Brand Voice + Tone Deep-Dive with HubSpot Content Hub (HubHeroes, Ep. 79)

With the arrival of HubSpot Content Hub, I’m seeing a renewed emphasis on the brand voice and tone conversation, which excites me.

Personally, I've been a passionate brand voice and tone scientist for years, working with countless organizations to help them stand out in a radically authentic, human way. George is also a huge advocate for authenticity in content and brand voice (possessing much more experience than I do!), and Devyn has been banging this drum as well from inside HubSpot for ages!

So, let’s talk about it! 

When we say brand voice, we mean your brand’s personality. What comes to mind about your brand and what you sound like all the time. When we say brand tone, we mean how you deliver on the promise of your voice in different situations. It’s a dynamic element that allows you to adapt to different situations.

🔎 Related: What the Heck Is the HubSpot Content Hub? And What Are We Nervous About?

For example, you might show up with more moxie, storytelling, and personality in a blog article (one tone type) vs. more editorial and straight-talking in a case study where you want the facts and data to stand on their own (one tone type). 

But how does HubSpot's new Content Hub empower forward-thinking companies with their eyes on the inbound content prize to show up more authentically in their brand voice? Are there ways in which the tool still falls short? And how should companies overall be thinking about their brand voice as they move forward?

Over the past few months, all of us HubHeroes have been hearing folks say more and more:

"Wow, that was clearly generated by AI."

"It's so refreshing to read something that isn't AI."

... your company's brand voice and tone are more important than ever.

🔎 Related: How to create authentic, engaging content like a freakin' human (HubHeroes Podcast)

Enter stage left, this critical conversation. 

The reality is that this brand voice and tone discussion is one that may be prompted by the rollout of the new features in the HubSpot Content Hub, but it's one that's been around for decades. So, while we're glad there's renewed interest in the topic, getting it right today in our AI-powered world is what will set the winners apart in the years to come. 

Key Takeaways

• Brand voice and tone are essential for building an emotional connection with the audience and establishing trust and reliability.
• However, we don't often recognize what our true brand voice and tone sounds like. Just like in real life, with our own personal voices and personalities, we often don't recognize or completely misidentify what actually attracts and brings people to us.
• A well-crafted brand voice conveys emotions, personality, and consistency, making the brand recognizable and distinctive.
• Crafting a brand voice requires self-awareness, authenticity, and understanding of the target audience.
• The HubSpot tool for creating brand voice provides a platform to define and implement brand voice and tone.
• The tool requires a writing sample, context, and target audience information to generate brand voice effectively. AI should supplement, not replace, the human experience in content creation.
• Authenticity and individuality are crucial in brand voice and tone.
• Understanding and aligning with your audience is essential.
• Testing and iterating are necessary for improving AI-generated content. But AI should not be a substitute for a clear content strategy. Storytelling and human experience are challenging for AI-generated content, so it cannot replace you.
• That said, there are ways to effectively train AI to understand and reflect your brand voice. But it will require you to double-down on your processes. 

And so much more ... 

Additional Resources

• Yes, you need to write (and market) like a human (+ examples)
• How to measure content marketing ROI the right way (HubHeroes Podcast)
• The importance of sounding like a human in B2B content
• The last SEO content strategy guide you'll ever need

Full Episode Transcript

Intro: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.

Never fear, hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.

This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

George B. Thomas: You know, Liz, before you dive in as I was doing my goofy stuff that people could watch if they're watching live, which they might be able to do easier in the near future because I'm literally contemplating on just giving somebody about a month's job of getting all the historical episodes, video versions on YouTube. I couldn't help but look and see Nick from Fargo, which, by the way, Nick from Fargo, you you I'm telling you, you're here. You're putting it down. But I couldn't help but laugh when I looked at the chat pane, and Nick from Fargo said, look at the cool poop I made. I immediately went back to, like, my 3 4 year old kids and was like, I may have heard that before in my life.

I'm just I'm throwing that out.

Liz Moorehead: Also, shout out to Nick from Fargo. We were talking about you, bud, before we hopped on on the studio today. Way to show up in our live audience week after week along with our guy, Chad. I you 2 are regulars here. We love you so much.

I was gonna say, I'm gonna say, I'm a fan of

George B. Thomas: the world. And Chris. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: Yep. Salim here?

George B. Thomas: Salim's here. Yeah. He goes, cough, cough. Like

Liz Moorehead: Buddy, I'm sorry. Salim, you know I love you, boo. You know I love you, boo. And for those folks listening at home, you should be joining in on the live studio audience party. But if you're just listening now in your car, at the gym, being a potato somewhere in your home, welcome to another episode of the Hub Heroes podcast.

I'm your host, Liz Moorehead, also resident content strategist, joined as always by the one and only George b Thomas, and we have Devin Bellamy of HubSpot. Max is out today, but he will be joining us next week. Just saying. I am I'm so excited to nerd out today because we're gonna be talking about one of my personal favorite topics, as you know, George. So last week, we did a big deep dive into the HubSpot Content Hub, which is the newest hub that just rolled out from HubSpot.

If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I definitely recommend after listening to this one, circle back, put a pin in that one, listen to it as well. But it brought up a renewed emphasis on a conversation that I have always felt that in the inbound world has been completely overlooked in most cases. It's something most organizations never ever talk about, and that is the brand voice and tone conversation. Now I want, before we start today's conversation, to just give some definitions. Right?

Because there are a lot of different ways that people describe or define these terms, but this is my house.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: It's my house, and these are my rules. Yeah. So when we say Brand Voice, here is what we're talking about. This is your brand's personality. This is what should come to mind in terms of how your most ideal customers describe you without you having to tell them.

Right? You don't wanna have to tell them that you're friendly and warm and welcoming and to they should be able to infer that automatically. Tone is something that is often incorrectly conflated with the idea of voice. Are they related ideas? Yes.

But whereas voice is static, meaning this is you all the time, tone is dynamic, meaning it is how you adjust the, quote, tone of your voice depending on certain circumstances. So, for example, let's say you have a blog article. In a blog article, you may have a little bit more fun, a little bit more whimsy, a little bit more personalized storytelling, a little bit more editorializing. Right? That's one tone of voice.

In a case study, however, you may be a bit more journalistic, a little more just the facts, ma'am. It's still the same brand, but instead of leaning in one part of your tone, you're moving into another. Or if we wanna put this in a more human

Liz Moorehead: way can you get a can you get

Liz Moorehead: a good human? Can I go get a good human on here?

George B. Thomas: Do you need a good

Liz Moorehead: human? Yes.

Liz Moorehead: But let's put it in a more human context. Liz is loud and unabashedly loves Nicolas Cage, godfather, and all of those different things. Right? If I'm rolling up and I see George and I'm like, hey, bud. How's it hanging?

How are you living like Nicolas Cage today? Because he looks happy. He looks excited. Right? But let's imagine for a moment I'm rolling up on a one of my girlfriends at brunch, and I see her, and she's already at least 1 or 2 mimosas deep.

She's got her head in her hands. She's really upset. I'm gonna roll up with a little bit more of a modulated tone of voice and say, hey, girl. But what would Nicolas Cage do? Still the same Nicolas Cage obsessed weirdo, different tonal packaging.

So that's what we mean when we say voice and tone. But, George, I know I'm not the only one excited about this conversation. I know I'm not. So why are you excited? Why is this something that you think is this is important, for us to be talking about today?

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So I think I'm excited first. That's what I wanna talk about because we are headed in a direction that directly aligns to a fundamental need and a principle if we want to achieve an output in the manner in which we're going to need to create based on this, genesis, this this, adventure, this, cosmic change that has happened to the world around AI, AI generated content, AI generated imagery, AI generated anything. And sometimes when the world gets crazy, you just gotta go back to the basics. You gotta go back to the principles, and voice and tone is one of these principles.

And HubSpot has entered the room. They have brought up the conversation. They have created a tool. They have used the magical word or words brand voice. Why is it important?

Because brand voice is important. Why am I excited this is important? Because I know that 85 to 95% of the humans that go try to use that tool right now are probably gonna jack up their brand voice. Or 85 to 95% of the people who are listening to this podcast might not be able to actually tell us what their brand voice is. And listen, why is it important?

Because if you have a brand voice, and everybody understands how to use it, and it is in HubSpot in the tool in the proper way, which by the way, Selim will talk about the tool and maybe it's possible dysfunctions and how it might get better in the future, because I see you in the chat pain and your disappointment, but we'll talk about that a little bit. Emotional connection. Listen. A well crafted brand voice can convey emotions and personality. Oh my god.

Things that humans have. Imagine that fact. Allowing a brand to connect with its audience on a more personal level because of its emotions and its personality. This emotional engagement is key to our customers' loyalty and them being our future evangelist. So you have to think about brand voice and emotional connection.

Why? Because emotional connection is a human element that we need to have.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, yeah.

George B. Thomas: The the second thing that I wanna talk about is trust and reliability. Like, again, these I'm going very human on why this is important to get it right in general and get it double right to freak in HubSpot. Because consistency in communication, guess what that does? Builds trust. You know what brand voice is trying to do to your HubSpot blogs?

They're trying to McDonald's it. They're trying to Wendy's it. They're trying to Chick Fil A it. You get a sandwich here. You get a sandwich there.

You get a sandwich everywhere, and it all tastes like the same sandwich. In other words, we want our content to have a consistency that builds, what, the t word, trust. When a brand uses a

Liz Moorehead: Not tortillas.

George B. Thomas: Okay. Not tortillas. No. Not tortillas. Not not any other t word that is trying to come to my mind right now.

Right? We we gotta make sure that if it's marketing, if it's sales, if it's service, if it's knowledge articles, if it's blog articles, if it's the snippets and chat paints, consistent brand voice to build trust and reliability. And the third thing, Liz, that I wanna bring up, identity and recognition. How the heck do we stand out as the needle in this pile of haystacks? By being who we are, by being able to communicate in a way that makes us different.

By being able to stand out in a crowded marketplace, you have to have a brand voice that communicates consistently and becomes recognizable amongst the noise and nonsense that happens out on the interwebs. This is why I'm excited about today's conversation, Liz.

Liz Moorehead: You know, George, this was something I thought we had worked on a few months ago. You know, a few months ago

George B. Thomas: I'm trying to bring up the passion.

Liz Moorehead: I am. It I know. And and so this is the concern I have. I don't not feeling it. I'm not sure where you stand on this issue.

I'd so just

George B. Thomas: I'll try

Liz Moorehead: coaching moment.

George B. Thomas: The next moment. Yeah. The next time you ask me a question, I will I will try

Liz Moorehead: That's all I'm asking.

George B. Thomas: Okay.

Liz Moorehead: No. I I'm totally on board with you, and I love so much of what you said there. We're really talking about identity, and we're talking about trust. We're talking about for those of you out there, for example, who may maybe you use they ask you answer. Maybe you've heard of it.

They're asking and you're answering, but how are you doing so in a way where they remember you're the one that answered? You know, this is all about the imprint of an undeniable fingerprint. Right? The thing that makes you you. We're gonna get into how the tool does and does not help that, but, Devin, I wanna turn to you for a moment.

What are your thoughts and relationships with brand voice and tone? Is this something that's ever talked about at HubSpot, or is it something you ever think about? Where are you in

Liz Moorehead: the spectrum of excitement, my birdie?

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. I might have heard it mentioned once or twice here to the point that we have guidelines and rules

Liz Moorehead: and, like, Oscar, there's

Devyn Bellamy: things you can and can't say and ways you can and can't say them. Things, we we we we take our our voice very seriously and and, our branding very seriously. And, but what it boils down to is just being able to be, you know, able to make those connections, be able to,

Liz Moorehead: be more human. Like like, there

Devyn Bellamy: are certain brands that are very buttoned up, and we are definitely not one of those. And it it's a reflection of, who we are, but also I think it's a reflection of how good

Liz Moorehead: we are. Because the way I say the way I see it, the better you are at what you do, the more you can afford to let your hair down. So yeah. That's it. Look.

Hey.

Liz Moorehead: The way I like to think about it is, like, if I know where the boundaries of the sandbox are, I can fling sand as high as I want. I just need to know what what my what my little playpen is. Some sand might get out a little bit, but, you know, I'm messy. That's fine. I'm fine with that.

So I'm gonna throw a question out to either of you because I have thoughts on this, but I'd be curious to get your takes on it. What does a great brand voice and tone sound like? Don't all jump in at once.

Liz Moorehead: I think

Devyn Bellamy: it varies, based on the company. Like, for me, brand voices, whatever the flavor it is, the key is authenticity. When brands try to come off as something that they're not, it shows like, during like, you look at everyone who was jumping on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon, during the whole George Floyd incident. And you can tell

Liz Moorehead: Mhmm.

Devyn Bellamy: What was authenticity, what was virtue sig virtue signaling, and what was just plain bandwagoning. And it it's just like authenticity is what it boils down to, regardless of what you sound like. And so if you need to change, change whatever company that I am in. I try to, you know, follow companies that whose brand voice is closer to my voice, because I'm, you know, a media person and I spend a lot of time on screen. I don't want to end up going on screen for a very buttoned up company.

And then I got, you know, Deadpool in the background.

Liz Moorehead: I'm like, like, I even have

Devyn Bellamy: to tone down some of my Deadpool for for HubSpot sometimes. So

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I don't think anybody should ever have to tone down Deadpool. Like, I I'm trying to get past that to actually answer the question. Like and, again, I think I think Devin hit, like, kind of this out of the park. When I think about what it sounds like, and I don't necessarily mean, like, an audible tone or anything, but, like, words like consistent, authentic, you know, distinctive, or or, you could it stands out in the crowd.

Depending on the brand, it it might have little tweaks where it might be empathetic or it might be humorous. That's like that I I go to for some reason, when you ask that question, Liz, I go to, like, singular words that when combined create a greater power than when they are separated. Right? It's almost like this, this begat that begat that concept, which is interesting because that's, like, the 4th time I've said that this week. Anyway, not why we're here.

There's, like, there's a power in the chain of things that belong together. Right? And as soon as you remove one of the things like, let's say we have 4 things and you look at them, they're gonna give you a perception, a a feeling, a thought. You remove one out and add a new block, and all of a sudden, you might get a completely different thought or feeling or emotion. And so I think it's really interesting to think about this question that you ask, what does a great brand voice and tone sound like?

And think about asking that question to the act. And I'm talking to the listeners right now, by the way. Apply that question to your brand. Like, what does a great brand voice and tone sound like, and is it you? Like anyway, just just some thought.

Liz Moorehead: You know, the the funny thing is, first of all, I agree with authenticity. And then the first word that actually came to my mind, is, George, one that you said and that is distinct. But my real answer to this is, what does a great brand voice and tone sound like for you? Well, usually not what you think. So to give you an example, George, you know this.

I don't know if our audience knows this. This is actually something I have specialized in over the past 10 years. I do a lot of voice and tone and messaging development for companies across a wide range of industries. Right? Health care, health care SaaS, recruiting, sales and marketing, accounting, financial services, defense contracting.

Like, you name it, I've probably talked to a company there and helped them with their voice and tone. But I wanna tell a story to explain what I mean when I say it doesn't sound like what you think. There was a gentleman who had started a company in the ad technology space and he was looking to develop his brand voice and tone as part of a larger messaging strategy. He had it was tech you could technically call it a start up, but he came he had such cache in the industry that he started his start up very high. And today, it's it's an incredible community that he has built, based on his reputation.

Now what was interesting is that when I took him through my voice and tone workshop, I had him along with his group. So he has other people that work with him. And the brand was not meant to just be him. I took him through a I took him through a bunch of exercises, George, you're familiar with these, where you have to self identify, where you have to I know. Don't say that with such pain in your voice.

George B. Thomas: I mean, I tried to bring it really bring it that time. Yes.

Liz Moorehead: Yes. What was fascinating though is when I asked him because one of the exercises is, you know, what are your yeses in terms of the attributes you wanna be associated with, and what are your noes that you do not wanna be associated with? What was funny is that 2 of his noes were opinionated and funny. And so I I looked I stopped, and I said, Rob, I just need to ask you something. Are you gonna wake up tomorrow morning and become a fundamentally different person?

Because this is, a, this is who you are. This is what the brand has always been, and, b, this is also what people expect from you. Like, the picture you painted of what you want this company to sound like is authentically the antithesis of the soul of who you are. So this

Liz Moorehead: is where I think we get into

Liz Moorehead: a really interesting conversation about brand voice and tone. Maybe this is a niche discussion for another day, but I think it's important when we answer this question. There I think of brand voice and tone often like core values. Right? Core values are often created by companies, well meaning companies, and they're a set of aspirations that are not necessarily reflective of the core values that truly drive the business.

Right? Doesn't mean that they don't have values. It's that we're gonna be honest. Congratulations. People are our greatest differentiator.

Everyone wants to be honest. Right? It's like there's those types of things. And voice and tone is kind of the same thing. Well, we want to be this.

We want to be that. Well, is that actually who you are? One of the ways you make a cohesive and authentic brand experience is that the experience somebody has with your your brand voice and tone online matches the experience they will have with the humans once they get through the door. It is your digital handshake. Like, George, you and I have another client.

Right? They're in the financial services space. Most of the time, it's it's very boring. It's very flat. Not these guys.

Yeah. Absolutely not. They're Yeah. They got spunk. They got spark.

They have sass. They have moxie. Is it grounded in authentic professionalism and expertise? 100%. But one of the things that we work on with them is, like, just just say the damn thing.

Just say it correctly and plainly, and that's where we've moved their voice. So that those are my thoughts.

George B. Thomas: I love it. I love it. You know, it's funny because I I can't help but think of, like, how much do organizations care in this idea of caring and, wrapping that around because here's here's my, Liz, my my worry, if if like, I know sometimes we do, like, a hashtag one thing to remember. My my hashtag one worry is that people aren't putting the brainpower, the time, and understanding the importance of this piece right here that we're talking about and how much it fundamentally impacts everything downstream from it that we've talked about historically and we'll talk about in the future.

Liz Moorehead: Well, I think, you know, George, maybe you can speak to this a little bit because you've been through my process. And I think what happens is it's not that people don't wanna put the time into it. They just think it's a, oh, we would like to be friendly. Our brand voices. But as someone who has had to go down the rabbit hole, as someone who has had to sit there while I go poke, poke, poke, poke, poke until a voice falls out, What what was different about it than what you expected?

Because I genuinely believe for most people, it's because they don't realize there's an actual methodology you could follow.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Well, let's get real honest real quick. I was like most mere humans, and I said, I need some words from my website. That's what I And, what ensued after that was me laying on the therapy couch and having to go back to all of my, like, professional childhood trauma and, my future aspirations. And, like, that's what I and I I'm trying to get at, like, sometimes you gotta you gotta, like, use a hammer and a chisel to create a masterpiece.

Sometimes you gotta, you know, pull out the saw or the drill to, like, build the foundation. And and this for me was that. Like, it was stripping away the garbage, getting the real perspective to where we are headed, and understanding, copy for my website was only a small piece of what was gonna come out of the work and the diligence to actually mold or build, this foundational pillar of the brand voice moving And then what we could do because we had that from an AI standpoint oh, hang on. That's later in the

Liz Moorehead: Oh, we're about to get there, so don't you worry. I'm gonna say one little thing, George, and then you we can dive right into the tools. You bring up a really good point there about the the chisel because as someone who does this work very often, I find with people, it's mostly stripping away what people think they're supposed to sound like and then giving them permission to just be who they already are. That's usually the process. That's usually the like, for example, the guy who didn't wanna be opinionated and funny, he does that naturally.

That is who he is. Quite frankly, it's a lot of who the people are who work with them. There's sort of a a reference to them even though they all show up in a slightly different way. Right? I put this in the chat that we have with our live studio audience because Nick from Fargo said something, it's kind of like your real voice.

Brand voice probably sounds different to yourself than others. And so I said yes, and we often don't recognize or we misidentify what actually attracts and brings peep and bring people to us.

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: So that's why this work gets really fascinating. Often, we're already going out there and doing the thing. We already have the authentic brand voice. We are walking around with it all the time. That financial services firm I was just talking about, they already sounded like that.

It's giving them permission to connect to the dots to bring that digitally into that space. So, George, you started to tease this a little bit. This goes really nicely into our next question. What do we need to be aware of when you're crafting one of your own brand voice set of rules into HubSpot? And I know this digs into some of the work that we've been doing, but, George, take it away.

I wanna hear from you on this.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So well, first of all, you use the keyword awareness or be aware of their so first thing to realize as you're listening to this, it's Content Hub Enterprise. Just a fair warning. If you don't have the enterprise version, you won't be able to get to the second thing that you need to be aware of is where the freak it lives because I was like, where are they gonna put that in the settings? And what's nice is it's account defaults, branding, my brand kits, and in brand kits, there's brand You need to be aware of that when you hit the start button to do this thing that you're gonna need, a writing sample of at least 500 words.

Now I would suggest like, and also I would suggest it be a really good piece that you're 100% sure displays your brand I wish it was more than 1 piece.

Liz Moorehead: It really needs

Liz Moorehead: to be

Liz Moorehead: more than 1 piece because of the tone conversation.

George B. Thomas: I wish you program it more. Anyway, you'll then need to tell it, like, the site I do love this part, by the way. If you give it a blog, tell it it's a blog. If you give it a, you know, case study, tell it's a case study because then it has context, which context for AI is one of the massive pillars that we always need to be paying attention to when we're doing things, generating things. So this context of it's a it's this type of content at least.

And then, it's gonna ask you for a target audience, so be aware of that. Like, hopefully, you know that. I think you know that. But there's a knowing that in the sales and marketing side of things and then, losing your brain because you think that you're doing something new and exciting with AI and you just start type typing the stuff that absolutely makes no sense. Like, HubSpot gives you an an example.

They basically say it's 1 to 2 sentences. I wish it was longer than 1 to 2 sentences because context is king and specificity wins the day. By the way, these are basic communication principles, and we're freaking communicating with AI to tell it how it's gonna treat everything we do past it. Anyway, HubSpot gives us an example. Marketing professionals at small to medium sized business looking to streamline their marketing efforts, generate leads, and grow their online presence.

Beautiful. That's nice. How do they feel? Like, I wanna go into the roles, goals, and challenges. By the way, can HubSpot somebody from HubSpot, can you well, it's probably because 90% of the user uses using the persona's tool wrong.

But in a perfect world, there's be some way that brand voice would connect to the persona tool where people have actually lived lived listed out the roles, goals, and challenges of those humans and be able to pull in any of the psychographic demographic and stories that they've actually built inside of their HubSpot personas, and it would be part of their brand voice instead of actually having to reprogram it with this little two line thing that doesn't make any sense to me. Anyway, like, these are things that you need to be aware of. When you're programming an AI voice like, I can't wait till inbound 24, y'all. I have already started to build out slides where I'm showing the specificity, the context of the the mathematical mental equations that one can actually put in to get astronomically different results. If HubSpot is gonna be my all in one place to create my content, and if it is going to the be the replacement for any AI tool that I might choose to use elsewhere, then ladies and gentlemen, we quickly have to get a little bit better at this part.

Right? Because it is so important.

Liz Moorehead: I think that the gaps of the HubSpot tool and HubSpot, call me. Give them my number. I will talk to them all day about this. I think it's because most people don't realize how it's supposed to come together. I also think sometimes it's because HubSpot is trying to make it the lowest barrier to entry possible in order to use a tool.

Because I could imagine if I'm using HubSpot for the first time and I'm starting to dig in there, I might have, like, a mild panic attack if I have 18 different things to figure out. But the reality is is when I looked at the tool, I felt the exact same way. Because when I think about what drives the tone changes. Right? What what drives it?

It's it's how someone is feeling about a topic. And, George, you and I were experimenting with chat, gbt, and web pilot earlier this week,

Liz Moorehead: and one of the things that you and

Liz Moorehead: I were talking about is that we have to identify who the person is. We have to identify why they are asking this particular question. So if it's about a specific time, why? And then it's how do they feel about it? Because you could have a content manager who is asking, what is a content strategy?

Well, why? Because they wanna know what it is so they can do their job better. But how do they feel about it? Probably pretty freaking stressed. Because if a content manager is suddenly going to Google and asking, what is a content strategy?

I guarantee you about 15 minutes before that, their boss walked up and said, by the way, can you get me that content strategy for all the stuff we're publishing? And they're like, sure thing, boss. And then, you know what? They're like, wait a minute. I guess but and they're had they're like, the editorial counter.

I thought that was the content strategy. I thought I'd I better go find out what that is so I can keep my shot.

George B. Thomas: Fast forward, the boss comes back out, asks where, Bob or Susie is, and, their coworker that sits next to him goes, oh, they all sudden got the flu and had to go home. I don't know what happened.

Liz Moorehead: Yep. I agree. The only thing I will say also, and this is where again, another conversation for another day because, Devin, I have a question for you. Thing that voice and tone will never replace, though, is the story you tell. And this is where we always have to be really careful about it.

Right? Voice and tone tool will can make you sound warm. It can make you sound friendly. If they gave us a few more options about tone, be more authentic, human, and dialed in from a tone perspective. Because if I have a spooky scary little content manager who's afraid about losing their job, I wanna show up not just friendly.

I wanna show up warm and understanding and validating and empathetic, and my tone is slightly different. Right? But that voice and tone tool is never gonna be able to, out of thin air, be able to convey the story that I used to once be a content manager who was effing terrified, who was once asked that question, who did not know how to answer it. And that is one thing, voice and tone. Voice and tone is not the what you say, it's the how you say.

Just remember that it is your packaging on the message you already have. Devin, what do you think our listeners need to know about when they start playing around with voice and tone? Because whether or not they actually have access to this enterprise level stuff, in the content hub, there are ways to play around with voice and tone when it comes to generative AI content, rewriting things, prompts what in where does your brain go in terms of how you wanna direct our our HubSpotting inbounders? Uh-oh. He's already smiling.

George B. Thomas: Look at that smile. That's like the most I'm done.

Liz Moorehead: Sniffing at Nick from Fargo. He he's telling me to spill my guts, and and he's he's just chat has been going great. You guys definitely need to come hang out for a live recording. But, my thing is, with this I hate to be the guy that does it, but you gotta check out my TED Talk. It's the thing

Liz Moorehead: in people. It's AI. And we love a good chill. We love a good chill. We love it.

Liz Moorehead: AI isn't going to replace the human experience, and you can't expect it to. All you could the best you can hope for is to get it to supplement it. I remember I watched, there's this channel that I I watch that, shows behind the scenes, stories about movies and stuff like that. And it was clear that they were experimenting with AI content generation because it felt written by AI. It was bad enough that the voice over wasn't that great, but it's like you could feel the writing style.

It wasn't there there was

Liz Moorehead: no writing

Liz Moorehead: style That in 100%, the uncanny valley. When you're listening to it, you can't even figure out what's wrong about it. You just know what's wrong, something's wrong. And until the technology progresses, you're still not gonna be able to look back on it and see what it was and and until we have a better example of it. But, the thing is is that that's half of it.

It's helping you, create, a tone and brand that that that's for you to use and to take your AI content that's, generated and maybe help, upgrade it and wordsmith it and change it so it has your, experiences, but also your brain and your voice. That's half of it. The other half is what George mentioned in the very beginning when it comes to, you know, fast food. It's about the standardization of what you're presenting. Somebody in chat mentioned how unhinged Wendy's social media is.

I love it.

Liz Moorehead: Because while it

Liz Moorehead: is unhinged, it is also consistent. And I honestly doubt that it has been one person doing this for this entire time. It's probably one person who's defined the brand voice and then a whole bunch of interns and associates learning how to be sassy for a semester. And and I I would just imagine that they're just recycling people. This is just how I imagine it's going.

But the thing is is that you can't really I'm sure somewhere at Wendy's, that social media brand voice is documented.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, a 100%. And my favorite thing about the Wendy's brand voice is it typifies the thing I always tell people.

Liz Moorehead: You are gonna wanna play it

Liz Moorehead: safe until you see someone else not playing safe, and then you're gonna realize you could've just been yourself the whole time.

Liz Moorehead: Exactly. But

George B. Thomas: but the real question is, Liz, do you teach that sassy course for Wendy's? Because I feel like that could have maybe been, like, you were the well, never mind. No.

Liz Moorehead: That could You know, I'm good at that. Compliment. My bad. Compliment. At first, I was like, wait.

Is he saying is he saying that's me? Is it is it me? I very pick me energy right now about this. Yes. I will take credit for it.

Absolutely. I guided Wendy's to the light. No. I think what it comes down to is that, like, when you get to a certain point with brands, there is this scarcity mindset that can set in, that we cannot color out of the lines lest we upset somebody, lest someone in the Internet public square points at us and goes, no. You have hurt me, and now it's your problem.

What I love about Wendy's is that it showcases that, like guys, could you imagine if if one of the bigger players had done that and what would have happened? Like, that would have like, it's not Wendy specific. It is now, and everybody's trying to copy them and emulate them. But a lot of these corporate giants just won't get out of their own way. They have to be in this very specific box.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. That's

Liz Moorehead: just right.

Liz Moorehead: So we're starting

Liz Moorehead: to get into

George B. Thomas: hang on. Before you move forward, I love that Salim, said Wendy's is great. The copycats are not. Ladies and gentlemen, no truer words could be said, and and, again, it ties to the authenticity of just being you. And, Liz, it's funny.

I I was trying to escape part of the conversation back a couple questions ago when you talked about me going through the process. And, there we got about 3 quarters through the process, and you asked me this question. And I know maybe we shared it on this podcast or maybe it was on Beyond Your Default podcast, but, you asked me the question, when are you gonna show up as a whole ass human? Meaning, when are you gonna show up authentically as you? And if you would have asked anybody, they would have been like, yeah.

George is a pretty authentic dude. Like, he he is what he is, and you get what you get. But they didn't realize there was these pockets that were hidden. There was, like, these pockets that were not. And until I realized, like, the brand was this, the ability to be the, you know, love Tupac, love Morgan Wallen, love cigars, love healthy food, love fast and furious, love going to church.

Like, it can be all of those things that make you Familia. Family, baby. Family. It could be all of those things that make you who you are, and you don't have to hide from any of them. And being authentically you and being the first mover and being able to capture in this digital world, I own me, and then watch people try to copycat that, that's the place you

Liz Moorehead: That's where it gets really freaking special because I know Devon, I'm sure this has happened with you as well, but, you know, George, when you and I speak, when we do public speaking, people are, well, I wish I could do what you do. I just can't. As if we have some sort of permission slip that nobody else has.

George B. Thomas: No.

Liz Moorehead: Right? See, Devin, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Like, you come off stage, people are excited. Like, man, I wish I could go up there. Oh, I can't do that.

I just I can't be that out loud. I can't be this. I can't look. You don't have to take yourself seriously to take what you do seriously. You can still just be your own whole ass human self.

And, also, you have to remember, am I loud and insane? Yes. But that is just me being authentic. Your authenticity does not have to look like my authenticity. It can be drier.

It can be quieter. It can be more gravitas. It could be whatever it is that you want it

Liz Moorehead: to be. Yeah. Anyway,

Liz Moorehead: did

Liz Moorehead: Anyway, did

Liz Moorehead: you know I love this topic so much?

George B. Thomas: I love this topic too.

Liz Moorehead: We've already started going down this rabbit hole with this question, so let's just ask it explicitly. And I'm gonna throw it out to both of you guys. What else do we need to be aware of when we're doing any sort of brand voice and tone work in AI tools? Whether we're talking about HubSpot or we're talking about chat gbt, web pilot, whatever you think. Devin Yes.

What about you, bud? Not just He's got thoughts.

Liz Moorehead: Not just who's doing the talking, but who you're talking to. Selene mentioned in chat that Liquid Death is more refined than Wendy's, but still unhinged. The reason why is because you gotta look at these core audiences. Like like, you're looking at Wendy's. It's like Wendy's is not going after the blue blood elites.

They're they're not going after oligarchs. They're not trying to, bring Yale students, Harvard students in. These are young people with not a lot of money. Yeah. Let's identify and goof off.

Sure. Liquid death, Red Bull, Monster. Look at their brand voices. The what they're they're trying to convey. Does an energy drink does a horrible tasting, overly sugar, overly caffeinated drink have anything to do with backflips on motorcycles?

Absolutely not. But the idea is that this is just it's extreme lifestyle, energy, action. Yeah. That's what we're trying to convey. That's our brand voice.

That's our image. And so, let let's let's, let's let's do that. And then with liquid voice, you have that too. But if you are are, or, liquid death, I mean.

Liz Moorehead: I like liquid I like liquid voice

Liz Moorehead: though. Yeah. So with liquid death

Liz Moorehead: Liquid.

Liz Moorehead: If, like, let's say, IKEA started sounding like Wendy's, you'd have a problem. If Wells Fargo started sounding like Red Bull, you'd have a problem. Even if all of the associates, are are are everyone who's running the the the company is taking over or or or all, you know, 1st years out of, Lambda Lambda Lambda and and whatever and just growing it up. And now we're, yeah, man. Wells Fargo.

Whoo. Interest free check. Wow. Yeah, buddy. It's like, you know, whatever.

It it doesn't make any sense because who you're talking to right. It just it it it doesn't gel. So those are the 2 things that you have

Devyn Bellamy: to keep in mind.

Liz Moorehead: Wait. I wanna point it to the I gotta point it

Liz Moorehead: to the

Liz Moorehead: thing here first.

George B. Thomas: Hang on. No. Was that a was that

Liz Moorehead: a re I'm gonna interrupt you.

George B. Thomas: No. No. Was that a revenge of the nerds callback? Lambda, Lambda, Lambda. Oh my god, dude.

I was like, he's he's talking revenge of the nerds right now. Like, Liz, I'm ashamed of you at this moment that you did not catch what but Devon was throwing down. Yikes. I'm like, my dude figured out

Liz Moorehead: how to

George B. Thomas: revenge the nerds into the Hub Heroes podcast on this very date. Mark your calendar.

Liz Moorehead: Guys, I'm just gonna be perfectly honest with you right now. George, I am so sorry. Devin, I am so I am ashamed.

George B. Thomas: This is why I could not move forward. I I was no.

Liz Moorehead: Never call myself a nerd again. I I need to go reflect. Okay. We're done with reflection.

George B. Thomas: There we go. Reflecting.

Liz Moorehead: I wanna note here. George, before we go to you on this question, there's one thing I wanted to point out that was not revenge of the nerds related that was just so stinkin' smart that I think is really important here. It is one of the things that we did before we even talked about you, George, in your process is we actually spent, what, 2, 3 hours obsessively talking only about your customers, who they are, what they feel, why they're here.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: And anytime you try to talk about yourself, I'd be like, that's tomorrow. That's tomorrow. Because everything starts with the people you are trying to reach. I love Devon bringing up the Red Bull example too because what is fascinating about Red Bull what's fascinating about Red Bull is that that adventurous lifestyle that is reflected in their voice is not just their voice. Their voice is a reflection of their actions.

Red Bull isn't just an energy drink. They're a Formula 1 team. They're an extreme diving team. They host wild, adventurous events around the world, so they are living their voice. Their voice is only authentic because that is authentically who they are as a brand and what they're trying to bring into the world.

So it's, you know, it's it's like the you can't just say you're a thought leader. You actually have to read thoughts without saying the word thought or leader, and you have to show up that way every single day. Also, Shao, could you imagine if OG 4 Loco had a social account? Like, if that was a thing back then, that would have been wild. Now, George, talk to us a bit.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So first of all, we've mentioned this, but you have to understand your audience, the humans that you serve. I think it's really important that you fundamentally understand your company. By the way, when we say company, we're actually saying the humans that live inside the walls of your organization. Notice we're talking about knowing the humans, interior and exterior.

Here's where I think it gets interesting, especially the fact that we're moving into the HubSpot Academy portion of this podcast, meaning it doesn't matter if you use HubSpot or not, any AI tool. These are some things to think about. If you're thinking about the humans externally and you're thinking about the humans internally and aligning the brand values, the mission, the core, the the why and the because of what you do, and the why and because of what they need, now all of a sudden we're getting somewhere magical. The other thing, Liz, you alluded to us testing and messing around is you have to realize that in every time you go to create something, you should envision the first hour or so of a season of testing and iterating. Testing and iterating.

Primary prompt, secondary prompt, primary prompt, secondary prompt. Get output. What do you want output to change? Put it back in. Ask again.

Like, there has to be this season of the messy middle, the massaging, the getting better at it, just like when you had to get better at podcasting, just how you had to get better at doing sales, just how you had like, real life ish, you have to go through the time of getting better. So a season of testing and iterating. And realizing too, Liz, once we get there, once we've reached the the nirvana, the the mecca, the hill, the top of where we're trying to go, it's only the starting line. It's not the finish line because, again, the human you, the Human. You has to come back through and use a checklist of I need to make sure these things to be true before I hit the publish button because this has to look like, smell like, feel like us, which, by the way, we're so close to having a checklist to put out to the world of like and here's how you do the final edit of your AI generated content to make sure it is not a big massive 3 d, foamy squishy pile of poo.

Liz Moorehead: One of one of my favorite things about that, which dovetails nicely into one of our final questions today, which is what we're seeing work well and what we're seeing not work well. Because, George, you and I have been doing a ton of testing, and sometimes the tests are great. And then sometimes I'm like,

Liz Moorehead: George, can you hop on hop on a call with me real quick? Can can we go we gotta we gotta talk. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: And what was fascinating to me is that usually the times that we went off the rails were and this is something that only comes out in testing. You don't learn what you actually need to have as inputs in until sometimes you get, oh, this is this is not an output. This is a lifestyle realistic poo

George B. Thomas: Yes.

Liz Moorehead: In a corporate setting.

Liz Moorehead: Yes.

George B. Thomas: Yes.

Liz Moorehead: And what I found that doesn't work really well is once again, it's the golden rule of HubSpot. HubSpot is not your strategy. HubSpot helps you execute the strategy that already exists. So if you're going in there and using AI to help generate a piece content as a raw rough draft and your strategy is unclear, you are going to you will not gain clarity by shoving it through robots who are only as good as the directions you give it. So that's number 1.

So when I say when I say, unclear strategy, the piece you and I were working on, it it's a it's a common mistake that can happen, but it just gets scaled because we're using AI. Right? Like, that that's what happens. Right? That's what automation does.

Do you do you have bad processes and and practices? Great. Automation will help you scale shit faster. Like, that's that's just what happens. In the case of the content that we were working on, it was a, you know, I'm not quite sure what direction I wanna take.

Let's see where it goes. And you can't do that because then it splits the baby, and then we have 2 half baby, and it just it doesn't work. Is not a

George B. Thomas: good thing. It's not No. I got in the call,

Liz Moorehead: and I said, I'm unclear as to what this is about. And it it was clear that there was you can see the confusion. So that's what I've seen not working well. The other thing is the thing that I've already mentioned.

George B. Thomas: I love I love calls by like that. Hold on to your thought, Liz. When Liz, reaches out and and she's like, I have a question. Are you talking about the Sales Hub or Skittles? Because I'm really not sure which one this article is about.

You know that you've just done jacked some stuff up. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: But to be fair, sometimes and we we do this to each other, and it's out of love. My favorite is when I get messages from you about podcast outlines. You're like, so how do you feel about this outline that you wrote? It's like, great. Now talk to you Monday.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. That's it.

Liz Moorehead: But we get there. But I think the other thing that I would point out as well is that when it doesn't work well is when you expect it to be a human.

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: When you expect it to have the stories. Like, there is something different that happens when you actually take the time to craft a piece. We're definitely gonna have to do a couple of episodes about stuff you and I have been doing, George, in terms of experimentation because we've been doing some really cool stuff. But what it fundamentally comes down to, ladies and gentlemen, is that it's not a robot doesn't know your stories. It doesn't know your experience.

It doesn't know your past. It doesn't know how you would show up as an individual person. Because I like to imagine every piece of content like a conversation. And that when you sit down to create it, you're imagining a person on the other end. Maybe you know exactly who they are, and you're speaking directly to them.

I'm speaking directly to that content manager, and I'm telling them my story about in 2017 when I was first asked that question of what where is the content strategy? And I panicked. A robot is never gonna know that story. It's it's never going to know. So I think that's where we get into really interesting conversations about AI.

That's where we get into really interesting conversations of, I think it's only gonna make it easier for great people to stand out. I mean, George, I told you the story earlier this week. I got a compliment on the newsletter I write for beyond your default. And what was fascinating is the guy said it was so refreshing. I said, oh, thank you.

And he said, yeah. It's not AI. I'm like, it's not. I wrote that. He's like, it's just so refreshing.

There's so much AI right now. And what I'm hearing that more and more. Oh, that's clearly AI. Woof. That yep.

That's AI gone wrong. I talked about it, what, last week. I'm like, there is a big company that sent me 3 whole ass emails. I'm like, there is no brand voice. There is no tone.

Is there a heartbeat?

Liz Moorehead: That's the thing.

Liz Moorehead: What is happening?

Liz Moorehead: Regardless of how much

Liz Moorehead: Go on.

Liz Moorehead: How much wit, how much fun you inject into it, it's still lacking a pulse. The more we get inundated with AI content, the better we are gonna be differentiating it and then being disgusted by it. It's already happening. We're already being, tuning out AI generated content because we're being so inundated by it. And I think what's gonna happen is that we're gonna start leaning more into incorporating storytelling and analogy in a real way that describes human experience.

Like one of the reasons why I was laughing so hard earlier is because we were talking about stories of, like, stories that AI can never tell. Like when I knew I was gonna move to Philly and, and my girlfriend and I at the time were looking for houses in Philly, what I did and and and and please no one from Philly get mad at me. But what we did was we used Google Street View. Right? And we're so we're going up and down streets of these perspective neighborhoods, and we're

Liz Moorehead: Billy's gonna come for you. I already know where we're going. What what

Liz Moorehead: we're doing is we're looking at the trash in the gutters, because every street has trash, but you could tell the quality of the neighborhood by the standard of their litter. So if there was, like, very high end litter, you knew you were in a good neigh end neighborhood. If it was low end litter That's the whole foods litter. The yeah. So whole food litter, it's corner store litter versus no litter, then you're probably in, like, Cheltenham or something.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. That's incredible.

George B. Thomas: So first of all, I love that that is where this podcast went today. But, also, I have to I wasn't gonna share something, but I have to share something. And this is only for the people who are watching, live because you won't be able to see this. Maybe we'll put it in the show notes. Maybe we won't.

We'll see. But I but Nick from Fargo started out this chaos that is ensuing in the chat pane, and he's got basically got a poop emoji in, poop emoji out. And Chad goes, stack your poop faster.

Liz Moorehead: Poop faster.

George B. Thomas: Nick from Fargo says robot times poop equals poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop poop to which, ladies and gentlemen, I have to share with you this right here.

Liz Moorehead: I'm taking a screenshot of that.

George B. Thomas: This right here says, ladies and gentlemen, write an article on leveraging HubSpot for marketing automation. This is me telling the JetGBTs and the AIs what I want. And what do we get out of that? Well, what we get out of that, ladies and gentlemen, is this right. Oops.

Back space, back space, problem right here. That's what we get right there. That's that's what happens with robots. That's what happens with the just giving it this little input. We get this right here.

Okay. I'll stop sharing my screen.

Liz Moorehead: Can we talk about how the poop is scared of the flies? It's just like, no. Don't do it.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Don't do it. Don't land on me.

Liz Moorehead: George, I have a challenge for you, and I believe in you. Okay?

George B. Thomas: Oh, wow. That just got deep and real, like a sense.

Liz Moorehead: Swear to god. If you

Liz Moorehead: give me more than one thing in answer to this question, I'll just complain about it and do nothing, but, like, I'll be super peeved for about 5 minutes.

George B. Thomas: Wait. We're only allowed to give 1

Liz Moorehead: If someone only remembers one thing from this conversation, what should it be and why? Yes, sir. One thing. One thing. Man.

One thing.

George B. Thomas: Okay.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. Can you do it?

George B. Thomas: It's difficult. Here's what I'll say. Here here's okay. In an effort to understand that, hopefully, most of this podcast was the HubSpot Academy version of Hub Heroes, meaning what we said could be done in and out of HubSpot. The one thing that I want you to remember is that it is okay to program, work on, and get a dope brand voice put together to then input it into HubSpot with the tool set that they have right now until in the future it might be a better tool set because you need to take the time to train it.

Train it. Train it. Train it. Train it. In other the thing that I'm getting to, Liz, is just like your humans, take time to learn the things that you do, the products you sell, the services you provide, the challenges that they face, the goals that they have.

You need to take time to train it to understand, to have that voice that your brand wants it to you.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. That was a really good one thing. So I'm just gonna ignore the fact that you backdoored about 3 to 5 other things and that hefty exposition that you trumped.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Not me. It was one thing. It was one thing.

Liz Moorehead: What? What?

George B. Thomas: The one thing was train it. That I just said train it. That's all I said. Just train it.

Liz Moorehead: It only took you 70,000 words to do it. No. But you brought up a good point there in your 1.75 things, which is that this is work that exists and should already be happening outside of HubSpot. Like, brand voice and tone is not something I specialized in because one day, HubSpot said, you can put in 2 sentences about your brand voice. No.

This is stuff you can do outside of HubSpot. You should be doing you shouldn't wait to have access to HubSpot Content Hub enterprise to do this work. Facts. Right? My one thing is this.

Authenticity is not aspirational, nor is it manufactured, nor is it a robot. It is you. Give yourself permission to be you. You're already doing it with your prospects. You're already doing it with the people who've already said a big fat yes to you and your company.

So, clearly, just you is doing something right. So show up. Stop sounding like everybody else. God. It makes me bonkers.

Devin, take us out on a happy note. What's your one thing, buddy?

Liz Moorehead: AI, is your friend,

Devyn Bellamy: not another person. It's not it's it's a tool. Use it. Don't be afraid of it. Lean into it, or else you'll end up watching someone else do your job who did lean into it.

I I know. You wanted me to bring it up.

Liz Moorehead: I tried.

Liz Moorehead: Ending on a harsh truth bomb.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: George, you wanna tell a joke?

Liz Moorehead: Do you

Liz Moorehead: have a dad joke to take us out?

Liz Moorehead: There once was a man from Kentucky. I literally I sorry. Well, so no. What's funny? No.

What's what's funny what's funny is,

George B. Thomas: what I wanted to do, I wanted to do, like, give me a limerick on brand voice and poop emojis and, like, see what it would actually do.

Liz Moorehead: I'm excited. What do we got?

George B. Thomas: Oh my gosh. Okay.

Liz Moorehead: Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it.

George B. Thomas: Read it. In a world where emojis reign, a brand spoke with a voice quite plain. With a poop emoji sent with grace, it found its unique space, making customers smile, never faint. I don't even know what we're gonna do from here other than maybe hit that big stop button. Okay, hub heroes.

We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well.

Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.