The Goodman Lantern Content
Style Guide: How We Capture
Your Brand Voice and Convey
Your Message

An Overview of Your Brand and Objectives

Who is your business, what do you stand for, and what are you trying to achieve with your marketing efforts? We answer these questions in a detailed overview that serves as your brand introduction.

In this introduction, we closely connect your brand and offerings to the type of content you want to produce and the story you want to tell. It’s part of the “why” behind the work Goodman Lantern and other agencies do for you and helps us better understand the overarching goal behind your content marketing efforts.

With this information, everyone who creates content for your brand can clearly understand the intent behind each piece of content produced, regardless of the platform where it’s published.

Your Target Audience

A content style guide helps to ensure consistency in the way your brand communicates with your target audience, both in terms of messaging and presentation. This consistency can reinforce your brand’s messaging and build a stronger customer connection.

Your content style guide should include information on your target audience and, preferably, the various personas you’re targeting.

Including this information is essential because it allows your marketing team and content creators to tailor your marketing messages to your potential customers’ specific needs, wants, and preferences. By deeply understanding your target audience, your content team can create more relevant and effective marketing campaigns that are more likely to engage and convert leads into customers.

Your Brand Tone of Voice

Your brand tone of voice is the personality and character that your brand conveys through written and spoken communications.

It encompasses the way the brand speaks, writes, and interacts with its audience, and reflects the values, personality, and unique characteristics of the brand.

The tone of voice sets a brand apart from others, helps to establish an emotional connection with its target audience, and contributes to building a strong brand identity.

This section of your style guide will contain guidelines on the tone and voice of your content, such as the level of:

• Formality
• Humour
• Intimacy
• Formality

Where relevant, we also conduct a competitor analysis and include examples of well-performing competitor content for reference.

Editorial Rules and Preferences

This section of the content style guide details the following:

• Grammar and Punctuation: Rules on grammar, punctuation, and spelling, such as whether to use Oxford commas or not, when to use contractions, and when to use British or American English.
• Capitalisation: Rules on capitalisation, including the use of title case, sentence case, and upper case.
• Abbreviations and Acronyms: Guidelines on the use of abbreviations and acronyms, including when to use them and when to spell them out.
• Numbers and Measurements: Recommendations on how to format numbers, measurements, and dates, such as the use of digits versus words, the use of decimals, and the use of time zones.
• Headings and Subheadings: Rules on the format and style of headings and subheadings, such as the use of H1, H2, and H3 tags, and the use of bold or italic text.
• Lists: Recommendations on the format and style of lists, including the use of bullet points, numbered lists, and definition lists.
• Images and Video: Guidelines on the use of images and video in content, such as the use of alt tags, captions, and image sizes.
• Links: Recommendations on the use of links in content, including the format and style of hyperlinks, and the use of nofollow links.