How to build a company brand (step-by-step framework + our real Brand Voice Guideline doc)

💎 I recently created a Brand Voice guidelines for one of our new products. So I decided to open-source our 📚 Brand Voice Guideline and share my process with the awesome Product Hunt community. 🛠 Technically, creating a brand voice came down to defining brand-building elements, essential brand attributes, and content & design guidelines. All those parts formed Brand Voice Guidelines, the soul and heart of the Lemon Hire brand. Our Brand Voice Guidelines determined all our customer-facing deliverables and became the foundation for our GTM. Below you can see the 9 steps I followed. Feel free to adapt them for your brand-building work 👇 1️⃣: 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 ↳ Your first step in creating a brand is to understand why you need one 😄. - Do you want to differentiate better? - Get on top of user minds? - Create emotional connections with users or drive more growth? 🎯 Start with having clear goals you want to achieve. 2️⃣ : 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 ↳ You need to dive deep into defining your brand personality. It comes to what promises, values, beliefs, and personality traits define your brand. You can go even more granular with 3 words describing your brand! Check out Brand Voice guidelines to see how I did it for Lemon Hire 👀 3️⃣: 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 ↳ Your brand personality should reflect your user's needs and the value prop your product brings. 🤔 Are you sure that your brand is talking to your users? 4️⃣: 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬 ↳ How do you describe yourself? How does your brand feel and sound? If your brand were a “hero”, whom would it be? All those are important questions to answer. They are essential parts of your brand-building work. 5️⃣: 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 ↳ Those are exactly how they sound: narratives that illustrate how your brand solves problems and fulfills the users' needs. We got very creative with Lemon Hire brand stories 😃 6️⃣: 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐬 ↳ These specs determine the tone of voice, rules for your copywriting style (sentence structure, vocabulary, content depth), and identify preferred words and phrases.📚 It's like a practical guide on how to use your brand in real-life situations. 7️⃣: 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 ↳ Align your design elements with your brand voice to create a cohesive brand experience. This part is design-driven. For all of the steps above, invite key stakeholders and run an internal brand-building workshop. 8️⃣: 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 ↳ Everything mentioned about becomes part of your brand voice guidelines. 💎 Those should be the one source of truth, the main guardians of your product brand identity. Don't forget to educate your team on the importance of brand voice, explain how to use it, and ensure its adoption 🫶 9️⃣: 𝐄𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 ↳ Maintain consistency in your brand voice across all touchpoints, including website, marketing materials, social media, and customer communications. Be your brand voice guardian. * * * ❤️ I open-sourced our Brand Voice Guideline via Reforge (an educational platform). It's free but you need to create an account. I have NO affiliation with Reforge, it's just the avenue where I share our doc. Feel free to check it out here: https://www.reforge.com/artifacts/brand-voice-guidelines-at-lemon-hire