How to Create Content Guidelines That Drive Consistency

Have you ever read content from a company that feels completely disjointed from one piece of content to the next? Having disjointed pieces of content is because you don’t have proper content guidelines. Creating compelling content guidelines isn’t just about enforcing rules; it’s about empowering your team to represent your brand consistently. Effective guidelines are also about maintaining your creative spark. Your content guideline is a key aspect of your overall content strategy.

A successfully implemented content guideline will help improve your content strategy ROI. Whether starting from scratch or refining existing documentation, this guide helps you develop amazing content guidelines. The content guidelines you develop through this guide will ensure consistency across your various pieces of content. You will also understand the content creation process.

What Are Content Guidelines and Why Do They Matter?

Content guidelines are comprehensive documents that outline everything from your brand voice to editorial guidelines and publication workflows. They also include formatting guidelines to ensure consistency and clarity. A content guideline is your comprehensive roadmap to developing smart, consistent content that resonates with your audience.

The Impact on Brand Recognition

A content guideline strongly impacts your brand recognition because it helps build consistency across your various pieces of content. Content guidelines also help maintain a cohesive brand identity. Maintaining a brand’s identity ensures consistent communication across different channels, aligning with the brand’s values and resonating effectively with audiences. Without consistency, your audience is less likely to continue viewing your content.

Benefits Beyond Consistency

Although consistency is the primary benefit of having content guidelines, there are others. Below is a list of additional benefits:

• Writers appreciate having clear guardrails instead of vague feedback.
• Content guidelines keep the content team on the same page. They also ensure the organization regularly assesses its processes, develops editorial guidelines, and aligns with business goals.
• Clear guidelines for internal and external contributors help team writers, product managers, and freelance writers align with content standards and objectives, ensuring a cohesive approach to content creation.

Common Pitfalls Without Guidelines

Without proper documentation, content teams waste hours arguing about essential items like whether to use “users” or “customers.” Brand messaging gets diluted, and customer confusion inevitably follows.

Step 1: Audit Your Existing Content

The first step in developing a content guideline is auditing your existing content. This is an important first step because it helps you understand what you have in place. To start auditing your existing content, gather samples from every platform where your brand has a presence. Your content samples should live on your website, social channels, and email campaigns.

Implement Collection and Categorization Methods

The next step in the content audit is to categorize the content. You do not need a shiny new tool to track content. You can use a simple spreadsheet to track everything. Create columns for content type, platform, publish date, and performance metrics.

Performance Analysis Tools to Leverage

Once you have collected and categorized your content, you can analyze it. Google Analytics is my go-to for website content performance. You can also use native analytics tools from social platforms. Hotjar and Crazy Egg are great tools that help you understand how users engage with your content.

Key Questions to Ask

When reviewing your content, ask yourself: Does this consistently represent our brand’s values? Would someone recognize this as our brand without the logo? Is the language consistent across pieces? Asking yourself questions such as these will help you lay the groundwork for building successful content guidelines.

Identifying Content Strengths and Weaknesses

Look for your highest-performing pieces and analyze why they work. Pay attention to key content areas, including readability, engagement, and conversion metrics.

Step 2: Define Your Brand Voice and Tone

Your content’s voice and tone aren’t interchangeable. Brand guidelines serve as a framework for defining voice and tone. Writing style is also crucial in maintaining consistency across all content. Most people think that brand and tone are the same. Your voice and brand are different aspects of your content. An organization’s brand voice remains consistent because it’s your brand’s personality. Tone adapts to various situations, just like how you speak differently to different people.

Voice vs. Tone Clarification

Think of voice as your brand’s character traits that never change. Your brand’s tone can be described as professional, friendly, authoritative, etc. A brand’s tone is its unique identity, a person’s fundamental character that doesn’t change day-to-day.

In contrast, your brand’s tone is how your voice adapts to specific situations, audiences, or contexts. Your tone is situational and flexible. The same person speaks differently at a funeral versus a celebration, and brands must do the same. Your tone might shift between formal and casual, serious and lighthearted.

Brand Voice Discovery Exercises

Try this exercise to discover your brand’s voice. Have team members list 3-5 adjectives that describe your brand, then compare notes. The overlapping words often form the core of your voice. Another approach is analyzing competitors’ voices and positioning yours in contrast (as long as it’s authentic).

Creating an Effective Voice Chart

A voice chart is a tool for defining the voice of your content. To develop your voice chart, create a spreadsheet. Include “We are” and “We are not” columns in your voice chart spreadsheet, plus examples of each trait in action. For instance, if you’re “conversational but not casual,” show examples of both.

Platform-Specific Tone Guidelines

Your LinkedIn tone should differ from your TikTok tone. Develop tone matrices that map different situations against appropriate tonal shifts while maintaining the core voice.

Step 3: Establish Content Structure Standards

Structure standards are what separate strong content from weak content. A style guide template is crucial for maintaining consistency in your content, as it encapsulates essential information about brand values, writing style, grammar rules, and visual standards. Structure standards for your content help ensure they are easier to follow. To develop content structure standards, start with clear headline guidelines; for example, try using the “how/why/what” formula for blog posts.

Length and Formatting Best Practices

Different platforms demand different approaches. For example, LinkedIn articles may perform best at 1,200-2,000 words, while Instagram captions peak at 125-150 characters. It is important not to guess what works best and follow your metrics.

Visual Content Requirements

Be super specific about image dimensions and quality standards. You don’t want to include pictures in your blog that aren’t great quality. Poor-quality images distract your audience just as much as poorly written content does.

Content Templates That Work

A content template is a document that outlines your content formats. It makes it easier to keep content consistent within your organization. Templates are also time-savers and quality controllers. They help ensure all content is the same across the board. Create templates with placeholder text showing exactly where key elements belong.

Step 4: Create Grammar and Style Rules

Creating editorial guidelines is a crucial step in establishing grammar and style rules. I always recommend picking one established style guide as your foundation. The most popular style guides are AP Style and Chicago Style. To find your style guide, review it and decide what aligns with your brand and what works best for you.

Company Terminology Guide

Creating a company terminology guide is a non-negotiable. Create a living document of approved terms. Should you say “users,” “customers,” or “members”? Is your product “easy-to-use” or “user-friendly”? These distinctions are significant to the success of your terminology guide.

Punctuation and Capitalization Decisions

Small choices make significant differences in readability. Without making decisions on important areas like punctuation and capitalization, your documentation risks being inconsistent. Your content development team will likely agonize over where to place commas and semi-colons.

Jargon and Acronym Guidelines

Defining acronyms on first use is generally recommended unless they’re more recognizable than their spelled-out versions (i.e., NFL, NASA, NBA). You spend less time explaining things later if you spell out each acronym first.

Step 5: Develop Content Workflows and Approval Processes

The best content guidelines in the world fail without a proper content creation process. A content workflow is a process for creating content, publishing content, and everything in between. To develop your content workflow, use the following key components.

Role Definition and Responsibilities

The first step in your workflow process is to define your roles and responsibilities. Content teams must know who handles ideation, creation, editing, approval, and publishing. Documenting your roles and responsibilities will help identify the key people.

Approval Systems That Don’t Kill Creativity

Multi-level approvals can kill content momentum. Develop a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to ensure everyone knows the primary content approvers throughout the workflow process. Below is an example of an approval-centric RACI chart:

Step 6: Document SEO and Technical Requirements

Documenting your search engine optimization (SEO) guidelines as part of your overall content guidelines is crucial. Understanding search engines in the context of SEO is essential for creating effective content strategies.

Documenting SEO guidelines is important because, without SEO, you’re less likely to gain organic traffic. You also risk poor on-page SEO and a lack of internal links.

SEO guidelines need to be practical, not theoretical. When you start, include one primary keyword in the first 100 words and 2-3 semantic keywords throughout each piece of content.

Meta Data Standards

Meta descriptions might seem minor, but they help with improving conversion rates. I generally use a 125–150-character limit and require the primary keyword and a clear call to action. This approach can boost your CTR over time. Below is an example of a meta description of gardening:

“Learn how to transform your backyard into a thriving garden oasis with our expert tips on soil preparation, plant selection, and seasonal maintenance for both beginners and experienced gardeners.”

Image Optimization Guidelines

Including image optimization guidelines may seem monotonous, but they also help boost your SEO. Make sure your team documents the alt text, a descriptor used to explain the images in your content. When relevant, try to use target keywords in your alt text. Also, make sure you document image compression standards. Image compression standards explain image compression limits.

Linking Strategy Documentation

Your guidelines should include a linking strategy. Internally linking related pages to each other will help improve On-Page SEO. Develop a set of clear rules, including 3-5 internal links per 500-1000 words, with at least one pointing to conversion-focused pages. External links should only link to authoritative sources.

Step 7: Organize and Format Your Guidelines Document

The best guidelines are organized like reference books, incorporating clear formatting guidelines to ensure consistency and clarity.

Start with a table of contents and use a consistent heading hierarchy. Nobody reads guidelines cover-to-cover, so organization is critical.

Making Guidelines Scannable

Adding visual elements to your guideline is important for many reasons.

• Adding visual elements breaks up text and makes it easier for team members to read.
• The addition of visual elements helps make explaining content easier.

When you add visual elements to your content guideline, use as many visual elements as possible without confusing the readers, including color coding for different sections, icons for key points, and highlighted examples.

Interactive Guideline Tools

Many tools can help teams review and update their guidelines periodically. Tools like Notion and Confluence work great for this.

Real-World Examples

Implementing real-world examples is not a requirement, but it can help team members understand why you have implemented specific guidelines in the document. For starters, include before-and-after examples showing why the rules exist. Screenshots of proper formatting and annotated content samples help teams visualize what you’re trying to convey.

Step 8: Implement and Train Your Team

Rollout is where most guidelines fail. If your content guideline is over 25 pages, schedule a phased implementation focusing on the highest-priority items first. Involve your content team in this process to ensure collaborative development and adherence to the guidelines. It may get lost if you hand over a lengthy document to your team members without content messaging.

Training Approaches That Work

Training your team is a vital component of implementing a content guideline document. When you implement the training of the document, don’t overwhelm your team with a full-day data dump session. 30-minute focused training sessions work better. For remote teams, try creating short tutorial videos (under 5 minutes) demonstrating key concepts.

Quick Reference Materials

Quick reference guides (aka cheat sheets) are lifesavers. They provide team members with easy access to specific answers to important terms. When starting, create one-pagers for common content types with the most essential guidelines.

Handling Resistance

Receiving some pushback from your team is inevitable. Sometimes, team members complain that guidelines limit creativity. When team members complain about the lack of creativity, show examples of brands like Apple. Show team members companies that are highly creative within strict guidelines. Frame it as enabling consistency, not restricting expression.

Step 9: Maintain and Update Your Guidelines

Creating editorial guidelines requires periodic reviews and changes. Like your content strategy and distribution plan, guidelines should be reviewed quarterly. If your team is small or you’re a solo blogger, try shooting for a bi-annual review process. Assign a guideline owner responsible for keeping everything current as your brand evolves.

Change Management Process

Create a simple workflow process that allows your team members to suggest changes. Leverage a dedicated Slack channel for minor update requests and a more formal review process for major revisions. Use a system like Remedy or Jira to record change requests and approvals via ticket requests.

Documenting Updates

Version control is essential to your content development process. At the beginning of the document, you should maintain a change log and highlight recent updates.

For significant changes, send email announcements with summaries of what’s changed and why. As previously stated, a ticketing system like Remedy and Jira will help record changes and approvals.

Evolution vs. Consistency

Brand voices evolve, which is natural. The key is making intentional changes. Annually, send out email surveys to your audience geared to voice feedback. Confirm via your surveys if adjustments are needed.

Measuring Effectiveness

Set specific KPIs for your guidelines. Track metrics like editing time, content consistency scores, and brand perception surveys. You need to track and review metrics to confirm how your guidelines are doing. Based on your content guideline metrics, your team can decide to pivot and make updates or keep the document as is.

Conclusion

Creating effective content guidelines is a key aspect of your overall content strategy. An effective content guideline helps your team be more efficient, improve content quality, and maintain brand consistency.

Due to their importance, you must ensure they are reviewed periodically. Your guidelines are a valuable resource and should be treated with the utmost importance. Remember that the best guidelines provide a clear direction and allow creative flexibility. Start implementing these strategies and watch your content quality and consistency improve.