How to produce content with style AND substance | The Giles Agency

Companies constantly produce copious amounts of marketing, PR and communications material, from press releases to internal emails to social media posts. Regardless of author or medium, every piece of content must fit smoothly together to paint different parts of the same picture, with the same brand voice, identity, style and tone—and for this, you need a style guide.

A style guide is a set of instructions for how your company should communicate, so that everything you publish is polished, professional and consistent. There are a few key aspects that you might wish to discuss in such a guide:

Brand voice and personality

How does your company sound when it speaks to its customers? The “voice” of a new gym will be very different to that of a well-established law company. A style guide ensures that all of your content ‘speaks’ in the same way.

Wording and language

Now you’ve established your brand voice, what language will you use to achieve it? This may include things like British versus American English, formatting for dates and figures, capitalising and italicising words, and so on. For many of these there’s no right or wrong way to do it; it’s merely a matter of preference.

Visuals and design

Visual communication is a key element of your external brand and marketing. This can cover all manner of visual and graphic design rules, including logo spacing, preferred font, colour palette, photography style, and more.

Style guides ensure consistency and professionalism, and strengthen your brand identity to your customers. They save time, cost, and confusion for your staff, and help new members of your team instantly understand your company’s brand.

If you work with freelancers or copywriting agencies, it can save a lot of hassle to simply send over your brand guide, so they know from the offset exactly what to deliver.

Need help?

If you don’t have a style guide and don’t know where to start, two of the best ones are the Style Guide published by The Economist and the Associated Press Stylebook. The latter is more relevant for American English, but is much more comprehensive than the former, so using the two in conjunction can be a great starting point.

If you need help, we can help you put together a company style guide from scratch, to ensure that all of your future communications are sleek and consistent. Contact us to find out more.