Why Your Brand Cannot Afford to Overlook a Style Guide

Consistency equals results! Learn why brands need a style guide, what to include, and how GPO can help align your content with your brand voice across platforms.

As content writers and marketers, we love it when a brand supplies a style guide. Style guides are a roadmap for clear, consistent messaging. A great style guide ensures that every word reflects a brand’s voice, values, and mission.

But a surprising number of brands either lack a style guide altogether — or have one that only focuses on visuals. If you’re not defining the written side of your brand identity, you’re leaving room for inconsistency, confusion, and even a diluted customer perception.

What Is a Brand Style Guide?

A brand style guide is a set of rules that define how a company presents itself through words, tone, and structure. Think of it as a blueprint aligning your team on external (potentially internal) communications. A brand style guide standardizes how your brand voice and messaging “sound” across all content, whether it’s a website, social media post, email, or sales collateral.

Without one, you risk mixed messaging, inconsistent terminology, and scattered representation of your brand identity. With one, your team can establish clarity, professionalism, and trust with your audience.

Why Do You Need a Brand Style Guide?

Brand style guides can help larger teams divide and conquer with confidence — and help expedite the process of creating quality content. Even if you’re a team of one or primarily work with outside partners like GPO on your marketing efforts, a brand style guide can prove to be an invaluable tool and reference point. 

But what is the purpose of a brand style guide in your day-to-day? Not only does a vetted style guide serve as a “source of truth” that you can refer back to in times of messaging doubt, but it can also help alleviate common marketing pain points and achieve your goals by: 

Ensuring Consistency Across All Content

Every blog, product description, and piece of marketing content should sound like it’s coming from the same source. A style guide provides tone, vocabulary, and structure guidelines to make that happen. 

Without one, different writers may use varying phrasing or messaging, leading to brand inconsistency. This can confuse your audience and dilute your brand identity.

Developing Stronger Brand Recognition & Audience Connection

Consumers care about brand. The more uniform your messaging, the more easily customers will recognize — and remember — your brand. When your brand consistently uses the same voice, terminology, and formatting, customers begin to associate specific language with your business. This recognition builds credibility and trust over time.

Enabling Efficient Content Creation

Instead of starting from scratch or second-guessing phrasing, tone, or structure, writers can follow established guidelines. This speeds up the content creation process, minimizes back-and-forth revisions, and ensures that all content aligns with your branding from the start.

Reducing Confusion and Revisions While Saving Time

Teams waste less time tweaking voice and terminology when there’s a clear reference for how things should be written. A detailed style guide eliminates ambiguity and is a go-to resource for new and experienced content creators on your team.

What To Include in a Brand Style Guide

Every brand style guide is a little bit different. What you should include in your brand style guide depends upon the platforms you use, your business model, your messaging goals, and your content priorities. 

Guidelines on Brand Voice & Tone

Your brand voice defines your company’s personality in writing. If your brand were a single person, who would they be? What would they sound like? And, who would they be speaking to? 

A great jumping-off point would be to ask yourself:

• What is your brand’s personality? (Formal, casual, authoritative, playful?)
• Do you use first-person (“we”) or third-person (“the company”)?
• What emotions should your content consistently evoke?
• Should your brand sound friendly and conversational or professional and precise?

Setting these parameters ensures that all communication reflects your brand’s identity and values.

Grammar, Punctuation & Formatting Preferences

Grammar and punctuation preferences help eliminate inconsistencies — and can reduce editing time. Show your copy editors some love by making these decisions here and now: 

• Do you use the Oxford comma? (At GPO, we do — no comma drama here.)
• Do you follow a specific guideline that already exists? (AP, Chicago, etc.)
• How do you handle em dashes, hyphens, and bullet points?
• Are there preferred sentence structures or paragraph lengths?
• Should headings be title case or sentence case?

Providing these seemingly nitty-gritty details can pay off by ensuring your content remains uniform across all platforms.

Specifics on Word Choice & Terminology

A consistent glossary of terminology strengthens your brand identity — and can ensure that you’re always delivering the message that you intend and portraying your brand in the right light. 

To get started, think through:

• What key phrases or industry terms should always be used — and which should be avoided?
• How should product names be written? (Ex: Is it “Local Pages” or “GPO Local Pages”?)
• Are there preferred alternatives for jargon-heavy terms?
• Do you have specific words that should be capitalized, italicized, or bolded?

General Audience Guidelines

As with all marketing, it’s absolutely crucial to know who you’re marketing to. While these details may vary from piece to piece — which can be provided in a content brief — defining who your typical target audiences are can help shape your messaging.

• Who is your ideal reader? (B2B executives, consumers, technical specialists?)
• What level of expertise should you assume?
• How should content be structured for readability and engagement?
• Should content be explanatory or straight to the point?

These factors determine how formal or casual your content should be — and can serve as a great guideline no matter what you’re crafting.

Best Practices Specific to Content Types

What works for a social post might not be the best fit for a long-form blog piece or site copy, even if it meets your brand guidelines. 

That’s why establishing best practices specific to content types within your style guide can help ensure that you adhere to platform expectations while staying true to your brand. Some considerations to make include:

• Are there specific guidelines for structuring blog posts, social media, or product descriptions?
• What’s the preferred CTA format? (Ex: “Contact us” vs. “Let’s chat.”)

Define Your Language Dos and Don’ts

Last but certainly not least, take some time to think about your language and word choice itself. Then outline some hard and fast rules. 

In the marketing realm, there are some general do’s and dont’s that most consumer-facing companies adhere to. Common dos and don’ts include:

Dos

• Use clear and concise language. Consider avoiding overly complex words if a simpler term will do. Generally, your goal should be for an audience to grasp your message without needing to Google definitions.
• Be inclusive. You don’t want to turn off a potential prospect. Ensure respectful language and avoid gendered, exclusionary, or culturally insensitive terminology.
• Maintain professionalism. Even if your tone is casual, it should still be polished and appropriate for business communications.
• Use active voice. “We created this solution to help businesses” is stronger (and shorter) than “This solution was created to help businesses.”
• Be consistent with terminology. If you refer to a service as “Content Amplification” in one place, don’t call it “Content Expansion” elsewhere.

Don’ts

• Avoid jargon overload. Industry-specific language is fine in moderation, but don’t alienate your audience with overly technical terms unless you absolutely must — and your goal for your content piece is to get into the weeds.
• Steer clear of fluffy, filler words. Words like “very,” “really,” and “just” often weaken your message instead of adding value.

• Avoid absolutes. If your legal team hasn’t already told you, it’s a great consideration to make. Saying something is “always” or “never” true can be risky. Instead, use language like “typically” or “often.”
• Skip passive-aggressive or vague phrasing. Phrases like “as you may already know” or “it should be obvious” can alienate readers.

Use Your Style Guide: Strengthen Your Brand With Quality Content 

A style guide is a living document that can be updated over time — and should be! If your organization undergoes major changes or launches a new product or service, a style guide update may be in order. 

At GPO, we understand the power of brand consistency — and how to support your goals as your business grows and changes. Whether you have a detailed style guide or a rough idea of how your brand should sound, we can help refine and implement your voice and messaging across your content strategy while helping you achieve your goals. Our content marketing services ensure that every blog, ad,  product description, and landing page aligns with your brand’s voice — helping you build trust, drive engagement, and improve search visibility.

Contact us today to see how we can help you strengthen your brand identity and be discovered by customers looking for your products and services.