Finding Your Brand Voice: How a Local Business Should Sound Online
Your page should sound like the best version of you talking to a regular customer. How to define your voice in three words and keep it consistent.
Read the captions on a few local business pages and you will notice that many sound the same: "Come and try our delicious food!", "Best prices in town!", "We are waiting for you!". Nothing is wrong with these sentences, but nothing about them makes you remember the business either.
Brand voice is simply how your business sounds in writing. It is the reason people recognise a post as yours before they see the name. You do not need an agency to define it. You need to look at how you already talk to customers and write that down.
What brand voice is, and what it is not
Brand voice is the personality behind your words: formal or relaxed, playful or calm, expert or friendly. It shows in word choice, sentence length, humour, and how you address people.
It is not a logo, a colour or a slogan. It is also not an act. If your salon is calm and careful in real life, a page full of jokes and slang will feel strange when customers walk in. The best voice is the most honest version of how your team already speaks to its favourite regular customer.
Describe your voice in three words
Write down three adjectives that describe how you want to sound. For each one, add what it does not mean. For example, a family bakery in Kutaisi might choose:
- Warm, but not sugary or overly sentimental.
- Simple, but not careless or full of mistakes.
- Proud of craft, but not boastful.
A cocktail bar in Tbilisi could choose something very different: playful, confident, a little cheeky, but never rude. The "but not" part is important, because it stops a voice from sliding into a caricature.
Make simple rules for everyday writing
Three words are a direction. Rules make it practical. Decide on a few things once so you do not have to think about them with every post:
- How you address people: in Georgian, the formal "თქვენ" is usually the safe default for business, while a youth-oriented café might choose a more relaxed tone. In Russian, decide between "вы" and "ты" and stick to it.
- We or I: does the owner speak personally, or does the team speak together?
- Length: short and punchy, or longer stories?
- Humour: yes, occasionally, or never?
- Words you avoid: for example, "cheap", "best in the city", or heavy marketing phrases.
Write these on one page and share it with anyone who posts for you.
Show the difference with examples
The same message can sound completely different depending on the voice. Imagine a café announcing a new pumpkin latte.
A generic version:
New pumpkin latte! Come and try it! Best taste in town!
A warm, simple, proud-of-craft version:
Our autumn pumpkin latte is back. We roast the pumpkin ourselves every morning, so the first cups go to the early birds. See you at the window table.
The second version tells you something real, sounds like a person, and gives a small reason to come early. That is brand voice doing its job.
Keep the voice in every language
Many Georgian businesses post in Georgian, Russian and English. The voice should stay the same in each, even if the words change. Do not translate jokes word for word, because they rarely survive. Instead, keep the feeling: if the Georgian caption is warm and personal, the English one should be too, not a stiff copy. Our guide on posting in Georgian, Russian and English covers this in more detail.
Stay consistent over time
Consistency is what turns a voice into recognition. A few habits help:
- Reread your last five captions before writing a new one.
- Keep a short list of phrases and sign-offs that feel like you.
- Answer comments and messages in the same voice as your posts.
- Once a quarter, read a month of posts in a row and remove anything that sounds off.
If you use AI tools to help write captions, give them your three words and rules, and always edit the result so it sounds like you. SocialAI, for example, writes from your business profile and lets you edit every post in your panel before it is published, which is the right moment to adjust the tone.
Start this week
- Choose three adjectives for your voice and add a "but not" to each.
- Decide how you address customers and whether you write as "we" or "I".
- List five words or phrases you will avoid.
- Rewrite your next caption using these rules and compare it with your usual style.
Your voice will become clearer the more you write. Start with honesty, keep it consistent, and customers will begin to hear you in every post.
