Has your business found its voice?
....then make sure you protect it!
Think like a big brand
Even for a small business, thinking like a big brand is good practice. You will probably already have established a set of guidelines for your corporate identity – a Design Style Guide that sets out how your brand appears visually; logo use, positioning and size, pantone colour references, font style, spacing, point size for headlines and body copy – that sort of thing (if you haven’t, you certainly should) - but how about how your brand is heard?
Your brand is not just visual, it has a voice too. Whether speaking online or offline, all of your communications will involve the words that need to inform and persuade. Having a Copywriting Style Guide as well as a Design Style Guide for your business will help you to build and develop brand recognition.
Be consistent in your communications
Communicating with your customers or prospects will involve a wide range of touch-points; websites, brochures, marketing collateral, newsletters, sales literature, advertising and signage to name just a few. Maintaining consistency across all of these areas in how your brand speaks as well as how it looks is crucial – it will influence perception and inform actions.
You should think about creating a Copywriting Style Guide for your business now. While it may take a little time and thought, it will save you considerable effort and investment further down the line.
Don’t keep re-inventing the wheel
Whether you draft your own copy or use a professional, it is useful to have a Copywriting Style Guide for your brand. If you do outsource, it will save having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time you brief a writer – if you generate your own copy, it will serve as a useful point of reference. The purpose of the guide will be to outline your unique tone, style, language and give examples of usages so that any new copy will match what already exists on your website or in your marketing materials.
Create a Copywriting Style Guide for YOUR business
There is always the option to have a guide professionally drafted for you by a copywriter, but if you have the time, you might want to have a go yourself. Here are some of the basic areas you will need to think about including;
• Objective overview: Each communication will have specific objectives depending on what you want it to achieve (a website, for example might need to convert browsers to buyers) - but there will also be general principles that you will want to apply to all communications. and you should set these out.
• Audience: Your writer will want to know as much as you do about the audience they are writing for. You should include any information that will help them understand the audience profile; gender, age, lifestyle, socio-economic position, what else they may read and any other relevant facts.
• Tone of voice: This area will set out the style of writing and tone to be used including the narrative position which might give instructions such as ‘conversational’, ‘active’, ‘formal’, ‘welcoming’, ‘use first person’, ‘use third person’ and so on.
• Language: It will be important to convey the level of language and how it should be used. Examples of what guidance may be given here might include; ‘write from the reader's perspective’, ‘should be suitable for reading age level of 12 years’, ‘use short and simple sentence structures’ or ‘avoid superlatives and anecdotes’.
• Specific terms used: You will probably have a selection of words, terms, and phrases you use in your particular business sector. Provide your copywriter with a glossary they can reference. You might also have an in-house style for some commonly used words and probably some acronyms you frequently make use of. These preferences will need documenting.
• Examples: Showing examples of work that has been done before - and that you are happy with - will be valuable back-ground reading for your copywriter and will help make the process easier. You should try to include;
o Page structure example - you may have an established format (particularly with a web page layout)
o Headline style example
o Body style example
o Bullet-point example - how, when, what to bullet
Setting out guidelines does not mean that they are fixed in stone; it’s inevitable that things will evolve over time – you may develop a new strapline or there may be a shift in the audience you want to appeal to. Your Copywriting Style Guide can simply be adjusted in line with these developments.
Your brand has a voice – make sure you protect it!
