How can you simplify content creation and maintain your brand voice?
By documenting your brand voice guidelines—and making those guidelines widely available, says Erika Heald.
Is your brand voice documented?
Founder of Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, Erika shared her insights into documenting your brand voice at B2B Forum in 2023. Get her valuable ideas in the short video or transcript below.
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Probably about seven years ago, I wrote an article for CMI about how to define and document your brand voice.
Because one of the worst experiences I ever had in my career was starting a brand new job doing internal communications for leadership and earnestly asking,
“Okay, so what is Art Leaders? What’s her brand voice?”
And they said, “oh, just go read those two articles in this trade publication and read some of her emails.”
I was like, “oh crap.”
Because I didn’t have—back then—an AI to look at that and tell me what her style was.
Instead, I had to read all of that… Oh, and the same day, write something for her too.
So it’s so much nicer, friendlier, and better to give people an idea of what your brand voice says, what kind of tone they should be using, and links to examples.
Now, I know this is hard to read. It is in the deck, so please do not try to write down all of this.
The thing is, the takeaway here is, you’re going to take whatever those three to five brand voice, brand attributes, you have… and you’re going to think about how to transform them into things that are meaningful for content creators.
(These examples, if they look familiar, yes, I did use them… in the [MarketingProfs AI for Content Creators] this summer. This was what ChatGPT put together as the attributes for Apple, and how these different brand attributes actually affect their content.)
So for example, for Innovative:
Apple is known for its innovative products and solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible. We can all agree that sounds like Apple, right?
So what would a “[thing to] do” be [for Apple]?
You’d want to use cutting edge technology and design to create products that are ahead of the curve.
In the same way, you’d want to have content that feels cutting edge. You wouldn’t ever want to just throw up a PDF. You’d want to create interactive content, for example.
You would even feel empowered to use some brand new tool that you found at MarketingProfs in the vendor hall. You’d feel empowered, you’d understand that that is a priority.
A “don’t” would be, you don’t want to copy the competitors or follow trends. Because that’s not what they do [at Apple].
Steve Jobs, when he created the iPod, yeah, there were already plenty of MP3 players. But he completely re-envisioned it. And instead of talking about how much music you could store on it per se, he talked about how it meant you could have all of your favorite songs in your pocket. Instead of the way that Microsoft, for example, would go to market with it.
So again, these are all just examples of how to go through and create your brand voice chart.
And I do, again, have an example of that in mine as well, so you can see all the “dos” and “don’ts.”
And then of course, this is my other favorite section of every style guide, the “what not to do.”
Everyone has that one executive who has one word that makes them burst into flames. Spontaneously combust.
So any of those words or phrases that you need to avoid, put it on there.
List of who or what not to quote or mention.
Now most companies, unfortunately, will be like, “don’t you dare our competitors research in something you’re doing.” Even if it’s the best research available on the market.
An example I always give is: Salesforce does amazing research on digital marketing and on customer experience.
And a lot of their competitors—some of whom I’ve done work for, I’ve also disclaimer, done work for Salesforce—a lot of people are like, “you can’t use that stat because it’s from Salesforce.”
It’s like, “but it’s the best stat available. So instead we should just say things with no attribution? And that’s better?”
And they’re like, “yes!” …Okay.
If that is your organization, just put it in there so that way you don’t put it on the onus of the content creator to not know that and to get ripped for it.
I did have a CEO that I worked with who used to walk up to people in the office in front of everyone, and if he did not like something that was being shared on social, he would tell ’em to delete it. Yeah. All right.
Additional resources? Any of the kinds of tools that you have.
This is how to drive style guide adoption. Yes, these are my overgrown roses. They grow like crazy and hopefully your style guide will do the same.
All right, first of all, you want to include a link to the shared document in any channels and tools that inform content writing and creation like your content brief, content templates, and guidelines for guest writers and contributors.
And that is my friend Carmen Hill’s suggestion, because that is… a challenge she has gone through in her organization. And I’m pretty sure we’ve all gone through it too.
People say, “oh, but where is the style guide? Oh, I couldn’t find the content intake template.”
You want to make that stuff readily available.
And if you are using a tool like Writer or Copy.AI, you can add those right there into those resources so they can never make that excuse again.
Melanie Graham’s suggestion was to include your style guide and onboarding materials for all new employees so they understand the brand guidelines and resources from the get-go.
And this was something I successfully did at Anaplan because I put together the presentation to tell everybody at a glance, “here’s the one page style guide of how we refer to the company, how we never refer to the company, where to go for more information. And please don’t create your own graphics. Please use these.”
The biggest thing… and this is my cat. When we did our big move in 2019, he thought he was helping me. He was like, “I’m helping mommy by laying on top of things that she’s trying to pack.” But he thought he was helping.
So the most important key to getting people to use your style guide is to communicate how it helps your people. Help them understand how having that consistency in the way that you talk about your company benefits them, benefits your customers, and makes it less likely that some member of the public is going to talk about you in a way that you don’t want.
All right, so the top five reasons I have—and this is Cooper-the-baby-approved—for why you need to have a star guide:
As we noted, avoid a vomit of redline edits on things people write. Because that causes people to never want to write again for your content team. And you want everyone in the organization to feel empowered to write.
You also need one so that AI can help us stay consistent across every channel, every time.
To resolve all those conflicting preferences your reviewers have. It is so nice to say, “thank you for your personal opinion, but our style guide says…” And then you can stop the comment thread from devolving.
It helps your external partners and freelancers confidently create content faster.
And my favorite: it makes space in your brain for things that need your attention, because none of this stuff should you be carrying around in your brain like a burden.
And you’re going to create a feedback loop.
You’re going to ask for additions all the time by hopefully putting it into a format where people can do that proactively.
Don’t wait to adjust things. If you can, put it again in that kind of format where you can immediately accept or not accept, and let them know why.
And don’t be afraid to break the rules because once you know the rules and you’ve documented the rules, you can break them sometimes.
But if they’re not documented anywhere, you’re just making a mess.
Published August 7, 2024
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