Why a Style Guide Can Help Your Brand and Your Leads

By Lynton Team

The Oxford comma is a polarizing piece of punctuation that demonstrates how complex the world of communication is. It may not matter if you use the serial comma and your grandma doesn’t – but when it comes to business, and all the people contributing content to a company, it is essential to be on the same page.

So, how do you ensure this? Enter the style guide. With a reliable guide in place, you can attract leads and ultimately create new, happy customers.

What is a Style Guide?

A style guide is an internal reference of design and writing standards for businesses. The elements included can steer your company’s vision in marketing efforts for products and services and clear up any communication misconceptions between teams along the way. Inconsistent internal messaging can damage your external efforts and hinder your current or potential connections with customers.

These guides range can range from thousands of pages, like the AP Stylebook, or be a simple one-sheet handout.

What Should You Include in a Style Guide?

Ultimately, what goes into your company’s brand or style guide depends on your team, but there are key components to address, such as:

  • Punctuation rules, like whether or not to utilize the Oxford comma.
  • Spelling - this is particularly prevalent with international organizations and should be addressed.
  • How to cite and attribute, if your company engages in long-form pieces such as eBooks or whitepapers.
  • How to write to your various audiences or personas.
  • Proper abbreviation for social media platforms.
  • Design elements, including your company’s logo and any of its derivatives -this should also include when or where to use each logo if you have more than one version.
  • How designers should treat logos and what files they should provide.
  • Typefaces for print and online material, including body copy versus headline copy. For companies providing demos via PowerPoint, this is integral.
  • Formatting preferences.
  • Various web styles such as buttons, contact us forms, and more.

Why a Style Guide Matters

A style guide broadcasts your brand and standards of your entire company. Having a document like this readily available enables your writers, designers, account executives, and other employees to create exemplary work with little stress. It also creates a consistent experience for your customers and leads.

Picture yourself as a potential customer reading your blog and noticing non-exempt and nonexempt run rampantly, and interchangeably, across multiple articles. What if a different person experiences a product demo that features a logo that’s different from your website’s? These instances diminish your brand as trustworthy and knowledgeable in the eyes of your audiences and can leave your in-house team feeling confused or embarrassed.

Without a style guide, you face meetings with writers about whether or not to capitalize a word. You’re bogged down by reminding your sales team to be consistent with one another. Less time spent focusing on simple style errors means more time focusing on more significant projects.

Think of some of the most well-known brands in the world, like Apple or Target. If you approached almost anyone on the street, it’s likely he or she knows their logos, colors, and slogans. If you go to their websites, their social media pages, or read their blogs, the language and punctuation are the same across the board. The personality is the same – and it’s feasible multiple people are attributing to these channels. However, the experience never changes. Apple’s consistent use of the same logo in the same spot and Target’s undeniable perchance for red resonates with their audiences. Frequency combined with consistency creates recognition. A friendly and trustworthy brand builds trust.

Now picture Target versus Walmart. They’re both large department stores, but most argue they’re entirely different entities, even if they both sell the same shampoo. They’ve separated themselves from the competition by adhering to their respected brands. Anyone and everyone - even if you’re a nonprofit, B2B, or B2C organization - has competitors they want to outshine.

How to Develop a Style Guide

If you’ve read this far and recognized you don’t have a guide and need one, don’t fret. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Here are some helpful guidelines to begin the process.

  • Consider who will be using the style guide the most and get their input on what they find important. Do they want a ten-page document or a simple half-sheet?
  • Identify and write down the key components to include (grammar, colors, etc.).
  • Go through your organization’s current documents, web presence, and more and look for trends. Is a stacked logo used most frequently? Do you hyphenate certain words?
  • Reference existing grammar style guides, like the AP Stylebook or MLA Handbooks.
  • Look over another company’s public brand or style guide.
  • Debate whether or not you need a client style guide as well. You may write webpage as one word, but a client may prefer web page.

After you create your style guide’s first draft, get input from key players within your organization to ensure you’ve missed nothing. A guide only helps if everyone agrees on its parts. After that, introduce the guide in multiple waves across the company. Be open to questions and debates. Just because you’ve created the manual doesn’t mean it’s not fluid.

A style guide is integral for your company’s brand recognition. When you’re consistent and recognizable, your relationships with those interacting with your organization are elevated. They can quickly become leads, then customers, or clients. When you’re contradictory and irregular, your relationships suffer, and so can your business.