Guide
How to build a client voice profile a writer can actually use
A voice profile is the difference between a post the client edits heavily and one they publish as written. Here is how to build one from material you already have.
What a voice profile is not
It is not a tone of voice document. "Confident, warm, approachable" describes half the founders on LinkedIn and tells a writer nothing about how to start a sentence. It is not a dropdown either. "Professional" or "casual" is a setting on a tool, not a description of a person.
A voice profile is a description of how one specific person writes, precise enough that a writer who has never met them can produce a paragraph the person would recognise as their own. It is built from evidence: things the client has actually written.
Where the evidence comes from
Use writing, not speech. How someone talks on a call is not how they write, and a LinkedIn post is writing. In rough order of usefulness:
- Messages they send you. WhatsApp and email replies are the least self-conscious writing you will get. Ten replies to real questions beat one polished bio.
- Posts they wrote themselves before they hired anyone. Older is better; it predates the advice.
- Internal writing they are willing to share: a memo to the team, a long Slack message, an all-hands note.
- Their edits to your drafts. What they change is the profile telling you where it is wrong.
Skip the company website and anything a previous agency wrote. That is someone else's voice.
The checklist
Read through the material once for sense, then a second time with this list. Write down an observation and an example for each.
- Sentence length
- Short and punchy, long and winding, or a mix? Count a few. Where do they break a long thought?
- Openers
- How do they start a message? A greeting, straight in, a question, a one-word reaction?
- Punctuation habits
- Full stops on everything, or none? Dashes, brackets, ellipses? Exclamation marks, and how many?
- Vocabulary
- Ten words they use that most people would not. Ten ordinary words they never use.
- Recurring phrases
- The things they say every time: "here's the thing", "to be fair", "look". Keep the exact wording.
- Jargon
- Which industry terms they use without explaining, and which they explain every time.
- Humour
- Do they joke? Dry, self-deprecating, none? Where does it appear, and where never?
- Certainty
- "I think" and "maybe", or "this is how it is"? Does it change by topic?
- Disagreement
- How do they say someone is wrong? Softened, direct, with a story, with a question?
- Numbers
- Do they reach for figures or avoid them? Exact or rounded?
- What they avoid
- Words, topics, and tones that would make them wince if they read it under their name.
- Formatting
- Paragraphs or lists? Bold? Emoji, and which ones?
A worked example
Below is a profile for a fictional client, written from a dozen WhatsApp replies and four old posts. Notice that every line is checkable against the evidence.
Voice profile: Amara Ndlovu
Rhythm. Short declarative sentences, then one long one that carries the actual point. Rarely more than three sentences before a line break.
Openers. Starts with the conclusion. Never a greeting, never a question. "Retainers were costing our clients margin. Here is what we did instead."
Vocabulary. Uses "margin", "rebuild", "the deal", "live on the call". Avoids "journey", "passionate", "leverage", "unlock".
Recurring phrases. "To be fair" when conceding a point. "That was the moment" when marking a turning point.
Certainty. Direct about her own decisions, hedged about other people's. Says "I was wrong" without softening it.
Numbers. Always exact. "A third of the revenue that quarter", never "a lot".
Humour. Dry, aimed at herself, one line at most, usually at the end.
Avoids. Exclamation marks, emoji, bullet lists, anything that reads as advice to strangers. Will not name clients.
Keeping it current
A profile built once goes stale. People change how they write as they read more, hire more, and get more comfortable in public. Two habits keep it accurate: add every new message the client sends to the evidence, and treat every edit they make to a draft as a correction to the profile, not just to the post.
The Noticed Engine writes the voice profile from the client's own interview answers and prompt replies, and updates it as those accumulate. It describes rhythm, vocabulary, recurring phrases, and what the client avoids, in the same form as the example above, and every draft is written against it. Your writer still reads it, and still edits.
This is what the interview does for every client, on its own.
One question at a time, follow-ups on thin answers, and a knowledge base your writers can search.