Launching a (Good) Content Style Guide
Have you ever noticed writing about writing is hard? When you’re trying to write rules about writing, it’s even harder. It’s so easy to be too rigid, or too flexible.
After all, it’s not just the people with “content” in their job description that write. Support reps, product team members, corporate communications specialists, customer success managers — they all write content, either internally or externally.
So how do we create a content style guide that’s applicable to absolutely everyone that could use it, without being too much like a rulebook?
Answer — it’s hard.
Where do we start?
Ever work on a project you know would have a big impact, but it wasn’t very urgent? That’s exactly what this was. Extremely valuable, something everyone at the company can use, but not strictly necessary to get things done. How do we dedicate time to this when there are so many other urgent requests that need our attention?
It’s not like we hadn’t attempted this before. We had a “Writing” section in our brand guidelines and a “Words” section in our design system. But we needed something that spanned every department, not separate resources just for marketing and product writing.
As many things do, it started with one person who recognized the need and was in a position to take action. She didn’t try to do it alone (something we learned from those past attempts), but instead set up a content guild. People from different departments, who all write as part of their jobs.
Next up? A sitemap. We wanted this resource to be as easy as possible to navigate — our friends on the web team joined us to help plan. We also wanted it to look like Hudl so we added a brand designer to the mix.
Sections were claimed based on everyone’s strengths. Our Google document became a behemoth, clocking it at more than 50 pages. Sections were added as we wrote. (How have we never covered parenthesis usage before?) Then we edited each other’s words (multiple times).
Our web guy came in clutch with a fantastic site for us to copy everything into. Cue several rounds of QA. And as we got ready to launch, we realized it had been almost a year to the day from our first content guild meeting.
So what’d we learn along the way?
(Other than how hard it is to write about writing rules while following those rules, I mean.)
This was a team effort.
No one person could tackle this alone. It goes back to wanting this to be a comprehensive resource, spanning all departments. We couldn’t achieve that unless we recruited people from across the company. Having a content designer write the sections on product writing? Genius. An education specialist writing the section on education? Seems like a good idea.
One more important criteria: the team was made up of people who were passionate about this project from the beginning. It was key that we all cared enough to make time for this low urgency project.
We had to be flexible.
This guide is exactly that — a guide. There are always going to be exceptions. And not just in the grammatical sense, but in our brand. Hudl’s tone in a billing email is going to be different than a celebratory tweet. We learned that sometimes it’s more about laying the groundwork so people can make their own choices.
And no one is perfect. All of our contributors are writers in some sense, but editing your own work is hard. Your mind glosses over mistakes because you’ve read the same thing too many times. We had to edit each other’s work, then go back through and accept those changes or have discussions about them.
Speaking of discussions, there were a lot.
When you have a lot of writers working on a project they’re passionate about (i.e., writing), you’re going to have a clash of opinions. We were all trained differently, all with different backgrounds and experiences.
So of course we had lengthy discussions about whether all punctuation should be outside quotation marks, and what our company’s take on ellipses should be. And what about our other resources, like our design system Uniform? Do we stay consistent with it every step of the way, or since this is about words, do we prioritize AP Style over product writing rules?
And those were just about the content. What about the way the site itself works? Should everything be public or should we keep some things private? Should links open in new tabs or within the same page? Should every headline section have a custom URL? What pages will be valuable to someone looking for a specific topic? How many cross-references is too many?
Discussions were had about all these topics, and decisions were eventually made. But lesson learned — with passion comes politics.
We have to keep it fresh.
Before we got started, we knew a resource like this could quickly become stale if no one is watching. We also knew this project was never going to be finished, tied with a bow, and moved on from. We would need people to watch over it, make updates and add new topics when necessary.
So a governance committee was planned and created. No one department owns the content style guide, so no one department should be in charge of maintenance. Our committee members include representatives from marketing, product, support, sales, education and internal communications. We’ll review change requests that come from Hudlies and make updates accordingly. (You can bet some good discussions will be had in this group.) We’ll make sure these guidelines don’t go stale.
Now it’s live. (Finally.)
Our beautiful content style guide site is now ready for action. The one guide to rule them all, ready to help Hudlies make their content the best it can be. An easy, self-service way for anyone who writes anything at the company to look up what they need to know or gut check what they’re working on.
Five sections full of tips, best practices, and yes, a few AP Style rules, with even more sections planned for the future. All designed around the best ways we can present information to our customers. So dive in.
