Brand Voice: how your business sounds, set once

The page opens on How brand voice works, four numbered steps (Make a voice, Fine-tune it, Hear it and check it, Everything writes in it). It starts open when you have no voices and folded once you do; press its title to open or close it. Below it, every field in the tool has a round ? button that opens a short explanation with a Good and a Weak example; press it again, press Escape, or click elsewhere to close it.

Your voices lists every voice you can see as a card: whose it is (Your business, Client: every website, or One website), its name, a colored bar and percentages for its tone mix, how many samples, topics, and rules it has, when it was last changed, and Used by links that open Content Kit's blog or product writer, or the website Assistant, already set to that voice. The search box matches names, clients, websites, and tones; the All, Yours, Clients, and Websites buttons filter by whose voice it is and show a count. Search and filter are kept in the page address, so a filtered list has its own link. New voice, at the top right, starts a new one.

A website's voice sits on top of the voice under it. If the website belongs to a client, that is the client's voice, shared by every website of that client; if it has no client, it is the website owner's own voice. Anything the website's voice sets wins; words to use and avoid, do and don't lists, topics, and rules from both apply. Writing for your own business with no website picked uses your own voice.

When you open a website's voice, a note names the voice underneath and, if you may change it, links to it. Owners, staff, and aiKit admins can change a voice; reviewers can read it but not change it.

New voice asks two things. Step 1, Who is this voice for: You (your own business), any client you work with (for all of their websites), or one website, each marked if it already has a voice. Step 2, How do you want to start, with three cards: Answer a few questions (about 2 minutes), Describe it in your words (about 30 seconds), and Learn from my writing (about 1 minute). Or start with a blank voice. Every way ends in the full editor with a draft and a note saying nothing is saved yet; you review each part and press Save voice.

Answer a few questions has four steps with a progress row: The business (optionally pick a kind of business, which fills in a matching tone mix and example topics and rules; then a name, what the business does, and who you write for), Tone (pick one to four tones and how much of each), How it reads (reading level and who is talking), and Words (words that sound like you, words you never want to see). Back and Next move between steps; Skip to review jumps to the editor at any point.

Describe it in your words takes a few sentences: how you want to sound, who you write for, anything to always or never say. Example buttons fill in sample notes for several kinds of business. Draft my voice turns the notes into a full voice: name, tone mix (and a different tone for a channel when your notes call for it), sentence style, words, do and don't lists, topic pillars, and rules. Or type a website address and press Draft from the website to draft it from that page; for a client or website, leaving the address empty uses its saved address and Client File.

Learn from my writing opens Your writing samples (below) so you can add as many pieces as you like, then Learn my voice. aiKit reads all of them, notices how each kind of writing differs, and proposes a tone mix, a tone per channel where your emails or social posts sound different, sentence style, words, do and don't lists, topics, and rules. It also lists what it found with a short quote from your own samples as proof; quotes are checked word for word against your samples, and any that don't match are dropped. Your samples are saved with the voice.

At the top: Paste or upload things you've already written. aiKit learns your voice from them. Add as many as you like. A voice holds up to 40 samples of up to 20,000 characters each. Each sample is labeled by type: Blog post, Product description, Website page, Email, Social post, or Other, and can have a title. When aiKit writes for one channel, it shows the writer short excerpts from samples of that type first.

Add samples three ways, chosen with Paste text, Upload files, and From a link; What kind of writing? sets the type for what you add next. Paste text has a title and the text, then Add sample. Upload files takes several files at once, by Choose files or by dropping them on the box: PDF, Word (.docx), plain text, Markdown, or HTML, up to 10 at a time and 8 MB each; each file becomes its own sample, titled from its first line (or a cleaned-up file name) and labeled with a best-guess type (an email, a product description, a website page, a social post, or a blog post); press Edit on a card to change the type. Scanned PDFs that are pictures of text can't be read; paste the words instead. From a link reads up to 5 public pages you wrote, one per line.

Added samples appear as cards with their type, title, word count, and where they came from, plus a count by type and a total word count. Edit opens the type, title, and full text; Done closes it; Remove takes it out. Changes to samples are saved with Save voice.

An open voice shows its name, when it was saved (or Not saved yet), the Used by links (Blog posts, Product copy, the website Assistant, and Emails, marked Coming soon), and six tabs: Basics, Tone, Words, Strategy, Samples, and Hear it & check. The tab is kept in the page address. Next at the bottom moves to the following tab. The bar at the bottom says Review your changes, then save or All changes saved; Save voice saves, and closing or reloading the page with unsaved changes asks first.

Basics: Voice name, What the business does, Who you write for, How easy should it be to read? (Simple, Everyday, Professional, Expert), and Who is talking? (We talk to you, I talk to you, or No you or we, which keeps the writing in the third person). Pressing a selected choice again clears it.

Tone: Tone mix lists twelve tones (Friendly, Expert, Straight-talking, Calm, Premium, Playful, Bold, Caring, Inspiring, Clean and modern, Down-to-earth, Witty). Pick up to four, or type your own tone (like neighborly or no-nonsense) and press Add tone; your own tones show in purple. A colored bar shows the mix and a slider per tone sets how much of it, shown as a percentage that always adds up to 100. The first tone leads. Tone in a few words holds three to five words that describe the sound, such as reassuring or plainspoken. Want a different tone for some channels? (folded until you use it) lists Website pages, Blog posts, Product descriptions, Emails, and Social posts, one line each showing its tones or Uses the main mix. Give it its own tone starts that channel from the main mix and opens its own mix and a short note; Edit and Done open and close it; Use main mix turns it off. Fine-tune (advanced), folded by default, has four optional sliders: Formal to Casual, Serious to Playful, Reserved to Bold, Plain to Technical.

Not sure? Get tone options, at the top of the Tone tab, reads what you've filled in (what the business does, who you write for) and your samples, and suggests two to four clearly different tones. Each option has a name (like Calm local expert), three to five tone words, a tone mix, three do and three don't tips, and a sample line written in that tone. Business facts are only used to judge what fits; they never appear as the tone, and the business's and people's names are removed from the suggestions. Use this tone makes it the voice's tone and saves right away, with a confirmation naming the tone; Use and edit puts it in the editor so you can adjust the mix before pressing Save voice. Suggest different options asks again.

Words: Words to use and Words to avoid (press Enter or Add; commas add several), Sentence style, Do and Don't lists, and Anything else the writer should know. After Learn from my writing, What aiKit found in your writing lists each trait with its quote; Remove takes out any you disagree with.

Examples to start from shows real-looking pillars and rules for a kind of business you pick: Landscaping company, Plumbing or home repair, Bakery or café, Dental office, Online clothing shop, Accounting firm, Fitness studio, or Real estate agent. For a landscaping company, the pillars are Seasonal lawn care tips, Before & after projects, and Local service areas, and the rules are Always mention free estimates, Never promise same-day service, and Link to the booking page in every post. Use this adds one; Use all of these adds every one not already added; Added marks what you already have. Plumbing or home repair shows rules like Always say 'licensed and insured' and Never say 'cheap'. Change the words afterward to fit the business. Add a pillar and Add a rule start your own from scratch.

The Kind of business picker starts on the closest match to what your voice says about the business. Topic pillars are the subjects your content should be known for, up to 12, each shown as one numbered row with its topic and what it covers. Edit opens its fields: Topic, What it covers, Search phrases, and optional Service areas (towns or zip codes) and Only for these products or categories; Done closes it. On switches a pillar off without deleting it; the arrows move it up or down, and higher means more important. Add your own pillar adds a blank one, already open. Blog ideas come from active pillars.

Rules are instructions every piece follows, up to 40, each one row showing the rule, its kind, where it applies, and a Required tag when set; Edit opens it and Add your own rule adds one. Each has a Kind (Always include, Never do, Link to a page, Mention an offer, Style or slogan, Cover a search topic), the rule itself, a Page to link for link rules, and Applies to: Everything, or any of Website, Blog, Products, Email, and Social, plus optional Trigger phrases, Only for topic (one pillar), and Required. A required rule is checked word for word in the checker: with trigger phrases only, any one of them must appear; with a page only, the page must be linked; with both, the link is required only when the topic comes up. A required rule with neither shows a note that it can't be checked yet. On, the arrows, and Remove work like pillars.

Both work on the voice as it is on screen, so you can hear a change before you save it. Pick Where it will appear (website, blog, product copy, email, or social), then type a message or press a starter (Holiday hours, New offer, Order shipped).

Hear it in this voice writes the message twice, side by side: Generic, the way a typical business would put it, and In your voice, with the same facts. What the voice changed lists the differences in plain words. Check this version moves the voiced text into the box so you can score it.

Check how well it matches scores any text, yours, a teammate's, or another tool's, from 0 to 100: 90 and up Sounds just like you, 70 to 89 Close, with small misses, 50 to 69 Partly on voice, under 50 Off voice. It shows the tones it heard next to your voice's mix, then pass or fix checks that need no AI: words to avoid found, a tip when none of your favorite words appear, point of view (for example any you or we in a No you or we voice), sentence length for Simple or Everyday reading, and every required rule. Suggested edits quote the exact words to change, with a rewrite and why; Apply to the text swaps it in. Neither Hear it nor the edits add facts that aren't in your text; where the voice wants a detail you didn't give (a link, a time), you get a [placeholder] to fill in. Changing the text clears old results so they always match what's in the box. Already working lists what fits.

• Content Kit blog posts and product descriptions: every draft reads the voice for its channel, including that channel's tone, samples of that type, and the rules that apply to it. Content Kit shows Writing in: with the voice's name.
• The website Assistant on a project page reads the website voice (website-page tone and rules) on every request, so words it writes on the site match the blog and the product pages.
• A project's Brand voice tab shows a summary of the voice with Open in Brand Voice.
• Emails: the email tone and email-only rules are saved now; email writing that uses them is coming soon.
• Free: drafting a voice, reading uploaded files, Hear it, and the checker don't use Content Kit uses. Each runs one short AI call; the PDF reader, the drafts, and the checker use the lowest-cost model, and Hear it uses the middle one.
• The AI can misread a voice from a few short samples. More and longer samples help, and nothing is saved until you review it and press Save voice.