How to Write a Style Guide for Marketing Communications

Imagine you want to bake a pie that you’ve never baked before. Will you use a cookbook? I bet you will! Otherwise, how can you be sure what ingredients you need and in what proportions?

Creating content without a style guide is like baking a pie without a recipe — especially true if you have a large team of writers and you need their collective work to look and sound like it comes from the same company.

A style guide is the bedrock of marketing communications for any brand that does marketing. It lays out a set of rules and writing standards that ensure your audience recognizes your brand in various formats across all channels.

What’s your brand voice? Should you sound conversational or business-like? How do you deal with numbers? Should you use bullet points or dashes? Do you use British or American English?

A style guide answers all these questions. It’s a one-stop resource for your writing queries articulating a strategy that makes your brand stand out.

Now that you understand a bit about what a style guide is, let’s talk about what it is not. A style guide doesn’t give answers to questions about:

• Content workflow
• SEO
• Visual elements of style such as logos, colors and…