Produces the definitive tone and identity reference for the client account: written voice, platform adjustments, vocabulary, emoji and hashtag policy, and visual identity direction for briefing a designer. Apply the east-african-english skill to this document's own prose.
Use When
- Every writer on the team uses a different register and the client wants one agreed tone with words to use and avoid.
- Tone needs adjusting per platform, for example warmer on Instagram and more formal on LinkedIn, without losing the brand.
- A designer needs a visual direction brief covering colours, imagery, typography cues and what the brand must never look like.
- Several people post for the brand and each does it differently: the team needs a social media style guide or rulebook covering emojis, hashtags, photo and video standards, who approves posts, when to pause posting after bad news, and grammar, UGX and date formats.
Do Not Use When
brand-strategy-and-distinctive-assetsfor which brand cues, buying moments and differentiation to build, including online shops competing on price.03-audience-personaswhen the audience is not yet understood.brand-voice-ai-trainingfor turning the approved voice into prompts and context blocks for AI tools.- Stop before inventing brand values, logos or claims the client has not confirmed; mark them for approval.
Required Inputs
| Artefact | Source/provider | Required? | If absent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three brand tone adjectives (the client's own words) | Section 6 of the 01-client-brief |
Yes | Do not proceed; they are the foundation of all voice decisions. Ask for them. |
| Client name, industry, country / city | 01-client-brief |
Yes | Ask; city defaults to Kampala, Uganda if not specified. |
| Brand colours and fonts | 01-client-brief Section 7 |
Yes | Accept descriptive answers ("dark green and gold", "a bold sans-serif") and mark hex codes and font names as to confirm. |
| Brands admired (2–3) and brands not to sound like (3), each with a note | 01-client-brief Section 6 |
Yes | Ask; without them the avoid-list relies on industry clichés only and must say so. |
Completed 03-audience-personas |
03-audience-personas output |
If available | Draft tone without persona alignment and flag it for review once personas exist. |
brand-voice-ai-training analysis note (ranked-source corpus, "what the author never does") |
Prior run for this client | If available | Derive tone from the adjectives alone and label the Right/Wrong examples as inferred. |
Workflow
- Collect the inputs; stop if the three tone adjectives are missing and ask for them.
- If
brand-voice-ai-traininghas already been run for this client, pull its analysis note rather than re-deriving tone from adjectives alone. - Write Section 1: 4–6 tone attributes derived from the three adjectives, each with a definition and two Right and two Wrong examples, then the 5–7 sentence voice summary paragraph.
- Write Section 2: platform tone adjustments for every platform the client is active on or has confirmed plans to use, rewriting the same sample announcement for each.
- Write Sections 3–5: vocabulary to use and to avoid (10–15 items each), the platform-by-platform emoji policy, and 1–3 branded hashtags plus community and discovery hashtag guidance.
- Write Section 6, the visual identity brief for a designer: photography direction, colour palette usage, typography guidance and image do's and don'ts. It does not produce design files.
- Test the draft against the quality standards; correct any attribute that cannot be traced to an adjective or any example pair that differs only by an emoji, and rerun the affected sections.
- Run the anti-slop ship gate and hand the guide to
05-social-media-strategyand the content team; produce the operational style guide only when the client asks for it.
Section templates and wording: voice-guide-section-templates.
Outputs
| Artefact | Consumer | Acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Brand voice guide (tone attributes, summary paragraph, platform adjustments, vocabulary, emoji policy, hashtags) | Everyone writing for the account; 05-social-media-strategy |
The definitive tone reference: client-specific, traceable to the three adjectives, actionable without further discussion. |
| Visual identity brief | The client's graphic designer or photographer | A practical written brief covering photography, colour roles, typography and image do's and don'ts. |
| Operational social brand style guide (on request) | Whoever runs the client's accounts | The nine sections in social-brand-style-guide, reusing this skill's voice outputs. |
Evidence Produced
| Evidence | Format | Acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Adjective-to-attribute trace | Table or note: adjective, derived attributes | A reader can trace each attribute to a client adjective. |
| Hashtag availability note | Note per branded hashtag | Records that the client was advised to search Instagram and TikTok before publishing. |
Capability and Permission Boundaries
Read and search only; analysis is read-only. Publishing, spend, live account changes, outreach and personal-data processing need explicit, action-specific client authority. The guide's own prose follows east-african-english, but the brand voice being defined may differ from EA standard if the client specifies a different style.
Degraded Mode
Without the client's three tone adjectives, return the narrowest qualified result and mark the affected checks not assessed. The input request, platform tone norms and the standard EA avoid list can still be delivered; tone attributes wait for the adjectives.
Decision Rules
| Condition | Action | Failure or risk avoided |
|---|---|---|
| The client needs an operational style guide for whoever runs its accounts, not only a voice guide and designer brief | Produce the nine-section guide in social-brand-style-guide, reusing this skill's voice outputs. | Operators publishing without approval, pause or formatting rules. |
A brand-voice-ai-training analysis note exists |
Feed its ranked-source corpus and "what the author never does" finding into the Section 1 Right/Wrong examples and the Section 3 avoid-list. | Inferred opposites in place of real, source-derived material. |
| The client works in a professional sector | Make at least one attribute address the tension between the professional sector and the warmth expected in EA communication. | A voice that is either cold or unprofessional for the market. |
| The brand is "professional and authoritative" rather than "warm and approachable" | Use fewer emojis; state permitted, limited or not permitted for functional, expressive and decorative types per platform. | Ambiguous "use occasionally" policies. |
| A platform is not active or planned | Omit it from the platform adjustments and emoji table. | Padding the guide with irrelevant platforms. |
| The audience is not yet understood | Route to 03-audience-personas and hand over the verified inputs already collected. |
Tone decisions misaligned with persona messaging. |
Quality Standards
- Tone attributes are derived logically from the client's three adjectives; a reader can trace the connection.
- Each attribute's "Right" and "Wrong" examples are distinct and clearly illustrate the difference, not variations on the same sentence.
- The brand voice summary paragraph is specific to this client; it cannot be applied to another client without rewriting.
- Platform tone adjustments show a genuine tonal shift between platforms using the same source message, not the same message with a different emoji.
- Vocabulary lists contain at least 3 items specific to the client's industry; generic EA professional vocabulary does not fill the list.
- Emoji policy is specific enough to act on without further discussion; ambiguous entries such as "use occasionally" are not acceptable.
- Visual identity brief is written as a practical designer brief, not as abstract brand theory; social graphics use a minimum 24px font size for mobile legibility.
- British English spelling throughout; tone of this document's own prose follows the
east-african-englishskill.
The branded-hashtag check is in the section templates checklist (§ Checklist).
Anti-Patterns
- Tone attributes that are synonyms of the adjectives ("Bold: bold"). Fix: write nuanced phrases such as "Bold in opinion, not in self-promotion".
- A voice summary that could fit any client. Fix: use the person-walking-into-a-room analogy with client-specific detail.
- Using hype words from the standard EA avoid list ("groundbreaking", "revolutionary", "game-changing", "amazing", "awesome", "unleash", "skyrocket"). Fix: include them in the avoid table and use plain, evidenced language.
- A WhatsApp message that opens with a promotional hook. Fix: lead with context and value, end with one call to action, maximum 3 sentences.
- Branded hashtags already in wide use. Fix: advise the client to search Instagram and TikTok before publishing, and keep the hashtag short, specific and consistent across platforms.
- Treating the visual brief as design output. Fix: write guidance for the designer; do not produce design files.
References
- Voice guide section templates: read when writing any of the six sections, the Right/Wrong format, the platform rules or the colour and typography tables.
- social-brand-style-guide: read when the client wants a complete social media style guide with approval workflow, content pause protocol, emoji, hashtag, media and grammar rules.
03-audience-personas: read when personas are missing or tone must align with persona messaging notes.- Anti-AI slop production gate: read when drafting the example phrasing and vocabulary lists.
ai-slop-audit: read at the release checkpoint.