Originally published September 7, 2022 , updated on January 16, 2023

Consistency is key when it comes to the success of online marketing content. This is where the importance of style guides in business can come in. This is because style guides help establish important aspects of your content like tone of voice, language, and visual style. As such, style guides can be hugely beneficial if your business is looking to connect with its audience on a deeper level. Let’s delve into how a good style guide can achieve this.

What Is a Style Guide?

A style guide is a comprehensive set of rules that outline how a business wants to share its brand image. This doesn’t just concern the types of content you produce or the phrases you use, but your entire business identity. As such, a company writing style guide helps members of your team give potential and existing customers consistent messaging.

The purpose of a style guide is to establish and maintain a consistent brand presence. Here are some of the things that should be included in a style guide for your business:

• Tone & voice – This relates to the language you choose to associate with your business. For instance, how friendly or informal your content should be. Consistent style in tone and voice allows you to express your company’s identity across many different types of content.
• Grammar & punctuation – Check that common words are being used correctly, such as your/you’re, to/too, etc. Additionally, punctuation like hyphens and date formats can vary, so it’s worth setting out exactly how they should appear. There isn’t a right or wrong way to use punctuation. A style guide for business merely ensures your approach remains consistent.
• Company-wide access – The impact of a good style guide should not be limited to your marketing efforts. Moreover, communication occurs in all parts of your business. This means giving all your teams access to your style guide boosts overall confidence in brand messaging.
• Distribution channel guidelines – Certain content distribution channels will suit your business and its audience better than others. The channels you choose will have implications for how your content should be formatted. For example, Twitter has a 280-character limit for posts.  
• Branding guidelines – While branding guidelines will usually exist in another space in your company database, it’s worth including them in your style guide so they aren’t overlooked.

What Are the Benefits of Style Guides for Business?

When deciding whether or not a style guide is necessary for your business, it’s worth bearing in mind the benefits we’re talking about. It may be hard to visualise at the outset, but style guides actively work towards improving lead generation and conversion. The purpose of a style guide is to create clear and consistent brand messaging, and the end result will boost sales in the long term. 

Brand Awareness 

Using a well-executed style guide for business builds a strong association with your company brand. Over time, this results in consumers becoming familiar with your business and its products. The benefit here is increased trust from your target audience. This leads them to be more likely to come to you to fulfil their needs over your competitors.

Evergreen Brand Experience

A style guide ensures your business’ content contains the same brand messaging over time and across multiple platforms. As such, no matter where or when a potential customer discovers your brand, they’ll get the same impression of what you have to offer, your values, and how you operate.

Flexibility 

A company writing style guide ensures your business values remain at the core of your content, whatever form it takes. This allows you to diversify your marketing approach without sacrificing effectiveness. For example, you release a new product that benefits from using solely visual content. Your business style guide will have instructions on how to present it in a way that is consistent with your established brand identity.

The Process of Creating a Style Guide

Armed with the elements of a good style guide and how it can benefit your business, let’s look at how you would make one. It might take a bit of time, but we promise it’ll be worth it.

• Identify your business values – What your business stands for should inform all aspects of your style guide, so it’s important to get it right early on. You could also call this your ‘mission statement.’
• Get your story straight – A brand story can be a great way to connect with potential customers on a more personal level. This is because showing where your business started can demonstrate why you care so much about your audience’s needs.
• Tone & voice – Nail down your business’ identity and how you want it to be expressed.
• Visuals – Visual elements are a key part of a cohesive marketing strategy. What colour compliments my brand logo? Is there an animal that encapsulates my goals? These are just a few helpful questions to consider.
• Differentiators – What sets you apart from the crowd. Focus on your business strengths and make sure they shine through.
• Overall styles – There are many styles that already exist for written content. For instance, how you write dates or the use of punctuation like the Oxford comma.
• Competitors – Arguably an optional inclusion. However, knowledge of your competitors helps inform how to set your business apart. 
• Create examples – Style templates are good, but examples go a step further. These give your team a clear picture of what they are aiming for.

Hopefully the importance of style guides in business is clear now, both internally and externally. 

How Goodman Lantern Can Help

Goodman Lantern has helped scores of businesses create unique style guides to help them achieve their mission. Whatever your industry niche, our team is equipped to deliver the guidelines you need to progress. Goodman Lantern’s range of content creation services mean we can also execute your vision.

Get in touch and find out what we can do for your business.

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