How to set brand voice guidelines for AI writing
Describe how you sound, add the writing rules agents follow, and set brand colours and example covers for AI-made images.
Your brand voice guidelines live in Brand Brain > Tone & guidelines. Describe how you sound in the How you sound card, then click Add guideline for the specific writing rules every agent follows. Brand colours and example covers for AI-made images go next door, in Visual identity.
Every agent that writes for you reads both before it starts: the Content Agent drafting a blog post, the Activation Agent writing a Reddit reply, or a custom agent you built. Set them once and you stop fixing the same things in every draft.
Why do brand voice guidelines matter for AI search?
Content that ranks in Google and gets cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity tends to be specific and plain. Hype like “revolutionary” and “best-in-class” gives an AI engine nothing to quote.
A good voice setup pushes agents toward writing that earns citations: concrete numbers, clear claims, honest comparisons. It also keeps your brand name consistent, which helps AI engines connect every mention back to you.
How to describe how you sound
The How you sound card holds a short description of your tone. Click Edit, write a few sentences, and save. Cover what’s hard to turn into a single rule:
- The overall tone. Plain and direct, warm and playful, formal and precise.
- Who you sound like. “A sharp sales leader explaining something to a peer” says a lot in one line.
- How you structure things. “Lead with the outcome, back it with a number.”
- How you handle competitors. “Compare honestly and say where another tool is the better fit.”
Onboarding writes a first version from your website. Treat it as a draft and tighten it.
How to add writing guidelines for AI
Guidelines are the hard rules. Each one is a single instruction you could check a draft against.
- Click Add guideline at the top right.
- In the Add guidelines dialog, type one rule per line.
- Click the add button. Each line becomes its own guideline.
Good tone of voice guidelines are specific:
- Write “Atlas” in body copy, not “Atlas CRM”. “Atlas CRM” is only for page titles and ads.
- Say “sales teams” or “reps”, never “users” or “seats”.
- Numbers over adjectives: “live in 4 hours”, not “incredibly fast”.
- Never use em dashes.
- Avoid “revolutionary”, “game-changing” and “synergy”.
- Sentence case for every heading and button.
- American English spelling.
There’s no fixed cap, but 10 to 30 sharp rules beat 100 vague ones.
Every time you make the same fix in an agent’s draft, add it as a guideline. Fix it once and no agent makes that mistake again.
Organise and edit guidelines
- Click New group at the bottom of the section to add groups like “Words and naming” or “Formatting”.
- Use a guideline’s menu to pick Move to group. A group’s menu has Rename and delete. Deleting a group keeps its guidelines.
- Click a guideline to reword it in place. Its menu also has Turn off (keep, agents ignore it) and Delete.
Other ways guidelines get added
- From a style guide. Upload your brand guide under Files & links. Brand Brain drafts its rules into Tone & guidelines as suggestions, with a source chip showing the file.
- From chat. Tell Ask Orchly “never call us a platform” and it saves the rule for every agent, with Undo.
- From your website. When Brand Brain re-reads your key pages, new rules can arrive for review.
Guidelines don’t have a fact-check switch. They’re rules for writing, not claims to test AI answers against. For claims, use Company and Products facts.
How to set brand colours for AI images
Visual identity covers how you look. Agents use it for covers, featured images and illustrations, so a Content Agent post doesn’t arrive with a stock image in someone else’s colours.
- Go to Brand Brain > Visual identity.
- In the Brand colours card, click Add colour. A row called “New colour” appears.
- Click the swatch to set the exact colour. The hex code shows next to the name.
- Name it, like “Atlas Blue” or “Ink”, so agents use each colour in the right role.
You can add up to 6 colours. After that, Add colour is disabled. Click the bin icon on a row to remove one. Changes save as you go.
A good palette is your primary colour, one or two accents, a dark text colour and one or two light tints.
How do example cover images work?
Example covers teach agents what your article covers look like. When an agent creates a cover, your examples go along with the request so the new one matches. Only the look is copied (colours, illustration style, layout), never the picture itself.
- In the Cover images card, drop images onto the upload area or click to choose them.
- Use PNG, JPG or WebP files.
- Add up to 3. A badge shows the count, like 3 of 3.
To remove one, hover over it and click the bin icon. Covers already made aren’t affected.
Pick three recent covers in one consistent style, on different topics. Three different styles give a muddled signal.
Covers come with the articles agents write. See the Content Agent board and how to publish agent output to your CMS. Featured images don’t decide whether ChatGPT cites a page, but they matter once someone clicks through.
You don’t need to repeat your voice in each agent’s instructions. Describe the task and Brand Brain handles the style. See how to build your first agent.