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14 Expert Tips For How to Succeed As A Freelance Content Marketer

September 22, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

It’s estimated that self-employed freelancers will make up half of the U.S. workforce by 2027. Although this estimate may surprise you, there are clear benefits of freelancing that make it an appealing work style:

Greater flexibility to balance work and life needs
Direct control over your pay rate
Unmatched ability to pursue diverse projects

As tech brands continue massive layoffs and companies across industries grapple with the uncertain economy, freelance consultants—especially in marketing and communications—are uniquely positioned to weather this economic turbulence.

Whether you’re looking for entry-level freelance content marketing work or are a senior-level executive ready to step into a fractional chief content officer or chief marketing officer role, let us help you build a lasting and fruitful career as a freelancer.

Thank you to these rockstar freelancers and self-employed marketers who shared insights for this post—be sure to check out their sites for more advice on creating amazing content:

Tod Cordill, principal of Moderno Strategies
Michelle Garrett, PR consultant at Garrett Public Relations and host of #FreelanceChat
Erika Heald, founder of Erika Heald Marketing Consulting
Carmen Hill, founder of Chill Content
Shane Shaps, founder of 520 East Brands

How to Prepare to Go Freelance

“Before you can thrive as a freelancer, you first have to be able to survive. If at all possible, plan ahead before making the leap,” Carmen advises. She recommends that you put away enough money to cover six months of basic living expenses as a cushion.

She adds that you should find a certified public accountant, which is especially important if you plan to open a business. “A good CPA can not only help you plan for taxes, but also provide guidance about what type of business entity makes most sense for you, [such as] sole proprietor or LLC,” she says.

In many cases, it may make sense for you to test out your freelance aspirations by taking on some moonlighting gigs while you are still employed.

“I always joke that I never had just one job,” Erika says. “I pretty much have had freelance content marketing projects or writing assignments starting with my first job out of college. Having had these successful forays into the freelance side of my work made it a lot easier for me to gauge the right time to finally take my self-employment full-time.”

Tod mirrors this advice, recommending that you “do as much freelance work as you can while you are still employed. You will be building your referral network and learning how to work with a variety of clients. Getting a few steady clients will make it easier to step into freelancing full time.”

14 Tips For Succeeding as a Content Marketing Freelancer

Based on our team’s decades of content marketing freelancing and advice from our network, below are expert tips to help you thrive as a content marketing freelance consultant.

Alert Your Network That You’re Available for Freelance Assignments

Tell your network that you’re freelancing through emails, social media posts, and 1:1 outreach. Update your social media bios to reflect your new work and the type of projects that you’re excited to pursue.

Consider Having a Website

Michelle had a simple website the day she launched her business, and it has served as the hub for all her marketing since. “I like having a place to share blog posts and I can send prospective clients there to learn more about me and my services.”

Book At Least One Retainer Client

“The hardest part of thriving as a freelancer is that your business is likely to ebb and flow unpredictably. I think every freelancer experiences alternating bouts of anxiety about getting enough work—and panic over getting all the work that you already have done,” Carmen says. “Booking one or more retainer clients provides a bit more stability and steady, predictable income. Then, you can fill gaps in your schedule with other projects.”

Create Templates To Streamline Deliverables

You’ll likely conduct the same type of work across your clients, including writing blog posts, developing thought leadership platforms, and conducting SWOT analyses. Save yourself considerable time and ensure a consistent quality of work by creating content marketing templates that guide you (and your clients) through your common deliverables.

“By crafting templates that take all of the elements of content production into consideration—from planning through publishing and distribution—we give our clients peace of mind,” says Erika. “They know that none of the small details will slip through the cracks. And as a plus, it makes our work go faster!”

“Providing templates that guide the work positions you as an expert,” Tod adds. “This builds trust, increases your likelihood of landing new clients, and makes it easier to expand the work you do for a client.”

Embrace Saying ‘No’

Ask any freelancer about the benefits of freelancing, and they will likely mention the client flexibility. The control to say “yes” or “no” to your liking is a unique, and sometimes invigorating, perk of freelancing.

“Be fussy about what kind of clients you want to work with and what kind of work you want to do,” Carmen reinforces. “Learn to say ‘no’ and decide what kind of work and clients you want to take on and when to take a pass. If you say ‘yes’ to everything, you don’t have capacity for cool new opportunities.”

Establish Freelance Referral Networks

You won’t be able (or want) to take on every potential project that comes your way, and that’s OK! Develop a network of fellow freelancers that you can recommend when an opportunity isn’t the right fit for you.

“I’d much rather refer a potential client to a colleague I’ve worked with that I know will be the perfect fit for their project than take something on that’s not in our wheelhouse,” Erika says.

Building your network can be tricky, though.

“Don’t sell when you’re networking,” Tod adds. “Freelancing is a B2B business, and people don’t buy until they have a need. The chances that someone has a need for your service the day you reach out to them are slim. My approach is to ask people what their biggest problems are and refer someone in my network that may be able to help. If you can do this, people will want to reciprocate and are more willing to introduce you to someone they know or anyone that can benefit from your services. You also build trust and they are more likely to think of you when their own needs fit your service.”

Gradually Raise Your Rates

Pricing your services as a freelancer can be a challenge, especially as you’re getting started. Start with a rate that you feel comfortable with, but increase that rate with each new potential project to see how much companies are willing to pay for your services.

“Be realistic about your needs when setting your rates,” Tod says. “You not only need to cover your hourly wage—consider the cost of health insurance, vacation pay, setting money aside for retirement, and your computer, software, and other services you need. Your rate also needs to cover your sales and marketing time and expenses. When starting out, have a goal to charge at least 50% above the hourly rate you had when employed. As you gain experience and get busier, your rate can be twice your employed wage or higher.”

Join Freelance Networking Groups

One of the potential drawbacks of freelancing is that it can be lonely. Find an online or local networking group of fellow freelancers to seek advice, share opportunities, and build a support system. Carmen says that Twitter chats like #ContentChat and #FreelanceChat are great places to start or a local chapter of the Freelancers Union.

“It is SO important to have a support system that includes other freelancers,” says Michelle. “Not only can you lean on each other when you have questions—which always come up no matter how long you’ve been freelancing—you can also refer work to each other when you’re too busy to take on new clients or projects. That’s why I started #FreelanceChat, which turned four in September 2022.”

Prioritize Your Mental Health

Freelancing is not without its stresses, and the benefits of freelancing mean nothing if your mental health is deteriorating. “Thriving isn’t just a matter of your financial well-being. It’s also about taking care of your physical, mental, and emotional health,” Carmen says. “Build time into your schedule for exercise, meditation, and non-work get-togethers. One of the best things about freelancing is you can do all that without asking for anyone’s permission!”

Reinforce and Respect Your Boundaries

As a freelancer, you are your own boss. Yes, you have client deliverables to meet, but you can largely guide that process and discuss the best way to work with your client. Some of your client contacts will treat you like a full-time employee and send messages after hours. Hold your ground on any boundaries you set, such as working hours or the expected time for you to respond to messages.

“It can be helpful to include working hours and communication expectations in your working agreements,” Erika says. “For example, in one social media playbook I created for a client, we documented our service level agreements with each other for time to respond, when weekly content would be reviewed, etc. This helped reinforce each other’s boundaries and work schedule, and instill confidence in the process.”

Treat Your Freelancing Work Like A Business

Thriving as a freelancer requires you to develop a clear business identity. As Carmen said to us, “treat your freelance business like a business. Develop a business plan. Define your niche and differentiated services. Develop your own brand, including messaging and content strategy as well as visual design. Create an elevator pitch.” All of these areas are vital for attracting and pitching new business.

Consult an Accountant

“One of the first things I did when I launched my freelance business was to consult with an accountant who understood how to work with self-employed people,” said Michelle. “He helped me set up my quarterly tax payments—which freelancers are responsible for—and also did my annual tax return. It wasn’t that expensive and well worth the peace of mind.”

Be Active on Social Media—But Not ALL Social Media

Michelle says it’s important to be active on social media, but be sure to choose your platforms wisely. “Try to post and engage on EVERY social media platform and you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed,” she advises. “Choose one or two platforms where your potential clients may be spending time. For example, if you work with B2B clients, that might be LinkedIn and Twitter. Then, post—and engage—consistently. It really can help you build a network that can bring clients and projects your way.”

“Social media, especially Twitter, is the easiest way to grow your network,” according to Tod. “It’s easy to engage, and then connect, with people on social media. You don’t need a huge network, you just need an engaged network that is relevant to your services. Comment on people’s posts, share their content, and then reach out to them.”

Surround Yourself with People More Knowledgeable Than You

“As your freelance gigs grow, you’re going to need help. Bring on hourly people who are hungry for experience or extra cash—BUT be sure to bring on people who fit a need, and not someone who needs training,” Shane recommends. “Bring someone into the mix that has a different skillset than you do. Diversify your services by offering something someone else is great at (even if you don’t altogether ‘get’ it). Your clients will thank you, and your agency will be better for it. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know how to do something—hire someone who does.”

Join #ContentChat To Thrive As A Content Freelancer

Your first few weeks and months as a freelancer may be uncomfortable, but it will get easier with time. Lean into your skills and remember that you have the ability needed to thrive. Not every client will understand or appreciate your approach, but you’ll get better at finding the right client fits the more that you explore new opportunities.

If you’re looking for a network to help you grow as a freelancer, we’d love for you to join #ContentChat. We’re a community of content marketers and other content professionals who love to discuss the latest trends, workshop our content, and share resources to help us all succeed. Check out our recent chat recaps here and join the conversation on Twitter weekly on Mondays at noon Pacific/3 p.m. Eastern using #ContentChat.

How To Perform A Mid-Year Content Marketing Audit to Improve Your Results

September 7, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

While it may feel like you can document your annual content marketing plan and let it run its course, it needs a mid-year check-in. What new opportunities and threats exist? Have your team resources changed? Can you still meet your goals without setting fire to all other priorities?

It can feel frustrating for content teams to execute a strategy that was developed under now irrelevant business circumstances, especially when that plan is clearly not meeting today’s goals. But a quick content marketing audit and a few simple updates to your content strategy can rally your team behind a new, attainable vision.

Let’s examine how to effectively audit your content marketing each Summer to keep your team on the right path to end the year strong.

Who Should Be Involved in a Content Marketing Audit?

Your content marketing audit should uncover the various internal and external considerations and needs across your company.

At a minimum, your marketing leadership and any content-creating professionals should be involved in your content marketing audit. Start with two to three people to conduct the initial data gathering, and then loop in representatives from every customer-facing role, which includes sales and customer success, as well as key C-suite leaders.

“I always like to include any SEO or SEM person that you have on staff, whether they’re in-house or external,” says Melanie Graham, a seasoned writer and content marketer specializing in the healthcare industry. “They tend to be monitoring a lot of things in Google Analytics and they can offer some great data insight that you may not have as much of a pulse on.”

8 Steps To Conduct a Content Marketing Audit

The goal of a content marketing audit is to quickly assess your results to date and identify the best plan based on your current realities. Be efficient when conducting a content marketing audit—if you take too long to gather data or review results, you’ll miss your window to drive effective change this year.

Follow these steps to perform a complete content audit that surfaces the best insights for your marketing team to adapt its strategy:

Step 1: Review Your Annual Content Marketing Plan

Before you start auditing your content marketing results, you need to understand what you set out to do at the start of the year. What were your content marketing goals? What strategies were instrumental in achieving those goals? What metrics would you track in support of your goals?

When reviewing your initial plan, Carmen Hill, founder, principal strategist, and writer at Chill Content, says it’s important to ask how your “goals have shifted or evolved based on changes in your organization or the market environment and whether your audience or customer needs have changed. For example, worries about inflation and looming threat of recession have intensified since January⁠—that’s likely affected budget priorities, staffing, and investment considerations.”

Step 2: Document Your Output and Results Across Channels

Once you revisit your content marketing plan for the year, review each of your content marketing channels and quantify your output and results. Where you look will depend on your goals, but you will likely review at least one of these key content marketing channels:

Owned content sources, like your company blog
Social media channels
Online brand communities
Your company intranet
Email newsletters

Track quantitative and qualitative metrics for each channel, based on your annual goals. How much content did you create, how many people did it reach, and how did they respond to the content? Did you use your entire budget?

“Make sure you’re tracking content that not only leads to engagement but also moves customers down the funnel and ultimately converts them,” Melanie says. “It’s especially helpful to talk with the sales team and understand what’s working at the bottom of the funnel.”

We recommend you create a simple content audit spreadsheet that captures only the relevant information that ties to your goals and measurable results.

Step 3: Perform a Content Gap Analysis

As an extension of your content marketing output and results, you should assess how your existing content can be changed to help you meet your goals.

“Your new content marketing plan shouldn’t just focus on new content,” Melanie advises. “Look at what existing content you can update and refresh to better leverage in your strategy. The audit may also reveal content that you need to delete or overhaul because it is no longer accurate or targets outdated goals or personas.”

During this process, figure out where you have content gaps in your sales funnel to show where you should focus next. Carmen says that “repurposing or repackaging existing content can be a useful, lower effort way to fill those gaps. Do you have a broadly focused ebook that could be versioned for different buyer personas or to fill vertical content gaps? Are there newer stats or examples you could cite to replace older ones on articles that are otherwise evergreen and still relevant?”

Step 4: Assess How Your Competitive Landscape Has Changed

Looking at your content marketing results across channels, what could have contributed to your successes or shortcomings? Was there an industry shift that your content team could not have anticipated? Were your internal resources slashed before you could hit your stride? Did a new competitor gain traction?

Document any factors that may affect your ability to deliver on your goals. Simply, would you have set those same goals today knowing what you now know?

Step 5: Review Your Internal Resources

Now that you understand your recent content marketing output and your competitive landscape, you should review your internal resources to identify how you can keep pace while overcoming any internal challenges or limitations.

Carmen recommends you ask each of these questions:

Did a bylined author leave the company?
What is your approach to handling changes in your thought leadership ranks?
Have people you quoted been promoted or changed companies?

Step 6: Brainstorm With Your Marketing Team

With this base work complete, it’s time to loop in the rest of the marketing team. Schedule a meeting with your marketing leadership, key sales partners, and customer success team. Clearly explain what your content marketing goals were at the start of the year, how you’ve tracked so far, and what you identified as potential inhibitors to your success.

Encourage an open and safe dialogue about why things are or are not working. In addition to a group brainstorm meeting, this process can include 1:1 conversations with content leads to discuss your audit and how they respond to the findings.

Step 7: Adapt Your Content Marketing Plan

Following your team brainstorm, you can now adapt your content marketing plan. Adjust any strategies that are no longer viable or that will not drive the envisioned results. Work goal by goal, strategy by strategy, and metric by metric to ensure every element of your plan has been reviewed and adjusted.

When reviewing all your potential strategy changes, stay realistic about your resources and understand what you’re working with. This is your chance to set a new content strategy that reflects your current resources and competitive landscape.

Share the updated plan with your marketing leadership to get their final approval, and then you can activate your team.

Step 8: Implement Tools For Success

Help your team work smarter by providing them with the marketing templates and tools they need to streamline their work and answer questions faster. Keep an open dialogue with your marketing team to understand what tools they’re using, what they need, and ways you can help them make the most of the available resources.

Ongoing Measurement Allows Your Content Marketing Team to Thrive

Your mid-year content marketing audit is essential, and monthly or quarterly audits are also valuable for adjusting your strategy (and reducing the mid-year audit lift). After you complete your initial audit process, integrate these same practices into your monthly and quarterly to-do’s to ensure your team is always ahead of changing market conditions.

To learn more about conducting a mid-year content audit, listen to this #ContentChat Twitter Spaces conversation replay (the conversation officially starts at 19:45).

If your marketing program is struggling to achieve its desired results, it can be valuable to bring in an outside expert to examine your brand from a neutral lens. We’ve partnered with countless companies to assess their marketing strategies and develop a plan that will shore up their weaknesses and amplify their strengths. If you’d like to learn how a content marketing audit can help your brand, reach out to us today. We’d love to see how we can help you!

Don’t Miss These 22 CMworld Sessions From Friends of Content Chat

August 15, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

Content Marketing World is one of our favorite annual marketing conferences, and you’re guaranteed to leave every session with a notebook full of ideas.

If you’re attending CMworld 2022 in person, it’s smart to build your schedule ahead of time—there are a lot of sessions and you don’t want to waste precious networking time deciding which sessions to attend.

To help in your planning, we humbly present for your consideration the below sessions that are led or joined by friends of the #ContentChat community of marketers and content creators. We’ve chatted with each of these experts in the last year and have no doubt that they will host an incredible session.

Before you dive in below, do you still need to grab your CMworld tickets? If so, use code HEALD100 for $100 off (thank you, Erika)!

22 Must-Attend Content Marketing World 2022 Sessions

The below list of CMworld sessions is in order of day and time, in case you’re joining us in Cleveland. If you’re catching the replays on-demand, dig into all the sessions below at your convenience!

We’ve noted which of these sessions are workshops, which are unavailable for on-demand replay and require an industry forum or workshop pass or a main conference plus ticket.

15 Great Books For Marketers To Inspire Your Innovation and Creativity

July 18, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

A good book will teach you something new. A great book can transform your worldview entirely. That’s if you can find the time—and the right book, of course.

It is hard to step out of your day-to-day grind. We get it—there’s a seemingly never-ending list of to-do’s, your pile of laundry looks more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa each day, and we’ve all got to sleep.

But there is something special about escaping in a book of any genre. Even the ones you’ve read before, or especially so. Books help us challenge our thinking, shift our perspective, and relieve us from the stresses of everyday life.

If you’re looking for new books to escape in or want to gift that feeling to a friend, let us help. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite books for marketing and business professionals, based on #ContentChat community favorites and the books that our team turns to time and time again.

15 Great Books for Content Marketers

Below are enough book recommendations to keep you busy for months, if not years. Unless you’re a speed-reading bibliophile (Erika, I’m looking at you), in which case months or days are likely more accurate. The list focuses on marketing and business innovation books, with a few others sprinkled in.

While these are some of our favorites, we recommend you browse a few pages online or—if you want to make us jealous—during a trip to your local bookstore or library (what a dream!).

Every author’s style and tone are not for everyone, and that’s perfectly OK. Find the ones that hook you, and let the pages take you away.

Do you have a favorite book you want to recommend to us? Let us know in the comments or tweet us @ErikaHeald with the #ContentChat hashtag.

Billion Dollar Brand Club by Lawrence Ingrassia

Looking to make waves as a business newcomer in well-established markets? Former New York Times editor Lawrence Ingrassia examines how brands like Casper, Dollar Shave Club, and Warby Parker ushered in the direct-to-consumer revolution.

Building A StoryBrand, by Donald Miller

Brand messages are often a confusing mix of jargon and buzzwords, written entirely from the “our product is great” perspective. But customers don’t care about your product. Customers care about themselves, and how you can help them in their journey to accomplish whatever it is they’re doing. Donald teaches you the not-so-secret (but incredibly untapped) formula behind what makes for a great story—ones that become box office hits and literary bestsellers—and how to make your customers the hero of your story.

Content Inc. by Joe Pulizzi

Most business stories are not ones of success. Time and time again entrepreneurs launch ambitious products that flop. Luckily, Joe is here to help you break that cycle. Joe, who is regarded as the ‘Godfather of Content Marketing,’ explains how to build a business with a content-first and audience-focused approach before you even have a product. Trust us, this book will leave you inspired and fully aware of how content can drive your success. Want a preview of what you’ll learn? Check out this #ContentChat recap with Joe.

8 Steps For Social Listening To Improve Your Content Marketing

June 17, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

Your customers are telling you what they need from your brand through social media—but are you listening to them?

Although 90% of marketers agree that data from social media enables them to stay ahead of competitors (Sprout Social), we know from firsthand client experience that many teams struggle to lead an effective social listening program. Too often, teams rush to implement a social listening solution without setting a clear strategy, or they fall short by focusing on social monitoring, not listening.

To help your team extract the greatest value from your community conversations on social media, we’ll explain what social media listening is and provide a step-by-step guide to help you lead a successful social media listening strategy.

What is Social Media Listening?

Social listening is a process where you monitor conversations across social media platforms to gain direct customer and key audience insights (also known as social monitoring) and analyze that information to adapt your strategy (that’s how you show you’re listening).

In its simplest form, social listening involves looking for direct brand mentions on social media. Every platform notifies you when another user directly ‘@’ mentions or tags you in their post or comment. Engage with all brand mentions, and thank your community member for sharing their thoughts.

A complete social listening strategy includes monitoring for indirect brand mentions, including common misspellings of your company name and untagged brand mentions, as well as competitor and industry-focused conversations. This process can include:

Monitoring influencers to listen to conversations about trending topics
Tracking hashtags to brush up on industry trends
Searching for common job tasks associated with your brand solution to learn the emotions that people have when completing the task
Listening for customer questions and challenges

Shruti Deshpande, a B2B marketing and content professional, says that “social listening enables you to be aware of conversations around your brand. Monitoring questions around your brand allows you to know where to improve your presence across social media channels, help retain existing customers, or monitor your competitors.”

8 Steps to Conduct Social Listening

Give your team a competitive advantage and run a successful social listening program by taking the below eight steps:

Step 1: Set Social Media Listening Goals

18 Elements Of A Truly Useful Brand Content Style Guide

June 2, 2022 by Alek Irvin Leave a Comment

If someone reads a piece of your brand content without your logo or brand name, would they know the content is yours?

With a practical content style guide, the answer should always be yes. Unfortunately, however, many teams fail to harness their style guide’s full potential. This is often because brand style guides focus on the look and feel of brand content, omitting the critical audience details and background necessary to bring your brand content to life.

Whether you’re building a new style guide or refining your existing brand style guide, here’s how you can create a robust content style guide that will help all of your brand content creators thrive.

What is a Content Style Guide?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a content style guide (also called “content creation guidelines”) explains and showcases how your company speaks with and presents itself to your community. It serves as a one-stop-shop for your entire team to understand your brand personality and visual identity and convey that on every brand asset they create.

Why Are Content Style Guides Important for Marketing Teams?

Content style guides are valuable for teams of all sizes, not just companies with multiple writers. Here are just a few reasons why content marketing style guides are an essential resource for your content team:

Consistency: A style guide ensures consistency across your content, which helps to reinforce your brand identity. This consideration is amplified as your team grows—more writers could mean new styles and tones creep into your brand copy—or as you partner with outside writers that are not immersed in your brand messaging.
Efficiency: Reinventing the wheel is a horrible use of your team’s resources. Style guides answer common questions and give creators the resources to complete their work confidently. The style guide is also a valuable document during any employee onboarding.
Streamline workflows: No more waiting for someone to send a logo or approve a description. Instead, this document allows team members to self-serve.
Strengthens your value proposition: Melanie Graham, a seasoned writer and content marketer specializing in the healthcare industry, says that a “style guide provides critical details on your customers and the messaging that addresses their pain points. This information helps all teams use the strongest, most relevant value props that ultimately sell your product or service.”

Tod Cordill, founder of Moderno Strategies, adds that style guides are valuable for channel partners, too. “A style guide should also include guidelines for channel partners that detail the correct usage of your logos, trademarks, and other brand assets,” he says. “For companies with a lot of brand complexity, this might be a separate document that is maintained in parallel with the style guide used internally and by contractors.”

What Should A Brand’s Content Style Guide Include?

A helpful content style guide will explain your guidelines and showcase them in action. Below are the main elements to include in a style guide, and, when possible, include examples or images that reinforce your points.

Audience or Key Personas

Who does your brand hope to reach, and what do you need to know about these personas? Overview your audience personas and explain the challenges they face, their goals, and how your product or solution helps them thrive.

“Don’t duplicate content if personas are extensively described in other documents,” Tod says. “Maintaining duplicate content is either extra work, or you end up with different versions. Whether to include detailed personas in the style guide, or mention and link out to them, depends on how often you are comfortable editing the style guide.”

Brand Colors/Color Palette

List your brand colors with multiple ways for designers and content creators to use those colors. The CMYK, HEX, RGB, and Pantone codes are all important inclusions (and you can learn more about each here).

Company Naming and Taglines

List all company products, trademarks, and taglines or slogans with any necessary trademark or copyright symbols. Also include your Board members and executive team members and their official titles and preferred names.

Company nicknames are essential to note, too, says Tod.

Company Overview

A thorough style guide will include a company description and key company facts for easy reference when creating content. Consider also including your company press release boilerplate, plus company descriptions of typical lengths to make trade show listings, social bios, and other such uses consistent.

Email Signatures

“Set a standard email signature for everyone at the company,” Melanie reminds us. “Consider whether to include the company logo, calls-to-action (“Sign up for our newsletter!”), phone numbers, emails, and job titles.”

Font and Typography

What are your brand typefaces and font sizes, and when are they used? Name all primary and secondary typefaces and explain how they should appear across different uses. For example, your brand style guide could (but, truly, should not) list Comic Sans as your primary typeface, with a bold 18 pt font with title case for headlines and regular 12 pt font for standard text.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your team will inevitably have questions about your brand style, even if you think you’ve covered everything in the style guide. So, track and address these questions in a dedicated FAQ section within your style guide.

Images and Photography

Define your photographic and graphic design style. Does your brand prefer hand-drawn illustrations? What about well-lit photos of actual humans doing their jobs? Or are you all about product shots and nothing else? Don’t forget to add a link to the approved image repository in this section.

Tod advises you to include guidance for various use cases where images are used, such as a website, social media posts, digital or print ads, print collateral, and banners.

Logo Use

Detail how your brand logo should appear, including all color, shape, or size variations, plus versions for social media platforms. Link to a folder containing logos for download, with various file types (.jpg, .png, .svg) and sizes to meet any web or print needs.

Messaging Framework

Embed a messaging framework into your brand style guide, or include a link to a separate document. Melanie reinforces the importance of this, explaining that “your messaging framework should be an overview of your company’s positioning, differentiators, proof points, customer benefits, and some example messaging (one-liners) you use in external channels.”

Mission and Values

Explain your company mission and values alongside your company overview. A well-built brand will have a cohesive narrative across its purpose, mission, and values, and the brand style should complement this narrative.

Preferred Style Guide and Dictionary of Record

“Explain your preferred style guide (MLA, APA, etc.) and dictionary of record for your organization/brand,” says Carmen Hill, founder, principal strategist, and writer at Chill Content. For example, “unless otherwise specified, we follow AP style and use the Merriam-Webster dictionary.” If your preferred guide does not have guidance for commonly used words, she recommends you create an A-Z word guide specific to your team.

Melanie says that “this section should also call out any brand-specific grammatical preferences that don’t fit within the preferred style guide—Oxford commas, academic degree styles, etc.”

Publishing Conventions

Carmen says that formatting and publishing conventions are another must-include item, especially for internal team members and contributors. “Detail your formatting and publishing conventions for headlines, subheads, titles, calls-to-action, lists, metadata, quotes, and references and source citations.”

Templates

Include links to any branded templates your team may need, such as slide decks, social visuals, or letterheads.

Video

Video is becoming more prevalent in marketing communications and deserves a spot in your brand content style guide. According to Tod, “videos should have consistent intros and outros, voice style, music, tempo, and graphic style that is consistent with brand images. This can be difficult to define in a written document.” Link to exemplary videos to help your video creators understand what an ideal brand video looks like.

Voice and Tone

Every brand should have a distinct personality. Do you want to be a fun, playful brand? Would you prefer a direct and instructive tone? Your brand style guide should define the brand’s voice with plenty of examples that showcase your brand tone in action.

What Not to Do

Use this section to outline whatever you don’t want your team to do—like using a specific word or phrase, or evoking a particular emotion. Carmen recommends you provide guidance on what to do, instead of simply saying “no.” For example, she says you can create a table with words or phrases to avoid with suggested alternatives, such as “Instead of ‘leverage,’ try ‘use, take advantage of, or maximize.”

Tod recommends you include a list of companies, most likely competitors, that content creators should never mention.

Additional Resources

The final section of your style guide can include additional resources that will empower your team and coach them to be better writers. For example, Carmen recommends you link to plainlanguage.gov and its guide for writing in plain English, Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips, grammar and spelling tools like Grammarly, and this guide to UK vs. US English.

How To Gain Team Adoption Of Your Content Style Guide

Creating your content style guide is a significant step. But for your efforts to pay off, you need to socialize your style guide and ensure all team members are aware of its existence and actively use it for content creation.

“A style guide, like any tool, is only useful and valuable if people actually use it,” says Carmen. “This is really the biggest challenge. Regardless of how you decide to share the guide, include a link to the shared document in any channels and tools that inform content writing and creation, like your content brief, content templates, and guidelines for guest writers/contributors.”

Melanie adds that “it’s helpful to include your style guide in onboarding materials for all new employees, so they understand the brand guidelines and resources from the get-go. You may also want to consider short training sessions on the style guide, either at an all-hands meeting or with individual teams.”

Example Content Style Guides

When building your brand style guide, it helps to look at other teams’ brand guidelines for inspiration. Some organizations even encourage you to use and adapt their style guides for your needs.

As a starting point, check out these great brand guideline examples:

MailChimp: This thorough style guide covers everything in short, easy-to-digest sections. There’s even a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) that summarizes the most important things to know, and the word list is a perfect model to follow.
Salesforce: This microsite houses everything related to the Salesforce brand. Check out specific sections on logo guidelines, color, and brand voice to see how Salesforce activates its branding.
Skyscanner: Audiences should notice when you change your branding. This Skyscanner page announces its branding update and clearly communicates the brand’s visual identity. We love the descriptors on the brand colors that put the choice into context.

Style Guides Are An Evolving Brand Asset

By addressing the key brand style guide elements we outlined above, your team will be able to create more consistent content faster, no matter who’s helping. Regularly update your style guide with necessary background or details, and communicate these changes as they happen. Consider creating one-sheeters that distill vital information for specific use cases, like graphic design or blog post writing.

To help you start writing your content style guide, download our free brand content style guide template. And in case you haven’t already, download our brand and content style guide checklist for ongoing reference.

For more background on how to create an effective brand style guide for your team—including common mistakes to avoid along the way—check out this #ContentChat recap with Maddy Osman, founder of The Blogsmith.

Need some help crafting a style guide for your content marketing team? Get in touch—we’d love to help!