you’re blogging. You shouldn’t do an ideal customer/reader profile unless you understand how you’re going to use it. Just doing exercises for the sake of doing them is a waste of time.

So why should you …

Read More

22 Words that Make You Sound Like Everybody Else

My first real writing job was as a copyeditor with a company that produced travel guide magazines (the kind you pick up free in the hotel or airport) for cities across the country. 

(They brought me in to help proofread because a guide for a very large city on the East coast had been published with the word “accommodations” misspelled on every single page of the hotel listings section. I will never misspell that word again in my life.)

It was a wonderful learning and growing experience for me. I’d never been around …

Read More

Brand Voice: What it Is and How to Develop It

“Voice” happens to be my thing. 

In my 20s, during my quarter-life crisis, when I was trying to figure out what to do with myself after it became clear that Hollywood and I didn’t have a future, I had a series of really boring temp jobs, the most mind-numbing of which was answering phones for an exterminating company. 

My entire job was to input data from the forms the actual exterminators brought back, detailing what had been done and how much poison had been applied, and answering phones. I was able to complete the …

Read More