Why do you need a Content Style Guide?
Does your content contain different types of pieces? Do you have to create detailed instruction manuals, helpful support articles, catchy blog posts, and frequent announcements? Are you working with a team of writers, designers, and content creators, each with a different style of their own? Do you lack uniformity and consistency in your content?
A content style guide is a good solution to most of these worries.
It goes without saying that your tone when creating any content, is of extreme importance. What the audience gets (or does not get) from your content, to what extent are their expectations met, and how helpful and attractive your content is, relies on the manner in which you create and present your content. But, of course, you need a pattern, you need to give this entire knowledge network a proper structure, one that is both easy to follow and helpful at the same time. The need for such a structure gets more pronounced when you’re not the only one generating the content.
Treading in a world full of content without a style guide is no different from playing basketball without looking at the rule book — you won’t understand how you lose the points but lose you will.
The Content Style Guide
A style guide lists the basic principles required to ensure consistency in your content. It is, in other words, an instruction manual in itself. A content style guide can cover a wide range of topics — from the usage of brand colors and template of various documents to the structure of headings and use of punctuation (whether to use the Oxford comma, for instance).
The Branding and Identity Guidelines document published by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is one example of a style guide. There are, however,many other examples convering a wide range of topics.
What can you include in a content style guide? That depends on the types of pieces you’re dealing with and the areas where you need to ensure a uniform voice. For example, if your organization is called ‘Stilez’, you wouldn’t want people to write ‘Styles’ or ‘Stiles’ or any other modification. So you lay this rule down in the style guide. Or if you’re using American spellings in all the content (‘color’ and not ‘colour, for instance), you wouldn’t want a ‘flavour’ in any piece (‘flavor’ would be great).
You have some liberty when it comes to the presentation of a style guide. You can create a shared document with everyone involved or you can get it printed and hand it out to all people or you can even host it on your website, accessible to everyone (particularly when you’re in an open-source environment). Remember, however, that the most important thing is to communicate the rules with clarity. If the guide itself doubtful, you can never expect uniformity in the content.
How is it Helpful?
Treading in a world full of content without a style guide is no different from playing basketball without looking at the rule book — you won’t understand how you lose the points but lose you will. What a content style guide does best is that it brings all the necessary rules in one document. You don’t have to go back to your writings and see how you formatted the date, which spellings and styles you used. You have the style guide for that. A guide also ensures that people retain their individual voices, thus not barring the creativity, but the audience gets what they want: a familiar experience. It is also an excellent idea to list all the branding rules down, making sure that the identity and visibility of your brand are never tampered with.
Another important — and extremely helpful — function of a content style guide is that it serves as a roadmap for the future. When your organization grows or the content creators come and go, you will already have an essential document in the onboarding kit. Even if people from different regions are contributing to your knowledge network, and this usually happens in open source organizations, they will have a set standard to follow.
Make sure that all the concerned areas are targeted in the style guide, even if some of those are not yet fully developed.
A style guide also makes the screening and editing tasks easier for those supervising the content. They know the areas to look at before approving (or rejecting) a certain piece. This can also help the editors in organizing the content effectively.
Some Tips
The creation of a content style guide can be time-consuming, demanding, and frustrating at times. Obviously, there are a lot of decisions to make, so collaboration between teams and individuals is a prerequisite. Some important things to consider while working on a style guide are as follows.
- Make sure that all the concerned areas are targeted in the style guide, even if some of those are not yet fully developed. For example, even if you don’t have the social media pages ready, yet, it is always good to have some basic principles.
- Make sure that all the information is accurate and updated. Revisit the style guide after regular intervals to make sure the content does not get outdated.
- Collaborate, discuss, and consult with all the relevant individuals/departments in your organization including, but not limited to, design, social media, and marketing professionals.
- Make clear and unambiguous rules. Do not leave any important decision, thinking that a content creator can do it on the spot.
- Keep an eye on the future. Create a flexible style guide, one that can be updated if new types of content are added and/or if there are some changes in policies, branding, and other such factors.
A style guide is the first step in bringing uniformity, enabling you to generate helpful content for the audience.
Sources
- UX Magazine. The Elements of a Style Guide.
- UX Writing Hub. Top 14 Content Style Guides 2020.
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Branding and Identity Guidelines.
- Barbara Arnolj in UX Collective. How to design a style guide for websites.
