How to Create a Social Media Style Guide and Ensure Consistency
If you are looking to succeed on social media, you need the right tools for content creation. It should start by putting together a social media style guide. This is a rulebook covering the vital elements that create the look and feel for your brands, such as logos, colours, tone of voice, and details to help run your social media content smoothly. [playht_player width=”100%” height=”175″ voice=”Mark”] Because more often, branding fails when miscommunication happens among the team, and they cannot deliver promises to their audiences or customers. That’s why having a social media style guide is necessary for better internal communications and making sure your brand communication meets your marketing goals. But that’s not all. The importance of having a style guide The top brands on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn are all likely to have a great style guide in place aimed at building branding and marketing success. For one, a style guide provides a clear direction for managing content on multiple channels and ensuring that all communication aligns with the brand’s positioning, core values, promises, and customer experience to make up its identity. This is important to create brand awareness and build trust, which is vital for all businesses as nearly 35% of consumers base their purchasing decisions on brand trust. It’s also important even if you work alone. Cause having a guide for typography, spacing, tone of voice, and social media style elements will simply speed up your design process. Now that you understand how you can benefit from having a social media style guide, the next step is creating one. Here we have a few questions to help you get started. 1. What is your social media goal? Creating a social media presence may seem necessary for any business these days. But still, it is essential to start with why and discover the goal for your social media account. There is no one answer to your objectives, but understanding what you want to achieve through social media can help define your marketing strategy. It can be anything, whether it is building awareness for a product, driving traffic and generating leads, or simply being heard in a competitive market. Knowing your social media marketing goal will give your team an idea of what content to create or what call-to-actions to use on your messaging. Plus, you can take it further by integrating your brand’s mission. For example, let’s look at Red Bull’s social media. Image Source One of the best selling energy drinks in the world, Red Bull is hugely successful with its social media platforms. The brand has more than 47 million Facebook fans, 15.4 million Instagram followers, and 2 million followers on Twitter. This is because Red Bull’s social media strategy is not about its drink. It is about their mission of “giving wings to people” and creating a community of adventure and sports lovers. 2. Who are your audience personas? Sit down with the team and discuss who your target audiences are? Because this is essential to know who you are speaking to when creating your content. Defining a persona means building a detailed description of your ideal audience based on user research and analysing industry data. Give them a name, demographic details, characteristics, and even a routine of their day-to-day life. It is easy to get lost in the details, but you want to find out how you can relate to them through their pain points and motivations behind purchasing decisions. Keeping your buyer personas in your style guide will help your social media team stay focused on addressing your target audiences and their priorities. This also helps humanise brand messaging and reach audiences more personally. Naturally, you will build a bond with your audiences and make them remember your brand. One example of a successful brand that knows who they are designing for is Spotify. At a glance, their music app may be suitable for almost everyone. But the brand uses personas to personalise its product, design, and content that targets different categories of listeners. You can see this in their social media content as they speak to what their audience cares about. Image Source 3. What is your brand identity? Your social media brand is more than just colours and logos. Users are curious about your story and want to know who they are buying from. This applies no matter if you are an individual or organisation. Brands stand out only when they have a personality and can position themselves in the marketplace. So share your brand story and identity in your style guide. Let your team know the brand’s stance on social issues like LGBTQ+ or Black Lives Matter. Most importantly, your mission and core values should drive your social content direction and establish something that truly represents you. As an example, take a look at Google. Its mission of organising the world’s information can be seen influencing its content throughout all its social media platforms, including YouTube with its Google – Year in Search series. Image Source 4. What are your design guidelines? Building a memorable social media brand is all about design consistency. The best brands are instantly recognisable with their presence associated with a logo, fonts, or colour. Think Netflix’s iconic N typography or Slack’s hashtag logo — and you’ll get the idea. However, branding is not just about repetition. It is about building the details that will create a consistent tone of voice and clear visual identity across every touchpoint. To set up a comprehensive style guide, here are some elements you must include: Logo guidelines Your team may know what the logo looks like, but do they understand the different contexts on when they should use the logo? Should they include it as a trademark on images? What happens when your logo doesn’t work well as a square image? Include a section in your brand style to cover logo usage and show visual examples of approved logos and situations. Image Source Visual and colour
