Your on-air presence is the heart of your business, but in today’s digital world, it’s only one of the ways that your audience will interact with your brand. An effective digital strategy includes a website, blog, and social media profiles. When it comes to publishing content in these arenas, what and how you post matter. That’s where a style guide can help you refine your content plan.
A style guide is an essential tool for producing quality articles and blog posts. When your content is created by a team, rather than one or two individuals, a style guide ensures consistency in your voice and tone and encourages best practices, such as putting your audience first. Below are three tips for creating your own style guide.
Before you can craft engaging content for your audience, you must understand exactly who they are. If you don’t already have one, create a profile for a model listener. Where do they hang out? What are their interests? When/why/how do they tune in to your station or visit your website? If you consider all of this when you’re writing blog posts, articles, and updates to share with your audience, it will maximize the potential for engagement.
While your on-air talent may each have their own unique voice, your brand should have a strong personality of its own, which should be reflected in your online content. Is your pop station quirky, quick-witted, and funny? Or are you a serious, fast-breaking news outlet, reporting just the facts? Will you write your content in first or second person? Your audience will expect to find these attributes in your articles and blog posts, so they should be consistently reflected in everything you publish.
Be sure to include guidelines in your style guide that establish what content formats are allowed on your site, where each should be published, and how they should be categorized. Will you only be posting interviews and blog posts? Or will your team be sharing video content and uploading podcasts from your programming? If you plan to include images–which you should–determine how each will be credited and how photo captions should be formatted. Keeping all of these elements consistent will enhance your audience’s experience when they visit your site.
Other items you could include in a style guide are specific colors, fonts, and design elements, categories for your blog posts, and templates for the banners, sliders, and any other ads that will appear on your site. The more specific details you include in the document, the more consistent your content will be. This will not only reinforce the unique elements of your brand, but it will aid you in creating an engaging and meaningful online experience for your members.