Setting up your brand voice (and using the free generator)
Ten minutes of guide-writing is the difference between AI that sounds like a marketing robot and AI that sounds like you. Here's the setup and the free generator that does the hard part.
If you're going to use AI for any part of your social content, the single most valuable ten minutes you spend is writing your brand voice guides.
Without them, AI produces competent-but-generic marketing prose. Polished. Inoffensive. Interchangeable with every other author using the same tool.
With them, AI writes in a voice that sounds like you. Specifically like you. The same rhythm, the same vocabulary, the same way you handle humor or tension. Readers who know your work can't always articulate the difference, but they feel it.
What the four guides are
Open /dashboard/settings and scroll to Content Guides. There
are four fields:
1. Prose Guide
How you write at the sentence level. Cadence, vocabulary, punctuation preferences, reading level, what you do with em-dashes. The mechanical rules that make your prose recognizable even stripped of context.
Example for a cozy-mystery author:
Warm, conversational, slightly wry. Third-grade reading level for accessibility. Prefer em-dashes to semicolons. Short sentences in tense moments, longer ones in reflective passages. Food metaphors welcome. Never use "literally" unless actually literal.
2. Brand Guide
The values-and-vibe layer. What you stand for, what you sound like as a human, what themes run through your work. The stuff your readers would list if asked "what's Chelle about?"
Example:
Cozy but not saccharine. We write about small-town murder where the comfort is the community, not the violence. Grandma sleuth is smart, not twee. Pets are real characters with real personalities. Romance subplot optional, never erotic. Happy endings guaranteed. We love readers who want to feel safe while they figure out the mystery.
3. Copywriting Guide
The persuasion-and-call-to-action layer. What makes your posts convert to clicks, pre-orders, newsletter signups. The mechanical rules for marketing copy specifically.
Example:
Lead with a hook question or a scene beat. Never lead with "Hey readers!" or "Happy Monday!" CTAs specific: "Read chapter 1 free" not "Check out my book." Use numbers where possible: "Book 7 of 12" rather than "my series." One CTA per post, never two. Character names in posts before book titles.
4. Social Media Guide
Platform-specific guidance. Hashtag strategy, emoji usage, caption length per platform, what kinds of content perform for you.
Example:
Instagram: 5–8 hashtags, mix of niche (#cozymystery) and community (#bookstagram). Use emojis sparingly — a book and a teacup, that's the palette. TikTok: hook in first 2 seconds, use trending audio only if it fits the vibe. LinkedIn: skip. Threads: shorter, sharper, one thought per post.
Why four guides, not one
Different guides inform different kinds of content. AI pulls from each one contextually:
- Drafting a caption? Prose Guide + Social Media Guide.
- Writing a launch announcement? Prose Guide + Copywriting Guide.
- Running a full campaign batch? All four, with priority depending on the post type.
Splitting them keeps each guide focused and short. A single "mega guide" gets long fast and the specific signals drown each other out.
Writing the four guides yourself
Writing these from scratch is the hardest part — and also the most valuable thing you can do for your AI output. Aim for five to ten sentences per guide. The placeholder text in each Settings textarea is the prompt; treat it as a question to answer.
Five questions per guide that get you 80% of the way there:
Prose Guide — How long are your average sentences? What punctuation do you over-use (em-dashes? semicolons? ellipses)? What three words do you reach for that other authors don't? What reading level are you aiming for? What's a sentence you'd never write?
Brand Guide — What three values do your readers expect from your books? What's a theme that runs through everything you write? What's a thing you absolutely won't do (gore? sex on the page? unhappy endings)? Who is your reader, in one sentence? What do you stand for that another author in your genre might not?
Copywriting Guide — How do you open a launch post (a question? a scene beat? a line of dialogue)? How do you write a CTA that doesn't feel pushy? What's the format of a hook for your genre? Where do you put the book title — top, middle, bottom? What's your standard sign-off?
Social Media Guide — How many hashtags per Instagram post? Which platforms get the most effort? What's your emoji vocabulary — sparing, none, or playful? What's your caption-length preference per platform? What's a post format that's worked for you before?
Save once, and AI starts using them on the next post you draft.
Coming soon: a Claude plugin that walks you through these questions in conversation and drafts the four guides for you to edit. Until then, write them inline using the prompts above.
What happens when AI reads a good guide vs. a bad one
Same prompt, same book, same platform. What changes is what guides are behind the scenes.
Without guides (or with 1–2 sentence guides):
Excited to share that my new cozy mystery is out now! Meet Grandma Rose, an amateur sleuth with a sharp eye for clues and a sweet tooth for pie. Available on Amazon!
With guides filled out using the generator:
*Rose didn't go looking for the body in the blueberry patch. She went looking for a pie filling. Same problem, different pie.
Book 3 of the Sugar Bee Mysteries is out now. Chapter 1 free at the link.*
Same facts. Different voice. The second one sounds like a person with a point of view; the first sounds like every other cozy mystery launch post ever written.
Each pen name has its own guides
As with the books library, each pen name gets its own set of four guides. If you write cozy mysteries as Chelle Honiker and thrillers as C.A. Steele, set up each pen name's guides separately. Run the free generator twice.
The switching between pen names in the top-right dropdown changes which guides AI reads. Different voice per pen name, automatically.
When you don't need this
If you don't use AI for captions at all, you don't strictly need to fill out these guides. The tool works fine without AI. Guides only matter when AI is involved.
But if you flipped AI on in Settings, spending ten minutes on guides is the single biggest quality lever available. It's the difference between "I tried AI for a week and the captions were too generic" and "I tried AI for a week and couldn't go back."
Common mistakes to avoid
1. Making the guides too long. A three-page brand guide is harder for AI to parse than a focused one-paragraph guide. If your generator output is very long, trim to the most distinctive characteristics — the ones a casual reader of your work would recognize — and save the rest to a longer personal reference doc.
2. Filling out just the Prose Guide and calling it done. Prose is one layer. Without the Brand Guide, AI doesn't know your values or themes, so captions come out stylistically correct but thematically hollow.
3. Forgetting to update them. If your voice evolves, the guides should too. Ten minutes once a quarter to refresh is worth it.
What to do next
- Open Settings → Content Guides and write the four guides inline using the questions in the section above
- Draft a post with AI — the difference from AI-without-guides is usually obvious inside one or two drafts
- If you're running multiple pen names, do this separately for each
- Watch for the upcoming Claude plugin that drafts these for you from a short Q&A — coming soon
