Tone Builder

Learn how to use Tone Builder to create a custom tone profile for your publication. Train your tone on your best content to generate summaries, headlines, and social posts that match your brand's voice.

TONE

Master your publication's voice with Tone Builder. With an easy to use wizard, leverage your best-performing articles, SEO elements, and social posts to create a custom tone profile. Then, use SUM to generate summaries that instantly align with that tone. Finally, craft compelling social media posts using our SOCIAL tool, ensuring your brand's personality shines through for a  seamless reader experience.

To access Tone Builder, navigate to Settings > Workspace Settings > Brands > [Select Brand] > Tone Builder. 

To get started, simply click “+ Create Tone.” That will open the Train Tone wizard screen below:
 

Naming your Tone - At the top of the screen, you will see [Untitled TONE - Date]. Type over this text to name the tone you are creating.

In order to create and train your tone for use across your outputs, it is important to complete each step of the Tone Builder wizard to achieve the most optimal outputs possible. The more examples you share that align to your voice and tone, the better our TONE will be in reflecting that in your tool outputs. 

1. General Content - If there are articles, blogs, links to content, or documents you believe represent your publication’s (or specific author’s) general tone of voice, utilize the General Content tab to load reference material. This material can be in the form of a file (.txt, .doc, .pdf), a URL, or pasted text. You can upload reference material for up to 128,000 characters for your General Content. Click the Next button to move onto the next phase of the TONE wizard. 

2. SUM

   1. Headlines - Provide a minimum of 5 high performing headlines in the voice and tone of your publication. The more headlines you provide that reflect your publication’s/author’s voice/style, the better we can replicate it for future headline outputs in our tools. (Note: if you have set  length and case preferences for Headlines in Brand Preferences, the Nota tool will prioritize these settings for outputs coupled with the tone applied). Click the Next button to continue. 
   2. Summary - Provide a minimum of 5 summaries of content written in your voice and tone so we can train our tool to produce similar styled summaries. Best practice is for summaries to be at least 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences). Click the Next button to continue. 

3. SEO

   1. Page Title - Provide a minimum of 5 page titles that performed well from an organic search perspective. Ensure the length and casing style align with your organization’s best practices. (Note: if you have set  case preferences for Page Titles in Brand Preferences, the Nota tool will prioritize these settings for outputs coupled with the tone applied). Click the Next button to continue.
   2. Meta Descriptions - Provide a minimum of 5 meta descriptions that performed well from an organic search perspective. Ensure the length aligns with your organization’s best practices. Click the Next button to continue.
4. Social - Provide a minimum of 5 posts for each of the social media platforms you’d like to train a tone for. Pick the posts that performed the best from an engagement perspective (likes, comments, shares). 
5. Check Content before Training - at the end of the wizard, we will show you all of the opportunities you have left to add additional content to help best train your tone for each of the outputs available. See below:

Click the Train Tone button in the top right corner. You will notice a ”Training” indicator will appear next to the tone you just created.

Once the tone is done training, you will see an Active tag next to your tone.

If you’d like this tone to be the default that is automatically applied to all relevant outputs, click the drop down in the Default Tone section, and select the tone of choice. Then click the green Save button in the top right corner of the screen.  

Modifying an Existing Tone

To review and update a previously created tone, simply navigate to the Tone Builder tab in the appropriate brand and click the name of the tone you’d like to update.

 This will return you to the Tone Builder wizard. You can add and edit reference materials to further refine your tone and adjust it to your liking. The more data the better! You can preview how your tone will apply to common outputs based on the references you loaded for training.

Preview Tone

Under the Train Tone section, you will see the Preview Tone section. The Tone Category drop down will display all of the output types you loaded reference material to train your tone with. You can then select a Tone Category and a corresponding item from the Content drop down list. The combination you select will show a blurb under [Original Text]. Click the Generate Preview link and Tone Builder will show you a preview of how the [Original Text] would be modified if your tone was applied. 

Leveraging your Tone in tools - SUM

You will now notice on the input screen of SUM, there is a new drop down under the brand selector to “Override your default tone.” If you have set a tone you created as a default tone, here is where you can switch back to “No default tone” or keep your default tone set before running SUM.

After generating an output with your default tone selected, you will now see a tag with a microphone and the default tone name next to outputs it has been applied to. 

If you would like to see how the output would read without your default tone applied, simply click the < or > arrows parallel to the title of the output you are reviewing, and it will show you the output with no tone applied (you will know you are looking at the generic tone because there won’t be a Tone Builder tag).

 

Within SUM, you can apply a tone to the following outputs: 

• Summary tab: Headlines, Article Summary
• SEO tab: Page Titles, Meta Descriptions

Leveraging your Tone in tools - BRIEF

You can also leverage Tone within our BRIEF tool. You will use BRIEF as you always would, and after clicking Generate, you will have the ability to apply a tone to your Article Summary. If you have a default tone set, you will see that applied to your Article Summary. If you don’t have a default tone set, you can click the diamond icon next to the Article Summary to apply a tone of your choosing. Again, you will be able to toggle between outputs with/without tones applied. 

Within BRIEF, you can apply a tone to the following outputs:

• Article Summary

Leveraging your Tone in tools - SOCIAL

Tone is also available in SOCIAL…so let your organization’s personality shine through! You will now notice on the input screen of SOCIAL, there is a new drop down under the Social Style drop down to “Override your default tone.” If you have set a tone you created as a default tone, here is where you can switch back to “No default tone” or keep your default tone set before running SOCIAL.

Your default tone will be applied to any and all social media channels you trained that tone for. You will know your default tone has been applied when you see the Tone tag next to the social media platform.  Example below: 

If you would like to see how the social copy would read without your default tone applied, simply click the < or > arrows parallel to the title of the social platform you are reviewing, and it will show you the output with no tone applied (you will know you are looking at the generic tone because there won’t be a Tone Builder tag).

Within SOCIAL, you can apply a tone to the following outputs:

• Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads, LinkedIn, TikTok, SMS

Leveraging your Tone within WordPress/Newspack

Before you can leverage a tone within WordPress/Newspack, you will need to go through the Tone Builder wizard within the Nota dashboard. To access Tone Builder, navigate to Settings > Workspace Settings > Brands > [Select Brand] > Tone Builder. 

Once your Tone has been created within the Nota dashboard, navigate to your WordPress/Newspack environment. 

Before analyzing an article, you will need to ensure your Brand is selected so that the trained Tone can be pulled in and applied to your outputs. See below:

Once you click the Analyze page button, your outputs will begin to Load on the Content tab. After analyzing a page, you will now see a tag with a microphone and the default tone name next to outputs it has been applied to. See below:

As with our dashboard tools, you can click the < or > arrows parallel to the title of the output you are reviewing, and it will show you the output with no tone applied (you will know you are looking at the generic tone because there won’t be a Tone Builder tag). Additionally, if you have another tone you’d like to apply to a given output, simply click the microphone icon and select the tone you want to apply. Your output(s) will then regenerate based on the tone selected.
 

Within the WordPress/Newspack plug-in, you can apply a tone to the following outputs:

• Content tab: Headlines, Excerpt, Summary
• SEO tab: Page Title, Meta Description
• Social tab: Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads, LinkedIn, TikTok, SMS