Getting AI to Model Your Unique Brand Voice

Wish your AI content sounded more like you? Want to create AI-written content to match your brand? 

In this article, you’ll discover how to get AI to model your unique voice.

How to Make AI Content Sound Like You: The ‘VOICE’ Framework

Are you struggling to create authentic AI-generated content that captures your brand's unique voice? You're not alone. Many marketers and content creators find it challenging to make artificial intelligence content sound like them. It's easy to end up with generic, robotic-sounding text that lacks personality and fails to connect with your audience.

The “VOICE” framework (Voice, Objective, Insights, Composition, and Examples) provides a systematic approach to feeding the AI the right information to generate on-brand content that sounds like you. By carefully curating your inputs to the AI, you can guide it to produce output that aligns with your unique brand voice and resonates with your target audience.

#1: Define Your Voice

Defining your voice is the first and most critical step in making AI content sound like you. Your voice encompasses your personality, tone, and language style. The unique way you communicate sets you apart from others in your industry and helps you build a strong connection with your audience.

To identify your brand's voice, look at your existing content, such as your blog posts, social media updates, or email newsletters. Analyze your writing style and look for patterns in your communication style. Are you conversational, humorous, or more formal? Do you use certain words or phrases repeatedly? Do you write in short, punchy sentences or longer, more detailed paragraphs?

For example, Molly Mahoney, author of Performance Power, loaded all her Facebook content from 2018 onward into a spreadsheet, categorizing each post as either business or personal and noting the number of likes and comments it received. 

She then fed this data into Claude, an AI tool, and asked it to describe her brand's tone, personality, language style, themes, and communication style. The AI analyzed her content and provided insights like:

“Your brand personality is empathetic, approachable, and relatable. It blends personal experiences with professional insights, creating a friendly and supportive atmosphere.”

“The tone is conversational and uplifting with a touch of humor. You clearly aim to inspire and motivate your audience, often using personal anecdotes to establish a genuine connection.”

“Your messages often revolve around personal growth, overcoming challenges, and embracing new technologies like AI and automation. There's a strong focus on the transformative power of coaching and learning.”

By using this approach, Molly gained valuable insights into how her audience perceives her communication style and what elements of her voice resonate with them the most. 

You can use a similar method to analyze your own content and get a clearer picture of your unique voice.

If you don't have a large body of existing content to analyze, Molly suggests asking others how they would describe your personality and communication style. You can also write a few pieces of content yourself and then feed them into an AI tool for analysis.

Once you clearly understand your voice, document it in your brand identity guidelines. Include details on your personality, tone of voice, language style, common themes, and any specific words or phrases integral to your brand voice. This document will be a reference for yourself and your team when creating high-quality content, whether with AI or without, ensuring consistency across all your communications.

#2: Determine the Objective of Your On-Brand Content

The next step in the “VOICE” framework is to determine the objective of your content. What do you want to achieve with each piece of content you create? Do you want to make sales, build your community, get people to subscribe to your channel, or something else? Having a clear objective is crucial because it guides the entire content creation process and helps you measure the success of your efforts.

Molly emphasizes the importance of having a clear objective for your content. She gives the example of Social Media Examiner's engagement posts, where the primary aim is to get people to comment and start a conversation.

By knowing this objective upfront, the Social Media Examiner team can craft content specifically designed to encourage engagement, such as asking thought-provoking questions or inviting people to share their experiences.

Your objective will shape the type of content you create, the topics you cover, and the call to action you include. For example, if your objective is to make sales, your content might focus on the benefits of your product, address common objections, and include a strong call to action to purchase. You might use persuasive language, social proof, and urgency tactics to convince readers to take action.

On the other hand, if your objective is to build your community, your content might be more focused on providing value, fostering connections, and encouraging interaction. You might share helpful resources, ask for feedback, or create opportunities for your audience to connect with each other.

You can also have different levels of objectives. You might have a “super objective” at the highest level that guides your overall content strategy. For example, Molly's super objective is to “write marketing-focused content to build a community and lead to sales.” Under this overarching objective, you can have sub-objectives for specific content or campaigns.

When setting your objectives, be as specific as possible. Instead of a vague goal like “increase engagement,” set a measurable target such as “increase comments by 25% over the next month.” This specificity will help you create more targeted content and accurately assess your progress.

By clearly defining your objectives and communicating them to the AI, you can ensure that the generated content is purposeful and aligns with your goals. The AI can then optimize the content to include the most relevant information, calls to action, and persuasive elements to help you achieve your desired outcome.

#3: Provide AI With Relevant Insights 

To help the AI understand your brand and generate content that sounds like you, you need to provide it with relevant insights. This includes information about your company, products, target audience, and their pain points. The more context you can give the AI about your business and the people you're trying to reach, the better it can capture your unique voice and create content that resonates.

Molly shares how she documents this information in a company detail sheet that includes:

• Offers and products: A list of all your company's products and services, along with a brief description of each.
• Features and benefits of each offer: The key features of each product or service and the specific benefits they provide to your customers.
• Pain points and “tickle points” of the ideal client: Your target audience's challenges, frustrations, and desires, as well as what makes them laugh or feel good.
• Brand bio and how to use it: A short description of your brand and how you want it portrayed in your content.

You can gather similar information from your internal documents, such as your brand guidelines, mission statement, product descriptions, and customer personas. Look for any data that helps paint a picture of who you are as a company, what you offer, and who you serve.

In addition to these internal sources, Molly recommends using data from your analytics tools to identify your best-performing content and your audience's demographics. Look for patterns in the topics, formats, and styles of content that get the most engagement, as well as any common characteristics among your most active followers or customers.

Once you have compiled all this information, feed it into your AI tool. Molly suggests creating a Google Doc or spreadsheet with all the relevant details and copying and pasting it into the AI platform.

You can also experiment with feeding the AI specific pages or sections of your website, such as your “About Us” page or product descriptions.

The more relevant information you provide, the better the AI can understand your brand and capture your unique voice. As Molly puts it, “If you're trying to jump straight into the AI and you never know if it works as a human, it's going to be a lot harder to get results because you're skipping the piece that is actually the foundation here.”

She also notes that providing insights is an ongoing process. As your business evolves and you learn more about your audience, update the information you feed to the AI. This will help ensure your content stays relevant and sounds like you, even as your brand grows and changes.

#4: Consider the Best Composition for Your Needs

AI tools can generate content in various formats, such as text, tables, charts, and even images. When using AI to create content, it's essential to consider the best composition for your specific needs. The right format can make your content more engaging, easier to understand, and more likely to achieve your desired objective.

Here are four ways composition can impact the effectiveness of your content:

• Short paragraphs with spaces in between for social media posts: When writing for platforms like Facebook or Instagram, Molly recommends using short paragraphs with a single sentence each, separated by spaces. This makes the content more visually appealing and easier to read on mobile devices.

• Tables for comparing products or features: If you're creating content that compares different options, such as a list of software tools or product features, presenting the information in a table format can make it easier for readers to scan and quickly find the details they're looking for.
• Code snippets for technical content: If you're creating content that involves code, such as a tutorial for developers or instructions for adding a widget to a website, including properly formatted code snippets can make the content more valuable and actionable for your audience.
• Images and visual aids to break up text and illustrate concepts: Adding relevant images, charts, or other visual elements to your content can make it more engaging and help reinforce your key points. For example, if you're writing about a complex topic, a simple diagram or infographic can make the information more accessible and memorable.

When choosing the composition for your AI-generated content, consider the following factors:

• The platform or channel where the content will be published: Different platforms have different norms and best practices for formatting content. For example, long-form blog posts may require a structure different from bite-sized social media updates.
• The preferences and habits of your target audience: Consider how your audience typically consumes content and what formats they prefer. Do they tend to engage more with visual content or in-depth articles? Do they prefer step-by-step guides or high-level summaries?
• The purpose and objective of the content: The format of your content should support your overall goal. If you're trying to drive sales, use a more persuasive, benefits-focused composition. If you aim to educate or inform, a clear, logical structure with supporting examples may be more effective.

Molly also notes that you can use AI to experiment with different compositions and see what works best for your brand and audience. For example, you could generate the same piece of content in multiple formats (e.g., paragraph text, a bulleted list, a table) and then compare the engagement and performance of each version.

When specifying the composition in your AI prompts, be as clear and specific as possible. Use formatting instructions like “Write this in a table with the headers X, Y, Z” or “Create a numbered list of steps, with a brief explanation of each step.” The more guidance you provide, the more likely the AI will generate content in your desired format.

#5: Provide AI With Examples of Your Content

The final step in the “VOICE” framework is to provide the AI with examples of content that reflects your voice and style. Examples serve as a template for the AI to follow, helping it understand the type of content you want to create and ensuring that the output aligns with your consistent brand voice.

Here are four examples you can provide to the AI:

• High-performing posts from your own content history: Look through your analytics to identify your most successful blog posts, social media updates, or email campaigns. These examples demonstrate what resonates with your audience and can help the AI replicate that style and tone.
• Engaging questions or prompts that have generated discussion: If you want to create content that sparks conversation, provide examples of questions or thought-starters that have prompted lively comments or debates in the past.
• Excerpts from other writers or brands you admire: While you don't want to copy someone else's voice directly, you can use examples from different sources to illustrate a specific writing technique, tone, or perspective you'd like to emulate. Just be sure to put your own spin on it and avoid plagiarism.
• Outlines or templates for specific types of content: If you have a particular format or structure you want the AI to follow, provide a detailed outline or template. This could include the key points to cover, the order in which they should be presented, and any specific language or transitions.

When providing examples, aim for a balance of specificity and flexibility. You want to give the AI enough guidance to capture your desired voice and style while leaving room to generate original content and ideas.

In her own work, Molly often uses a combination of examples and instructions to guide the AI. For instance, when creating a weekly content plan, she might specify the type of post for each day and include an example:

“Monday, you'll create a Barnum statement. Start the week off with a general yet profound statement that virtually anyone could find true about themselves. This should make the audience feel understood and intrigued. For example, ‘You're doing your best, and we appreciate you. Pat yourself on the back. You deserve a good job.'”

By providing this context and a specific example, Molly helps the AI understand exactly what she's looking for and increases its chances of generating content that fits her brand.

Another way to use examples is to feed them into the AI as part of your “insights” data. For instance, if you have a particular blog post or email that perfectly captures your brand voice, you could include the full text of that piece in the information you provide to the AI. This helps give the AI a more comprehensive understanding of your voice and style.

As you work with the AI and see what kind of output it generates, continue to refine and update your examples. If you find that certain prompts or examples consistently lead to content that misses the mark, try tweaking them or providing different examples until you get the desired results.

Putting it All Together

By using the “VOICE” framework and providing the AI with the necessary information, you can significantly increase the chances of the AI generating content that sounds like you. This can save you time and enable your team to create content that consistently reflects your brand voice, even if they don't have your writing skills or intimate knowledge of your brand.

Molly's team used the “VOICE” framework to create an entire podcast episode based on questions from their community. They started by feeding the questions into an AI tool and asking it to answer in Molly's voice, using the insights and examples they had previously compiled. The AI generated a script that sounded just like Molly, including her unique turns of phrase and personal anecdotes.

They then ran this AI-generated script through a text-to-speech tool called ElevenLabs, which created an audio version of the episode in Molly's voice. The result was a fully AI-generated podcast episode that sounded convincingly like Molly and provided valuable content for her audience.

This example illustrates the potential of the “VOICE” framework to streamline your content creation process and achieve a level of consistency and authenticity that would be difficult to maintain manually, especially as your content needs to scale.

Molly quickly points out that AI is a powerful tool but is not a complete replacement for human creativity and judgment. She recommends constantly reviewing and editing the AI-generated content to add your own personal touch and ensure it aligns with your brand voice and message.

This editing process is crucial because, while AI can mimic your voice and style, it doesn't have the same context, empathy, or understanding of your audience that you do. It may generate technically correct content but lacks the nuance, emotion, or specificity that makes your brand voice unique. By reviewing and refining the AI output, you can preserve the efficiency benefits of AI while still maintaining the human element that sets your brand apart.

As you implement the “VOICE” framework, remember it's an iterative process. The more you use it and the more feedback you provide to the AI, the better it will become at capturing your voice over time. Don't be discouraged if the first few attempts don't perfectly match your vision. Keep refining your inputs, providing specific examples and instructions, and editing the output until you are satisfied with the results.

It's also important to remember that the “VOICE” framework is a tool, not a strict formula. Feel free to adapt and customize it to fit your unique needs and workflow. You may find that certain components are more important for your brand than others or that you must add additional steps to the process. The key is to use the framework as a starting point and experiment and iterate until you find the best approach for you.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Facebook and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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