Content Corner: Create a Brand and Style Guide

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Have you ever read a book with multiple narrators? It can be challenging to keep the story straight – who is talking, how are they feeling and what is happening to everyone else? As a conscious brand and business your customers want to hear the truth, to get to know you and to understand how you are making a difference (and how they can help!). This means no matter how many people are on your corporate team you need to create a consistent style to communicate with your audience.

Today, we’re going to dive into voice and the basics of establishing a writing style guide for your team but we’ll touch on brand guidelines, too. After all, the story you’re telling will consist of more than words. First, start by getting clear about the value you provide. Most conscious companies focus on human and social good, environmental impact, animal protection or multiple topics. This interest will be central to how you write.

Get To Know Your Writers

Before you start writing style guidelines in stone, think about who will be writing on your brand’s behalf. When working with multiple authors, it can be challenging to establish a consistent voice – everyone has a different writing style and might have a different relationship with your products or services. Brand consistency is vital to the user experience though. Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I the primary writer and business owner?

• Who is currently writing or may write on my in-house team?

• Do I plan to work with an agency or partner who will write?

• Will I hire new employees or interns who might contribute?

Whether you are one or many, odds are you’ll expand as a result of the important impact you’re making. As you have more writers or even external contributors, creating a style guide is essential to define basic writing guidelines and principles, to share with your team and to save yourself time in the editing process. Set your expectations so writers are guided by advice that is as clear as possible. 

Yes, your voice can evolve over time as your business does, but just like building any other relationship, you want to build trust and credibility through your words, content and actions along the way.

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What To Define

According to Jenn Chen on Sprout Social, your brand voice refers to your brand’s personality in communications. She also has some great tips to help you develop yours. If you want, you can even create a brand persona to determine how your brand should “talk”.

As you start to define what you want your brand voice and any written content to sound like, brainstorm the broad attributes before getting down to specifics. This will help you to pick conventions that support how you want to sound.

Is your brand funny? An expert? Exclusive? Write down your top three brand attributes you hope to communicate. Now, what will your tone be? This might vary slightly by piece as fit to specific communications, but decide how you’ll typically communicate with people. Will you be formal, casual or matter-of-fact? Match your energy and mission. 

For conscious brands, transparency and casualness can especially help to build relationships.

Digging Into Details

Next, what is the level of technicality you need to include? Based on both legal requirements and required formality, determine the best basic style and formatting. Will you write in AP style or another standard convention? Will you mix this style with anything else?

Also, depending on what type of content you will be developing, determine the best way to cite or link research sources. This could vary by industry, but giving credit where due is a must, just keep the format consistent. You can also look at what competitors are doing to be on the same page technically.

To continue, here are a few other questions you will need to answer:

• Are there any words you will keep consistent or only use in particular contexts? 

• Will you use contractions? Which ones?

• Will you use slang or industry verbiage?

• Will you have content word limits?

• What will your paragraph layouts look like? On a blog, how many sentences are required for a paragraph or when should writers stop?

• If you’re grouping content, what categories will your writing fall into? Even tags and hashtags should be intentional.

Compile your answers to all of these questions in an easy to read document. Be specific and know why you are making these decisions. Use your principles of design to make it clear, reader-friendly and ready to share with any writers who wander your way. With the tough questions answered and your details defined, let’s move onto more general brand guidelines.

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How To Create Your Guidelines

Beyond your words, here are a few other elements for your brand you should set standards for.

1) Select brand colors. These should communicate your story, align with your voice and mission or even connect to your industry. Consider starting with two or three primary colors, secondary shades for type and legal and alternate values to add impact – that’s what we do at The Good Camp! Together, you’ll have a beautiful palette to get started on designs. For more inspiration, check out Canva’s color combination guide.

2) Define logo usage. Just as we mentioned in our design elements discussion, protect your logo. Communicate to your team what white space you expect to surround your logo, what colors it can and must be, its minimum size and how the logo can be used on social media. In this section, you can also show what NOT to do. Visualize it for your team and it will be more likely they won’t do it.

3) Clarify your fonts. Especially when working with an agency or guest designer, give them clear guidance on what you expect fonts to look like in design – they’re creative and will surely have an idea of their own! Determine what can be italic or bold and what should not be. What is your standard font for body text, captions, footnotes or even subheadings? For your headings, what font sizes do you expect? Will you use a complimentary font for impact like a script? Include all of this information in a font section.

4) Show image expectations. While defining your brand voice will paint a picture of your brand, the clearer you are about what you expect in images and visuals the better. In this section of your brand guidelines, discuss the types of images you want to represent your brand whether they’re produced in-house, shared by contributors or located from stock sources. What messages should they convey? Are there specific colors that should be included? Is there a type of balance or design you want to consistently seek? Are there any stylistic differences between your website, direct mail or social media?

None of these decisions should be made lightly so put serious consideration into them, but once you have things set, get ready to level up your content creation and make your editing that much easier.

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Establishing Consistency

Just like that, you’ve created a style guide for writing and brand guidelines for your team! Be proud of the investment and information you’ve collected. To establish consistency and create the aesthetic of your dreams through stories and design, encourage your team members to use this guide like a checklist, editing their content by comparing designs and copy to each section. This way, in a content review you or your managing team members will not have as much to correct and can focus on whether the content is accomplishing its purpose.

Like your business, these guidelines should be living and breathing. When you want to start transforming your brand in one way or another or notice that you start making a specific correction or edit repeatedly, revisit the style guide and brand expectations – keep them updated and save yourself and your team the stress.

Pro Tip: From creation to updates, involve your team in style and brand developments. The more unique perspectives on your business that can be included and served, the more informed your decisions will be. Plus, your creators will feel empowered as you hear their voices and incorporate their best brand practices.

It may feel challenging at first, but looking at your content and evaluating it through this strategic lens will help in the long run, and before anyone creates for you they’ll have an understanding of what’s expected. Explore, personalize and make your style what you’ve dreamed it can be.