Create a style guide for your content

Contributors

@paul-boag


Business Benefits

Keep tone, voice, and messaging consistent throughout your content.


In a document, add a Target Audience Profiles heading and outline your buyer personas.

Each persona should include:

  • Name
  • Pain point
  • Goals
  • Questions
  • What motivates them to choose you
  • Job titles
  • Income levels
  • and other defining characteristics.

Your personas should come from research on your target audience.

Add a Brand Voice heading and describe your brand personality and tone in few words.

If your brand was a person, how would you describe their personality? For example, quirky, professional, empowering, friendly, and passionate.

Look at your existing blog posts and social media content and find the ones with the most shares and positive comments.

Read the content and identify the voice that was used. This will help you to determine what your audience identifies with and what they like.

Add a What our brand voice is not subheading and enter the characteristics that are opposite to your brand voice.

For example, if your brand voice is professional and corporate, staying away from clichés and jargon can be a part of conveying your brand voice.

List the content types that you want to create for your brand under a Content Types subheading.

Include content like video, audio, and blog posts. Specify how each content type will be used. For example, video for interviews and how-to guides.

Add a Formatting heading and enter the grammar and formatting specifications for your brand.

That can include using the Oxford comma, how you credit references, the font style and colors you use, and how many lines should be in a paragraph.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T16:30:39Z

In our style guide we add 2 or 3 examples to give a broader range and make it easier for contributors to contextualize.

I find it more effective to add some clear examples in the Brand guidelines doc, for each personality trait. This helps writers - especially when working with external contributors - to understand the style easier.