Whether you’re a company or a creator, keeping your social media presence constant is essential to developing a powerful brand. Take a look at the fast rise in popularity of companies like Chipotle and Wendy’s for their amusing, imaginative, and frequently caustic posts. Or how Denny’s amassed hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers through their peculiar posts.
While the specifics may differ, keeping a consistent brand image is a crucial element in these brands’ social media success. A social media style guide can help you with this by giving you recommendations for your brand voice, the visual appearance of your social media, and other things. Learn what a social media style guide is, why you need one, and what to include in one by reading this article.
Detailed Instructions for Social Media Style Guides
What is a Social Media Style Guide?
A social media style guide, as the name implies, is a set of recommendations for how your brand should appear and behave on various social media platforms. It influences how you represent your brand on social media, which in turn affects how customers view your company. In essence, it describes how consumers should see your brand and the type of image they ought to associate with it.
Why Do You Need a Social Media Style Guide?
The successful implementation of your social media strategy depends on having a social media style guide. It outlines how your content should appear and sound when you publish it, giving you a summary of how you should represent your brand on social media. Additionally, it provides guidance on how to interact with your audience, what brand voice you should uphold, and the appropriate terminology to utilize.
For instance, the social media brand voice of Innocent Drinks is casual, straightforward, and so uncomplicated that it nearly comes out as naive. This property embodies the brand by emanating an air of innocence that matches the name of the company.
The ability to keep branding consistent across various social media channels is made possible by having a social media style guide, which will increase your trust. Because of this, it is especially crucial for your multi-channel social media strategy. Your social media staff will have a clear grasp of the brand voice and image to employ across all platforms thanks to this.
As a result, even when training new staff, they may quickly sense what is expected of them. They can easily comprehend how you want the brand to be represented on social media if the rules are put out clearly. This also reduces the possibility of mistakes as everyone participating in your social media plan is aware of how to carry out your strategy in a way that is consistent with your brand identity.
Your social media style guide should include these 6 topics.
Every company’s social media style guide will appear different, and the elements might not always be the same. In light of that, the following are some essential elements for your social media style guide.
1. Social Profile
List every social media presence that belongs to your brand in detail first. You are allowed to utilize various social networking platforms and have numerous accounts on each one. For instance, companies like Netflix have distinct Twitter accounts dedicated to customer service. So that you can see all of your naming conventions, make sure they are all on your list.
In order for consumers to quickly recognize your brand regardless of which new platform you decide to join, one important area where you need to retain consistency is in your naming conventions. This will also assist your viewers in identifying real profiles from phony ones so they may choose which ones to believe.
Establish precise rules for how to format your usernames on various social networking platforms. For instance, despite the “&” symbol is a component of the brand name, Ben & Jerry’s does not use it in their social media identities. On all of its social media accounts, the brand spells it out and uses the handle @benandjerrys. Instead of using the word “Australia,” they use regional acronyms like “UK” or “Oz” for their subsidiary accounts in other nations.
2. Audience Personas
You must be aware of your audience if you want to establish a compelling brand voice. This makes it essential to specify who your target audience is and what personas you want to appeal to.
Brief summaries of each persona should be included in your social media style guide so that your team can quickly refer to it while creating content. Additionally, having your audience personas defined will help you better understand the route you should go with the remaining aspects of your brand guidelines. You may create a visual plan that appeals to your audience, for instance.
You must be aware of your audience if you want to establish a compelling brand voice. This makes it essential to specify who your target audience is and what personas you want to appeal to.
Brief summaries of each persona should be included in your social media style guide so that your team can quickly refer to it while creating content. Additionally, having your audience personas defined will help you better understand the route you should go with the remaining aspects of your brand guidelines. You may create a visual plan that appeals to your audience, for instance.
3. Brand Voice And Tone
Your brand voice is what distinguishes you from the competition and facilitates communication with your audience. Building familiarity with your followers requires maintaining it consistently across all of your social media channels. Being very serious and unapproachable on Facebook while being all wacky and fun on Instagram shouldn’t be done.
Keep your brand’s personality and essence consistent, even though you may need to make minor voice changes depending on the social media platform. This would involve striking the ideal balance between the voice that is genuine to your brand and the voice that the platform’s audience prefers. Regardless of the platform you use, your social presence should continue to look and feel like you.
For instance, because of the professional character of the platform, members on LinkedIn keep a professional tone of voice when using social networks. So, your first inclination might be to abruptly change from a lighthearted and funny tone to a formal tone. Instead, strive to strike the correct tone by remaining relaxed and humorous without appearing utterly unprofessional. That implies keeping your snark and sarcasm (if they characterize your brand voice) on Twitter or other less official platforms.
Everyone is familiar with Wendy’s as a company that isn’t afraid to use sarcasm and snark and has a robust Twitter “roasting” game. On LinkedIn, though, the brand maintains a little more formal tone. For instance, the brand maintains professionalism without coming off as overly formal or distant in the post that follows presenting their new homestyle French toast sticks on the platform. The playful and humorous nature of the brand is still discernible.
When describing your brand voice in your social media style guide, be specific. This will assist you in clearly defining what your brand should sound like for your social media staff. By developing a graph that depicts the ideal balance, Autodesk even assists users in visualizing their brand language. Try to give many examples of what is wrong and what is excellent to further illustrate your expectations.
4. Brand Language Rules
Maintaining consistency means staying true to your brand, and your social media style guide should detail the specifics of using language that represents your brand. Details like trademarks—such as whether to capitalize brand names and product names—are included here. For instance, thredUP avoids beginning its brand name with a capital letter and simply capitalizes “UP.” Additionally, you can see this being utilized constantly on the brand’s social media pages.
Make a list of any additional brand-specific jargon and acronyms as well. For instance, BUXOM Cosmetics refers to its followers on social media as “BUXOM babes.” When distributing user-generated content, they employ this phrase as a hashtag.
5. Following Formatting
Do you intend to stick to a particular posting format? Line breaks, for instance, should be used between articles with lengthy captions. Alternatively, you might wish to include a caption and a few hashtags after the link when sharing link postings. If you like, you could put all of your hashtags in the first remark.
Additionally, you might wish to include a signature with your support-related responses so that clients know who they are speaking with. Your team will have a clearer sense of direction when you specify these formatting guidelines for your social media content.
6. Other standards of consistency
In addition to the aforementioned, you should think about defining the various linguistic and stylistic guidelines to adhere to in order to preserve consistency. Depending on where you are and who your intended audience is, you might choose to use British or American English. Additionally, you could decide whether to use the Associated Press or Chicago Manual’s current style standards.
Developing Your Social Brand Identity
The secret to attaining branding consistency on social media is a strong social media style guide, which will afterward aid in the creation of a distinctive brand identity. To establish or enhance your brand’s social media style guide, use the advice provided above.