Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

43Voice and ToneDon't Get Hung Up on Whether Something's Been Said Before—Just Say It Better

In prose, style is a differentiator.

Mark Twain described how a good writer treats sentences:

At times he may indulge himself with a long one, but he will make sure there are no folds in it, no vaguenesses, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when he has done with it, it won't be a sea-serpent with half of its arches under the water; it will be a torch-light procession.¹

He might've just said, as many others have before and since: write with clarity and don't be indulgent. But he didn't. He wrote with a unique perspective and voice.

That doesn't mean you need to be a literary genius, of course. It just means you have to hone your own relatively unique perspective and voice.

Voice (like story) is another one of those literary terms that can sound abstract and high-minded in a business context. But the concept is pretty straightforward: your brand voice is simply an expression of your company's personality and point of view. That personality is expressed in how your words sound when they're read, and it's a key differentiator for a company that takes the time to develop it. (And not many do. So you have an opportunity there!)

“Unless you have so-called commodity content—you have to have a unique voice,” Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping, told me. “That's part of your hook. That's what makes you different, and how you build relationships with people.”

Your unique ...