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Should I create a style guide for my blog?

 

We usually associate style guides with newspapers, magazines or companies, but we never think that this document is useful for our corporate blog, when the truth is that it is essential. That because? We explain it to you in this post!

 

Having a style guide in which you define the tone you will use will help your blog show off a unique personality.

Why should I create a style guide for my blog?

Creating a style guide for your blog is a very useful resource, especially for three reasons:

  • You will be able to create a unique voice in your company – Everything your company communicates must be consistent. In other words, the same tone you use on social networks is the one you should use on your blog and vice versa. This is the reason why it is essential that you have a style guide in which you have created a unique voice, with a marked and defined personality.

 

  • Improve your communication with your users – When you write your style guide, you think about the needs of your users, their behavior and the language they use to adopt a tone that is attractive to them, which obviously translates into improved communication.

 

  • It sets you apart from other blogs – Having your own style makes you stand out from other blogs. Your users will know right away when they find a message from you because it will present your identity signs. And this is something that greatly improves the reputation of companies.

So creating a style guide will help you always maintain the same communicative tone and differentiate yourself from the rest of the blogs in your sector, which is why it is essential that before you start writing on your corporate blog you spend some time designing your style guide. .

How to design a style guide for my blog

Very well, now you are convinced of how important it is to create a style guide for your blog, but now the doubts are in how to do it. It is simply a matter of creating a document that contains the following sections:

 

  • About us? What is our goal?

 

Any strategic document must begin by defining who we are and what our objective is. Let's take our blog, Marketing Dreams, as an example. We are a group of marketing specialists who want to transmit our knowledge, reaching as many people as possible. This would be the simplified version, but obviously we can make it more extensive by explaining our mission, values, etc…

 

  • Who are we targeting?

 

Another point that cannot be missing in a document of this type. Make a small analysis of the public to whom you want your blog to be directed. A kind of buyer person. Define all characteristics as their age, sex, employment status, interests, background, etc…

Our blog, for example, is aimed at people ages 23 and up who are interested in online marketing. But we also have several subgroups of audiences: students who are beginning their journey in the world of marketing, freelancers who want to carry out online marketing actions in their company and/or professionals in the sector who seek to keep up to date with the latest developments. So when we write a post, we select exactly which sector of our audiences we are going to address.

 

  • Publishing Strategy

 

In this section we have to define the tasks of each member of the team that participates in the management of the blog, as well as the strategy to follow: publication frequency, topics to be discussed in the blog, formats, etc…

actual example. We have divided our blog according to the topics we are talking about: SEO, SEM, Social Media, Analytics, E-commerce, etc… And we have opted for simple formats, although from time to time we make infographics, white papers, etc. …

 

  • Article Structure

 

It consists of defining in general terms what the structure of the articles of each theme will be. It goes beyond the introduction, development and outcome, present in all the contents, focusing more on whether practical cases, examples or if citations are going to be included.

 

  • Tone of the contents

 

Are you going to use a formal or informal tone? Will the author speak on your behalf (me) or on behalf of the entire company (us)? Are you going to use simple or complex sentences? Will you use technical or simpler language? All of these things should be defined in your style guide.

 

  • Type of images

 

Nowadays, blogs are nothing without images, that's why you should also emphasize them in your style manual. describe what type of images you want to use, the format, its quality, size, etc…

 

  • SEO Checklist

 

If we have the entire process properly organized, it will be much easier to carry it out, which is why it is always recommended to include an SEO checklist in a blog's style guide. What does it mean? Well, make a list with the SEO elements that each article should contain: the keyword percentage, h2, meta descriptions, links, tags, etc… Thus, the editor, when finishing the article, only has to review the checklist to see if everything is correct.

 

  • Aspects to avoid

 

Just as you have mentioned everything you want your blog to have, you must also record what you do NOT want it to have. Topics to avoid, inappropriate terminology, treatments that you prefer to avoid, etc…

Have you seen that creating a style guide is very simple? Get to work!

 

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