Create a social media style guide

Contributors

@brandon-leuangpaseuth @andreea-macoveiciuc-content-expert @derek-gleason-3


Business Benefits

Align your social media strategy to establish your brand’s objectives across all of your social media platforms.


List the social media platforms that your brand will be active on.

List all the social media platforms that your brand will be active on, along with secondary options (if any). Once listed, you’re ready to create your profiles.

Document your brand’s personality traits and then tone and voice requirements.

This will help your brand maintain consistency across all channels and avoid creating content that isn’t aligned with your brand’s personality. If you have a different voice for different platforms such as formal on LinkedIn or more playful on Instagram, be sure to note that down in your style guide. Some voice options are:

  • Cheerful
  • Helpful
  • Casual
  • Sarcastic
  • Friendly
  • Political or non-political
  • Humorous

Use campaign specific and trending hashtags that define your brand.

Categorize a list of branded hashtags that are trending and can be related to your brand personas. Choose a few ideal hashtags to start with then test and iterate from there. Make sure you have one specific hashtag that defines your brand. Use TagsFinder to generate useful hashtags.

Example of a spot-on hashtag usage: on Twitter, the #GivesYouWings hashtag is listed in place of its company description.

Outline the types of images and videos your brand will share on social media, and the dimensions and formatting to use.

Include points like whether to add the company logo to a post, where in the post to add it, and which colors to use. Take screenshots of the visual content that inspires you and save them to include in your social brand guidelines.

Plan out how to manage a crisis on your social channels, including a list of immediate response actions such as pausing or canceling any posts.

For example, if you are a travel brand and there’s an international tragedy, you probably want to cancel posts talking about offers or discounts. Make a list of responses that you will use as a brand when there are negative comments on your posts.

Prepare a content calendar for your active social media channels, to align your daily, weekly, and monthly social media cadence.

For example, if your LinkedIn account is meant to drive leads, focus on lead generation content. Similarly, if your Instagram account is meant for brand awareness, use relevant content that is meant for brand awareness. You can start by choosing a day and network for your post, then write your post copy in a content field.

Schedule your posts to maintain consistency in the timelines for posting content across various channels.

There are a range of scheduling tools available online like Postify, Tweetdeck, and Hootsuite.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T16:25:40Z