Successful business blogging, part 4: use a style guide to keep your business voice consistent

/ Red Sail Writers/

In this 5-part series, we’ll cover the philosophical and practical steps for successful business blogging, whether you’re a barbell coach, marketing manager at a SAAS company or a real estate agent.

So far, I’ve covered the useful-or-funny blog principle, how to brainstorm enough ideas to give you a heart attack and using a publishing plan to keep you on track.  Now it’s time to create a blogging style guide so your blog articles share the same voice … yours.  

Like steps one to three, you may be tempted to skip this one and just get writing. That could work for a little while, especially if you tend to be anal-retentive about details. But it’ll get confusing soon enough when you’re writing and think, ‘do I bold headlines or is this H1’ and there goes the morning when you’re back checking previous articles and fixing inconsistencies.

What is a blog style guide?

It’s a simple document—I recommend one to three pages at most—that outlines the formatting, tone and content guidelines for your blog (or other publication). It’s basically a cheat-sheet for writing your blog articles so they all sound like they’re coming from the same business or person.

The importance of consistency

Ever run into someone who makes you uneasy? Part of that uneasiness is you getting the feeling that the other person is unpredictable in an unpleasant way.  An inconsistent business blog probably won’t make your readers uneasy like a shifty fella in a dark alley but they’ll notice something’s off and that takes away from your message. When you go to the hard work of writing something good or hiring someone to write it for you, don’t sabotage your message with unnecessary formatting distractions.  

Making and using a style guide keeps your blog free from formatting crimes that cause your astute readers to question your credibility and seriousness.

What to include in your blog style guide

Your style guide should cover these philosophical and pragmatic points: 

  • Purpose of blog

  • Blog audience

  • Tone

  • Types of articles

  • Categories and subcategories

  • Formatting guidelines

  • Picture info: type, size, source

  • Typical article format (intro, 3 points, outro, etc.)

  • What text to bold

  • What text to use H1 headers on.

  • Spacing guidelines

  • Font guidelines

For best results, have pictures showing the results of the formatting guidelines so whoever populates your blog content on your site knows it’s right. Include instructions (again, with pictures) for how to put the blog content on your WordPress or Squarespace site.  It’s simple and easy but publishing a blog has multiple steps and if you don’t know what they are, mistakes—dreadful formatting mistakes—will happen.  

Choose your blog publisher carefully

You know how some people are ‘big picture’ thinkers? Do not delegate the job of publishing your blog content to one of those people. They’ll laugh at your guidelines and won’t let your spacing rules squash their enormous creative potential. Save those people for when you’re brainstorming your blog topics.

Instead, find a details person. The kind of person who apologizes for a typo in a text message. Tell this person they’re the blog sheriff, responsible for making sure the blog doesn’t descend into chaos, one font irregularity at a time.  You won’t regret assigning this role to someone who cares about the small things being done right.

Share your blog guidelines with your writers

Got a bunch of people writing for you? Make it easy for them to deliver what you need, every time. Set the expectations that articles that don’t meet the criteria will be returned for revision.  They’ll get it. And if they don’t, you’ll have a decision to make. Fewer edits mean time savings and less frustration.

If you can do all this, your blogs will be a consistent pleasure for your prospects to read on their way to knowing, liking and trusting you.  

Stay tuned for part 5 in this business blogging series where we talk about three ways to get your content written and published consistently.  

I'm Andrea Bassett, an executive ghostwriter and content marketing writer in Toronto and I’ve spent the last decade serving executives.

I write thought leadership content marketing for executives and/or their content marketing teams. My specializations are corporate wellness, benefits, employee assistance programs, leadership & coaching, encryption & cybersecurity and strength training for seniors.

To talk about a content marketing project, call me at 647-502-3187 or send a note to andrea@redsailwriters.com.

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