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Content Delicatessen
How guidelines support great storytelling
28th September 2015
Telemax, CC BY-SA 2.0
Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.
How guidelines support great storytelling
What I’m going to tell you
1. Why you need guidelines.
2. What guidelines you need (and how to create them).
3. How to make sure your guidelines are used.
1 Why you need guidelines
1. Guidelines ≠ limitation.
2. The larger the scale of your content programme, the more true point 1 becomes.
JePoirrier, CC BY-SA 2.0
Guidlines complement creativity
It should:
- be relevant to the audience
- be true and unique to the brand
- be usable
- be "ndable
- be repeatable.
OpenSourceWay, CC BY-SA 2.0
Content should be creative, and more…
How guidelines support great storytelling
What guidelines will do for you
1. Strengthen and di#erentiate your brand.
2. Promote uniformity across teams, channels and formats.
3. Make collaboration easier and more predictable.
4. Make sure content resonates with your audience.
5. Give you a benchmark to judge content against.
6. Create better content faster (and cheaper).
Pennuja, CC BY 2.0
Guidelines help you get storytelling more right, more of the time.
2 The guidelines you need
Core content guidelines
1. Message architecture
2. Voice, tone and style guide
3. Templates
4. Process
How guidelines support great storytelling
1. Message architecture
How guidelines support great storytelling
- “A hierarchy of communication goals that re$ects a common vocabulary” - Margot Bloomstein.
- Creates consensus about what’s important.
- Ensures consistency in messaging.
CrazyGabe, CC BY-SA 2.0
One way to create a message architecture
1. Create/source a set of cards with qualities e.g. traditional, customer-"rst, good value.
2. Get stakeholders to sort them into categories: who we are, who we aren’t, who we want to be.
3. Merge ‘Who we are’ and ‘Who we want to be’ - be aspirational. Look for con$icting ideas e.g. traditional and edgy. Group similar cards.
4. Prioritise your groups.
5. Create messages that tell the story of each group in relation to your organisation.
How guidelines support great storytelling
2. Voice, tone and style
How guidelines support great storytelling
- A comprehensive guide to writing for a brand/organisation.
- Good writing goes unnoticed, bad writing breaks the $ow.
- Voice, tone and style are discrete elements.TheRedProject, CC BY-SA 2.0
Voice
Voice is a description of the unique, distinctive voice of your brand. This should cover:
- its personality
- its rhythm and pace
- its vocabulary.
How guidelines support great storytelling
Playful, cheeky, fun.
Zoonabar, CC BY-SA 2.0 Macmillan
Personality: Innocent
Personal, inspiring, straightforward.
Personality: Macmillan
Punchy, punctuated, staccato.
SaraRichards, CC BY-SA 2.0 Penhaligon's
Rhythm and pace: OxfamLyrical and $owing.Rhythm and pace: Penhaligon’s
Plain and simple.
OVO Porsche
Vocabulary: OVOTechnical and specialist.Vocabulary: Porsche
One way to create voice guidelines
1. Create/source a set of cards with adjectives on them e.g. friendly, fun, playful, serious, dependable, musical.
2. Get stakeholders to sort them into categories: what we sound like, what we don’t sound like, what we want to sound like.
3. Merge ‘What we sound like’ and ‘What we want to sound like’ - be aspirational. Look for con$icting ideas e.g. traditional and edgy.
4. Group similar cards and prioritise those groups.
5. Work the groups into concrete statements that describe your voice, with explanations and examples.
How guidelines support great storytelling
Tone
Tone is how to use your voice in di#erent situations.
Your brand voice is singular, but you can use it with many di#erent tones.
Separating voice and tone means you can be empathetic to your users.
How guidelines support great storytelling
Congratulatory, funny, casual.
Mailchimp, Voice and Tone Mailchimp, Voice and Tone
Tone: success
Helpful, calm, serious.
Tone: failure
Creating tone guidelines
1. Create an outline of the di#erent kinds of customers/users and the kind of journey they will be on when they come to your site.
2. Think about (or event better - ask about) the emotions that people are feeling, and the tone that will be most empathetic in that situation.
3. Write some guidelines, with examples, to help people choose the right tone and understand what it sounds like.
How guidelines support great storytelling
Style
Style is a house ‘style’ for what your writing looks like, for example where to use capitals, how to spell certain words, reminders on grammar, vocabulary.
How guidelines support great storytelling
Creating style guidelines
- Copy, copy, copy! Pick a house style you like, and create your own version of their guidelines.
- Take a look at:
- The Economist Style Guide
- Oxford University Style Guide
- BBC News Style Guide
- MailChimp Content Style Guide
How guidelines support great storytelling
3. Templates
How guidelines support great storytelling
- Helps you to get information from experts/stakeholders.
- Ensures quality and consistency.
- Makes things faster and simpler.MrBill CC BY 2.0
One way to create templates1. Print out one example of each type of content you
produce.
2. Break it down and annotate the components that make-up the page; e.g. title tag, meta description, H1, introduction, sub-headings, images, captions.
3. Think of and annotate the rules that are associated with each component part; e.g. headline format, subject matter, maximum character count.
4. Make a template where each component part is a "eld, and each "eld is annotated with the corresponding guidelines.
How guidelines support great storytelling
4. Process
How guidelines support great storytelling
- Who
- What
- When
- HowJoePage CC BY-ND 2.0
One way to create content work!ow
- Write down every single step it takes to create a piece of content, how long it took, who was involved. Include everything, however inconsequential it seems.
- Look for the good points and pain points in that process: what worked well, what was hard, what took longer than it should have?
- Re"ne the process to make it smoother, faster and repeatable.
How guidelines support great storytelling
3How to make sure your guidlines are used
Futurilla, CCY BY-SA 2.0
It isn’t enough just to have guidelines, you need to get people to use them…
Sending an email probably isn’t going to cut it.
Guidelines need to be tangible part of your content culture.
Sbeebe, CC BY 2.0
What’s the best way to get people’s attention in your organisation?
How guidelines support great storytelling
A few ideas for getting guidelines into use
- Plant beautifully printed and bound copies planted around the o%ce.
- Run training sessions to get people familiar with new guidelines.
- Create a digital version that’s easy to "nd and easy to search.
- Incorporate elements into your templates as a pre-sign o# checklist.
- Look into what support your CMS/content platform can o#er.
How guidelines support great storytelling
A quick note on content software
Content software can make sure your guidelines are used.
Some CMSs and content platforms (Percolate, GatherContent) have impressive integration for style guides and templates .
4 In conclusion
What I told you
1. (Good) guidelines complement creativity.
2. Guidelines help you get storytelling more right, more of the time.
3. A message architecture, voice, tone and style guide, templates and processes are the core guidelines you need.
4. Creating guidelines should be collaborative.
5. Don’t let your guidelines die as a PDF on a share drive.
How guidelines support great storytelling
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