Speaker 1: Imagine you wanted to bake a pie you've never baked before. Will you use a cookbook? I hope you will. Otherwise, how can you be sure of what ingredients you need and in what proportions? Creating content without a style guide is like baking a pie without a recipe. In this video, we'll talk about a style guide, what it is, why you need it, and how to put it together. My name is Katerina. Every week I share a video on copywriting and content marketing to help you get better at your job. Subscribe to this channel so you never miss it. In this video, we'll talk about a style guide, a bedrock of marketing communications. What is a style guide? A style guide lays out a set of rules and writing standards to ensure that your audience recognizes your brand across all channels and in all formats. What is your brand's voice? Should you sound conversational or business-like? How do you deal with numbers? Do you need to use bullet points or dashes? Do you use British or American English? A style guide answers all these questions. It's a one-stop resource for all your writing queries. Having a style guide is especially important for companies who work with different writers because no matter who writes content for your company, you want it to look and sound as if it comes from the same company. A style guide helps you create a consistent experience for your readers. Consistency makes your readers trust you because you feel familiar and they know what to expect from you. In a consistent piece, there are no deviations in grammar, punctuation, formatting throughout the text. It sticks to one style. How do you get started? Putting together a style guide from scratch is a lot of work. I suggest starting with a style manual. It's a reference book that tells you how to handle grammar, punctuation and many special cases. For example, whether you need to use an apostrophe or an apostrophe plus S for possessive plural and when to use figures or words to indicate numbers. There are many style manuals to choose from. I recommend an AP style guide, which is developed by journalists. You can either get a paper copy of the AP style book or purchase an online subscription. All your in-house writers, freelance writers, contributors, guest bloggers and intern should refer to your style manual for most questions. But for some specific items, including how to achieve your brand voice, they should refer to your in-house style guide. There are a few things that you need to include in your style guide. First, your brand voice and how to express it. For example, most likely, you want your audience to perceive your brand as an expert authority. Your style guide needs to describe exactly what expert means and what it doesn't mean. And it needs to provide recommendations on how to convey an expert opinion. For example, expert, what it means. Knowledgeable, respectful, informative and trustworthy. What it doesn't mean. Overly scientific, pretentious, superfluous, obvious, robotic. How should I convey expert opinion? Explain. Don't just state the facts. Put expert knowledge and research in human terms and explain it using words and real world examples that your readers will understand. Keep sentences short and concise and avoid lengthy digressions. Limit jargon. If you have to explain complex technical terms, do it visually. How should I not convey expert opinion? Using passive voice. Stay active and use the first person. By referring to questionable sources, cite only respected and recognized sources. This confirms your status as an expert. The next thing you need to include in your style guide are problematic words. Problematic words don't have a universally agreed on spelling. Not mentioning them in your style guide can lead to inconsistent spelling across the content that your marketing team produces. For example, how do you write e-book or e-book? US or US? End user or end user? Make sure you choose a dictionary, Macmillan for example, that will be a primary reference for spelling words that you don't include in your style guide. The next thing to include in your style guide are common grammar and punctuation questions. Should you use serial or Oxford comma when you list three items? What should you capitalize? How should you handle abbreviations? Should you spell out numbers or write them as numerals? How should you use symbols like percent or and? Address all these questions in your style guide and you'll avoid lots of basic inconsistencies. And the final must-have ingredient of your style guide are formatting do's and don'ts. Formatting refers to the general look of your content. How should you use headings? How long should your paragraphs be? When can you use bold? How do you cite research and links to external sites? Include all the do's next to the don'ts. It's also a good idea to include an example of a well-formatted blog post. You can include many more sections in your style guide. Whatever you think will make your writing more consistent. Putting it together can be a lot of fun. Once you've finished, make sure your team knows that your style guide exists and can easily access it. Your style guide should evolve as your business grows and matures. I suggest revisiting it at least once a year to keep it a living resource and updated to reflect your current marketing objectives. Some of the biggest companies like Salesforce, MailChimp, Microsoft, and Shopify have their style guides available on the internet. I've added links to these style guides to the description of this video so you could draw some inspiration from them when you're creating your own style guide. I hope this video has helped you understand what a style guide is and why you need it. Do you have a style guide? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I'll see you next time with a new video. Thank you for watching. Я Катерина. Пока-пока.