Originally published on our InTrends LinkedIn newsletter on July 2nd 2024
How obvious is it that your communication is written by several people?
Does your company sound more relaxed on social media, serious on the website, and very formal on the company profile?
Do you write dates, abbreviations, or currency differently on Linkedin than it is on your website? what about PRs?
If so, then yes, your business may be losing clients, and for a very simple reason: They have no idea who or what you represent.
Let me tell you a story…
A client walks into your headquarters and asks to meet your sales head. A young man wearing a wide black T-shirt, black jeans, and a red cap welcomes them and asks them to wait in the reception.
Two minutes later a female executive dressed in a Chanel suit asks them to follow her to the conference room, where a third executive wearing semi-formal corduroy pants and a simple white shirt, with two buttons open.
If we asked the client if they can relate to your brand? what would they say? They’d have no idea; you gave them three wildly different impressions.
Yes, the overall perception of a brand is far more complex, but the point stands. Unify how you choose to communicate.
Your company needs to appear like it’s one person, made of an entire team.
The point is the information, who cares if I use “make” or “render” in my copy?
The whole point of communication is to help your ideal target audience relate to you, trust you, and most importantly feel that their business is in the hands of the right people.
A well-established asset management company needs to sound consistently serious and formal, otherwise, large-scale clients won’t trust it.
The same goes for a FinTech app targeting university students, if their clients can’t relate to them they won’t trust them.
Inconsistent communication creates a blurry picture of your brand identity, it also causes:
- Confusion and Misunderstandings: Imagine an email filled with technical jargon followed by a social media post in slang. Confusing, right?
- Loss of Trust: A brand that speaks with a scattered voice appears unprofessional and untrustworthy. Clients won’t know what to expect.
- Missed Opportunities: If a client doesn’t know what to expect, your business won’t be their first choice, nor will you stand out from the competition.
Want to see examples of a B2B communication style guide? DM me for a consultation call
How do you create a communication style guide?
It’s a document that explains how you’re brand communicates as if it’s a person.
The point here is not only to ensure that everyone communicates in the same tone and style, but also to ensure that each message from your business paints the right image and stresses your position.
1- First things first, audit all your latest content. You’ll notice several consistencies, those are your foundation.
For example, most of your team Capitalizes Their Titles, prefers a semi-formal writing style, writes dates in the same format, uses the Oxford comma, or follows the Chicago style rather than AP, and so on.
2- Pretend your business is a human and describe them and their primary goal.
- How does your brand sound like? How would it speak, what is the one image you need to consistently convey?
- On the spectrum of formal to casual, where do you stand?
- And the spectrum of serious to funny, where do you stand?
- Reason for being? What’s your brand’s story
- What do you value? (i.e. a company with a strong stance on environmental issues will consistently use this as an under-tone in its communication, not only reference it in CSR announcements.
- Benefit to the world: What problem are you solving?
- How are you different from your competitors?
- Which of the four basic types of brand personalities do you fall under? Are you sophisticated, exciting, rugged, or reliable? Yes, you will be a mixture, but with one clear pillar.
3- Based on your answers develop a detailed manual for each point of content:
- Language style, and common personality traits that would dictate your choice of words
- How should your team write headlines, email subjects, dates, numbers, units, acronyms, abbreviations, officials’ titles…etc.
- Punctuation and grammar, of course
- What’s the structure of a press release or announcement, how are quotes handled?
- The criteria for a social media post, preferred length, key messaging, don’ts
- A suggested checklist, as in how to structure; when to use bullets; when and how to break text with sub-headings…etc
- FOR THE MENA REGION: A frequently updated glossary of how you write Arabic company and officials’ names in English. (el or al; Muahmmed or Mohamed; Bayrouty or Bayrooti….etc)
Want someone to do this whole exercise for you? DM me for a consultation call
Extra benefits of having a style guide will:
- Onboarding: New team members can quickly understand how to communicate in your company’s voice.
- Less time and fewer resources: With half the mental work done, your team can write better sales copy, PRs, social media posts, and more
- Everyone on your team will sound polished, without the need for extensive editing
Want to try something fun? Try this brand personality quiz
Here are 6 ways our team can help you
- Develop your communication style guide
- Audit your content and offer you actionable steps to optimize it
- We can also optimize your content for you
- Revamp your website content (and website as well) and company profile
- Create sales letters, elevator pitch (30-second story), and pitch deck
- Launch and maintain a newsletter or blog on your behalf
You can see a full list of our services here
Not sure what you need exactly? That’s common, let’s have a casual chat first. Book your free consultation call.