How can you use brand guidelines to ensure consistency across your content?

When explaining to clients why Brand Guidelines are a necessity, it’s important to recognize that Brand Guidelines are an extension of your brand identity and guidelines specify when and how your brand can be referenced. I often use the analogy of where clients personally live when explaining the importance. Neighbors might reference your home by your name, by street address, location on a street or block, or any number of other ways, encompassing a home’s identifying features. While there are several features, these are relatively uniform when describing any one residence, and a brand’s identity is no different. Brand Guidelines help specify how a brand can be presented, supporting consistency and your control over your brand’s identity.

Brand guidelines are building blocks defining your brand's overall look, feel, and experience. Just like an individual, a brand persona has a set of rules, characteristics, mission, vision, and goals that help us understand their perspective and create a unified identity.

Brand guidelines might seem anal, but they come in handy when you're working with freelancers who otherwise don't know your brand very well.

Beyond the visual and auditory aspects, your brand guidelines should dive into the values and personality traits that define your brand. Is your brand innovative and cutting-edge, or is it more traditional and reliable? Are your values centered around sustainability and social responsibility, or do you emphasize quality and innovation? These details will shape how your brand is perceived.

The backbone of any brand guidelines is seen in brand positioning. This is “why” brand exists, and the rest are “how” it conveys value proposition. Another perspective, i.e. relevant for regional brands, is understanding of brand guidelines as tool of international communication with markets and partners. When done properly it sets the tone for any project and serves benchmark for branded content deliverables.

Brand guidelines are like the rules of the game for your brand and they are crucial– keeping things consistent, credible, and helping you stand out in a crowd of competitors. But, just like us, brands change and grow. So, when it comes to creating content, sometimes you've got to tweak those guidelines a bit to fit the platform or connect to the audience. Think of brand guidelines as the field's boundaries at a game. They give you structure, but you can still play the game your way and have a blast doing it.

By providing clear instructions on your brand voice, tone, style, and visual elements, brand guidelines enable you and your team to create content faster and with fewer revisions. Furthermore, brand guidelines ensure that your content aligns with your business goals and target audience, enhancing your marketing effectiveness and ROI. Overall, brand guidelines are a vital tool for any content marketer looking to build a strong and compelling brand identity.

How a brand consistently communicates with its audiences across different platforms serves as a humanizing factor that helps it (the brand) build authentic relationships with them (audiences). And as they say, people don't buy from brands - they buy from people they trust - thus, the need for brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines should be dynamic, evolving alongside your content strategy. Regularly revisiting and adapting these guidelines is essential to maintain alignment with your current goals and audience preferences. As your content strategy shifts to accommodate changing trends and audience needs, your brand guidelines should reflect these adjustments. This ensures that your content consistently resonates with your target audience and supports your strategic objectives. In essence, brand guidelines serve as a compass, guiding your content creation efforts in the ever-changing landscape of content marketing.

Guidelines exist for the same reason any other boundary does - to keep the garbage and/or nonsense away whenever possible. Good guidelines give your creative staff the ability to play without fear and your collaborators to show the best of you. Poorly done guidelines are restrictive, ensure boring content, and create unnecessary red tape for your team.

Make sure your brand's "voice, tone, and style" have enough leeway to be able to adapt to the market. If your market is the globe, be sure that your brand can be used in Japan the same way as in Germany the same way as in Mexico. When creating, spend the time to understand your market.

To create brand guidelines for content marketing: 1. Define brand identity. 2. Identify visual and tonal elements. 3. Design logos, colors, and typography. 4. Develop content guidelines. 5. Create design templates. 6. Set usage rules. 7. Include examples. 8. Consider accessibility. 9. Address legal and compliance. 10. Distribute and educate. 11. Review and refine. 12. Enforce and gather feedback. 13. Document and communicate the guidelines.

To enhance brand guidelines for content marketing, consider integrating user personas and competitor analysis. User personas provide crucial insights into your target audience's preferences, helping define voice, tone, and content style that resonate effectively. Moreover, conducting competitor analysis alongside a brand audit unveils market gaps and opportunities. Studying your competitors' content strategies within the guidelines can inform your approach, ensuring your content stands out while remaining consistent with your brand's identity and values. Incorporating these elements into your guidelines equips your team to create content that resonates authentically and competes effectively in your niche.

Define your brand personality and voice - What are your core values? What tone and style best represents your brand? This guides content creation. Establish guidelines for messaging and positioning - Determine key messages you want to communicate about your brand consistently. Specify visual brand standards - Provide logo usage standards and brand color palette. Give examples of ideal imagery that aligns with your brand's look and feel. Outline formatting standards - Provide examples of ideal content types and formats. Specify how writers should portray your brand's personality in articles, social media, and videos. Determine review and approval process - Who reviews and approves content before publication?

While the steps mentioned give a structured approach to creating brand guidelines, it's equally essential to remember that these guidelines are living documents. As the digital landscape evolves and your brand grows, so should your guidelines. Engage your team in this creation process; often, the best insights come from those deeply involved in the content creation or design process. They provide the on-ground experience of what works and what doesn’t. Further, after drafting the initial guidelines, consider running a few pieces of content as tests. This real-world testing helps refine any areas that might be too restrictive or ambiguous.

Adaptability is crucial in brand guidelines, enabling content creators to adjust tone and style when unexpected trends arise, all while preserving the brand's core identity. Collaboration is equally vital, fostering open communication among team members. This encourages feedback and suggestions that enhance content quality while upholding brand consistency.

Here are some tips: - Review brand guidelines for tone, voice and messaging before creating content. Ensure content aligns. - Follow guidelines for logo, fonts, colors and images. Use approved assets. - Adhere to formatting rules for headlines, subheads, captions, links, etc. - Check if certain words or phrases are prohibited or recommended. Use accordingly. - Understand brand persona and target audience. Create content that resonates. - Stick to branded hashtags and handles on social media. - Suggest updates to guidelines if needed to reflect new campaigns or initiatives. - Periodically audit old content. Update to reflect current guidelines.

Content governance, a vital aspect often overlooked, should be integrated into brand guidelines. This entails defining roles, responsibilities, approval processes, and workflows to ensure content consistently adheres to brand guidelines, safeguarding brand identity. Furthermore, incorporating a content calendar within these guidelines is essential. It acts as a strategic tool, facilitating consistent publishing schedules while aligning content with overarching objectives. These additions empower brands to not only maintain visual and tonal consistency but also execute their content strategy with precision, bolstering their brand's credibility and resonance in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Brand guidelines are a way for you to express your vision, mission and values in a very practical way, without having to make micro decisions on every single piece of content you make. When you have clearly expressed what is, and isn't your company's brand, you empower your team to make decisions on their own, without having to micro manage everyone because "they just don't get it!" Get your brand guidelines in place, then get out of your teams way.

Le;'ts not forget story telling and the emotional side of your brand, this is massively improtant nowdays, after all we buy emotions and that's the job of your brand. Your guidelines should not just be about fonts and colours but also about ensuring a consistent narrative that resonates with your audience. For example, if your brand is all about 'empowering the underdog,' every piece of content should echo this sentiment. This narrativ alignment not only makes your brand memorable but also deepens emotional engagement. So, when drafting guidelines don't forget storytelling and emotions!

In my experience, brand guidelines are there to guide and inform decisions across design, product development as well as of course marketing execution. Brand guidelines are not necessary the guidepost for content creation these days, but rather the visual guide on consistent logo / font / color use. When it comes to content creation, the focus needs to be on consumer first // platform first and being flexible on brand guidelines to fit what the consumer expects from brands on each platform. Against all what we know in traditional branding, to cut through especially with GEN Z consumers these days, your brand should NOT look the same everywhere. And that doesn’t mean logos/ fonts but WHAT you’re delivering as content on each platform.

Defining/publishing a set of colors, fonts, logos, tone, terms and their usage is only half the battle and half the responsibility of a Marketer if you want your sales teams, account management teams, and company at large to fall in behind their consistent usage. I advise also creating templates for many common needs built within the confines of those brand guidelines (presentation templates, product/use case briefs, landing pages, icon libraries, permitted logo variations, borders, etc.) It also helps to create a process so items created outside of those templates can go through a quick branding review. The easier you make it for your business to stay within the guidelines, the higher level of consistency you’ll get.

Brand guidelines are essentially also representative of your voice to your customers. How do you sound and position your statements, messages and content to your target audience. It's also representative of the topics and themes you support and have an opinion on that you want your customers to know and care to know about. It also defines the boundaries for your organization and your employees on what not to talk about in their professional capacity or public forums. With that in mind, you can better tailor your content strategy as well to develop topics that resonate best with your brand personality.

While we talk about the Do's of Brand Guidelines, it's the Don'ts that often break the brand. Some Don'ts to consider ? Don't do it because others are doing it. Competitor analysis is good, but you have to choose what aligns with your brand. ? Don't be a Copycat. Your brand is not a clone of your competitors. ? Don't blindly chase the latest craze, it's not a fashion show. Create your own timeless brand. ? Don't ignore the digital world, it's not the age of the hermits. ? Don't be too rigid or too easy. Allow some room for creativity and innovation. Evolve as a Brand. ? Don't forget to enforce, rather update and adapt. ? Don't be a Don'ter. Learn from your mistakes. ? Don't forget to like if you liked this. ??