Can you put out quality content without a documented style guide?
The answer, as always, is: It depends.
BUT: I will say that if you’re hiring freelance writers who are external to your organization (or if you’re having people across various departments write for a company), it is hard.
Consistency is often lacking across voice/tone/formatting, and the result is that the organization communicates in a way that’s all over the place (which cuts away at its ethos.)
This is why about two years ago, I added a question to the intake form on my website asking potential clients whether or not they had a content strategy in place (part of this being a documented style guide.)
The reason: There were too many times when I’d agreed to work with a content team wanting to move quickly, only to find that without this piece of documentation, things got…challenging.
It was hard to discern the brand’s desired voice/tone.
The editing process took longer.
I didn’t have the context I needed on the target audience.
Now, I exclusively work with companies that have a documented style guide.
As a result, we spend less time on the phone catching each other up to speed, the overall quality of work is improved, the editing process is a breeze, and my clients are generally happier with the content I create for them.
So…how do you create a style guide? And what should it include?
Over the past eight years of doing this work full-time, I’ve seen a vast spectrum of what this can look like: Some are 25-page-long novels, others are a simple one-pager.
If the style guide is too in-depth, writers may feel overwhelmed (and, let’s be real: No one’s going to remember every single thing you covered, so it’s often wasted energy.)
If it’s too brief, you may give writers too much editorial freedom (and be disappointed with the off-base outcome.)
In my experience, the sweet spot is on the shorter side of things (three pages or less), but includes a few key areas that are the absolute essentials. We’ll get to those in just a sec.
A few must-haves in a style guide
When you work on building out a style guide, there are a few basics to cover.
I have a style guide template available for purchase if you’re interested in the complete list of elements I think are important to have in this document that’s part of a larger bundle, but if this isn't something you’re interested in buying, here’s the bird’s eye view:
Objective: What is the end goal of the content you’re putting out? What do you hope it achieves? This might be SEO, conversions, event signups, etc.
Company overview: What the organization does, plus its mission/values/differentiators.
Audience: Who you’re writing for (customer personas are helpful here.)
Voice/tone: At the very least, you need some descriptors of how the writing voice should sound, but ideally there are examples that show what this looks like in action (plus some do’s and don’ts.)
Style: Notes on grammar, desired reading level, and preferred editing handbook.
Technical language/word choice: Share if there are any words to avoid, the brand's stance on technical language, and a brief glossary of key terms the audience would expect to see.
What to do with a completed style guide
Once the style guide is done, share this resource as part of your onboarding process with new writers, but also share it with your existing team working on customer-facing writing.
Keep in mind that this should be a living document, not something you build once and then never revisit. Organizations evolve over time, and often the target audiences do, too. That means your style guide needs to change along with it and be regularly updated.
For people working with large teams and multiple freelancers, editing can quickly become a chore if you add the layer of reviewing for cohesion with the style guide on top of editing for flow and quality of content.
That’s where an automated tool like Writer makes things easy: It's an AI writing assistant that automates the correction of off-brand writing in real-time that's based 100% on a brand style guide. Think of it like Grammarly, but way more advanced. It’s pretty handy tech, and a huge time-saver.
Final thought here: Yes, you can produce quality content without a style guide. You can hire talented writers that have a knack for writing and just let them do their thing.
But having some basic guidelines also never hurt nobody. That's my take.