How to Create An Easy-To-Understand Branding and Style Guide.

A style guide is a necessary tool for any company to stay true to their branding. The guide outlines all of the important information that a person would need to make any sort of communication that represents the company. This includes the kind of language, key words, general style, colors, approved logos, fonts, and anything else that might be necessary to the image. Outside communication is especially important to regulate, since it is directed at customers who might be confused by a mish-mash of messages. Internal communications are also important, because they help cement the brand into the culture of the company and minds of the staff.

For the strongest results with a consistent image, it is best to involve the entire company when launching or promoting a style guideline. While it is customarily created for and used by the marketing department, anyone in the company is capable of writing an email or letter to a customer. They need an understanding of the approved language, style, and general feel that has been selected for branding.

The intended format and guidelines for website updates, emails (external and internal), postings to social media accounts, print advertisements, radio or television spots, and even billboards should all be outlined in the manual. With a thorough approach, the brand can be extended across not only all marketing initiatives, but anything created about the company from entities inside or out.

Once all branding details have been decided, choose one person to be in charge of keeping the guide current with edits and changes. Make the language basic and straightforward, with plenty of pictorial examples and rich graphics. Then, make sure all staff have a printed copy or know where to access a universal read-only copy on a shared drive or in the cloud. Then, the tool can be easily accessed at any time and used by all.

A style guide helps ensure that the branding identity of a company is not diluted. A lot of financial support and staff time and effort went into the design of a brand, so you can stay true to your plan for positioning, message, purpose and target. For all of the brand greats, they used the guidelines consistently and exclusively in every communication for years, even decades.

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