For Agencies
How to Keep Voice Consistent When You Outsource Writing
Clients notice inconsistency before they notice quality, and it is the most common reason outsourcing gets abandoned.
The objection to outsourcing is almost never that the writing is bad. It is that the fourth piece does not sound like the first three, and the client noticed. Consistency is a process problem with a process solution.
Adjectives Do Not Transfer
Most style guides describe voice with words like professional, friendly, authoritative and approachable. Every writer interprets those differently, and several of them are contradictory.
Examples transfer. Two pieces the client approved, and one they rejected with the reason, communicate more than three pages of description.
The rejected example is the more useful of the two. It shows the boundary, which adjectives never do.
What to Write Down
- Sentence length: Short and direct, or longer and more considered. This alone accounts for much of what people hear as voice.
- Person: We or the company name, you or the reader, and whether "I" ever appears.
- Formality: Contractions allowed or not. A small rule with a large effect.
- Vocabulary: Terms the client uses, terms they avoid, and their own product names spelled their way.
- Openings: How pieces start, since a house pattern is most visible in the first line.
The Same Writer, Where Possible
No documentation substitutes for continuity. A writer who has done six pieces for an account produces the seventh in the right voice without being asked.
It cannot always be arranged — holidays and volume happen — but it should be the default rather than the exception, and a supplier should tell you when it is not possible instead of quietly substituting.
Check It Deliberately
- Read a new piece next to an old approved one before it goes to the client.
- Read the opening lines of five recent pieces together — drift shows there first.
- Update the style guide whenever the client corrects something, so the correction only happens once.
- Give a new writer the guide and two examples, and treat their first piece as calibration.
A style guide that has not changed in a year is not being used. Client preferences move, and an unrevised guide is a sign feedback is going somewhere other than the document.
It Is Worth the Setup
The work here is front-loaded. An afternoon spent building a proper style guide removes the problem for as long as the account runs.
We build one from your existing work if you do not have it, and you keep it — including if you stop working with us. That is described in full on our agency service page.