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What is a Brand Style Guide?

Publish Date: 9/15/2022

Have you ever tried to create a marketing piece for your business and forgot the name of that font you really like? Have you ever worked with a graphic designer who needed a high res version of your logo and you had to spend hours trying to hunt it down?

What is a Style Guide?

A Brand Style Guide can solve those problems and more. A Brand Style Guide is a collection of elements that make up your brand and style. It provides details on your messaging, and how your image should be shared both visually as well as in text format applications. It also provides your logo along with how and where it should be used. Your Brand Style Guide is a useful resource for anyone who is writing copy for you, managing your social media content, or creating graphics for you. It saves you time, and it clearly defines how your brand should look and feel on any piece of content.

Why do I need a Style Guide?

A Brand Style Guide gets your staff and freelancers on the same marketing page with you without you having to say a word. If you're working with a graphic designer and you need a flyer done, send them a copy of your brand style guide and with the exception of special considerations, ideally they shouldn't bother you about font choices, color choices, or anything involving your brands' look and feel.

A Brand Style Guide is a visually appealing way to keep track of all of your branding elements in one place. It's a huge time saver and will keep help streamline your marketing efforts so that everyone you work with is on one accord.

What is included in a Style Guide?

A style guide includes your logo along with its various versions. A logo can encompass many different variations including a black and white version, a version on a color background, or a horizontal version. Your Style Guide should include any other approved versions of your logo.

It also should include font selections that your brand uses for text and written copy. These font selections should encompass headings, sub-headings, and body text. You could also share approved font sizes if necessary.

Color palettes are also a big part of your brand and style and should be included in your Style Guide. Each color you prefer to use for your business should be shown along with the corresponding HEX Code number. You can also share how or where color combinations should be used. For example, you might consider using a secondary color palette when you're trying to showcase a product as opposed to a primary color palette that you would use on flyers. There might be massive differences in color choices depending on what you're doing. Your Style Guide should account for that.

Another thing you could include in your Style Guide is a list of guidelines on what not to do. If you like to use certain types of images to communicate a message, you could say that in your Style Guide. For example, if your brand revolves around strong families, then you would include that as a guideline in selecting stock images for marketing pieces. If you have specific requirements regarding imagery not to use, that can also be included in your Style Guide.

Lastly, you'll want to include a phone number and a contact in case there are any questions regarding the use of your brand.

Your Style Guide is a visual representation of everything that is your brand. From color palette, look and feel, to your logo, your Style Guide informs everyone involved in bringing your vision to life how to apply your branding to any and everything. If you need help creating your Style Guide, click here.

How Can a Blog Elevate Your Business?

Maintaining a business is not easy in today's market. Brick and mortar only stores are a thing of the past. Now, business is happening online at an alarming pace, and entrepreneurs see a great advantage to keeping up with these times in order to stay afloat. Excelling in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a sure way to remain competitive in this ever-changing market. One of the things small businesses and entrepreneurs can include as part of their SEO strategy is cultivating a blog.

Why a Blog?

A blog allows your website to maintain relevancy and high level attractiveness to search engines. If new information is not being added to your website consistently, search bots will automatically demote your page. This means your website will not get served at the top of search results. This can be problematic because there's only so much you can say about a product or service. Having a website is great for disseminating information such as business hours, prices, product or service catalogue listings, etc. But if you want to appear high in search results, you'll have to take this a step further by adding relevant content to your website on a weekly basis. A blog is the perfect choice to resolve this issue.

What Should I Write About on My Blog?

The beauty of your blog is that it's yours and you can write about anything you want!!! There are a few guidelines I suggest be followed such as writing to keep your customer in mind; being knowledgeable about key words; and posting articles to your blog at least on a weekly basis. When looking for topics a good place to start is with your products and services. You could write a series of posts describing the product or service in detail, and how they can be used to resolve problems your customers have. Also, product tutorials are a major content generating source, as well as product reviews, case studies, and product or service features.

You can also get creative by featuring customers, employees, and any events you are hosting or participating in - whether physical or online.

A really strategic way to generate content is to choose topics in which your customers are already searching for. This will give you the most bang for your buck because when people go to search for this topic, your blog post will hopefully come up - automatic exposure for you. For example, if you're a makeup artist, you can write a few blog posts about how to find the right makeup artist in your town. Sprinkle in the relevant search terms throughout your blog and don't forget to pitch your services!

Also, here's a list of super easy topics you can write about:

  • Our Top 10 List of Must Haves (with your product)

  • Why You Should (use our product or service

  • How we're giving back to the community

  • A Step Back In History: How Our Company Started

  • Our Business Philosophy and Mission Statement

  • What you need to know about (Local Event or Controversy that ties in to your business)

  • Why We're Going To (list a local event)

  • Talk about any events in which you've participated or hosted in the past.

  • Product or Service Comparison

  • Talk about Your Convictions as a Company ie. animal rights

How Can I Maintain a Blog And Run My Business?

Unfortunately, blogging is quite time consuming. For blogging to be an effective SEO strategy, the experts suggest posting to your blog at least once a week. Some ideas to make this less stressful and less time consuming are to create post series with a formula to follow that anyone can do, then delegate it to an employee or assistant. You could also implement feature articles that are interview style in nature where all you do is send someone a list of questions. When you get their answers, add their picture and an intro paragraph and throw it up on your blog. Another thing you can do is create videos or even audio files and have someone transcribe them and format it for an article.

If you're writing articles yourself from scratch, it helps to set up a time every week on the same day to dedicate to blogging. This will help get you into a routine and encourage you to develop regular blogging as a habit. Unless you're writing white papers or a thesis, you should not have to spend too much time on this. Only spend 1 or 2 hours writing if you can help it. Don't make this any harder than it should be!

Put together topics and titles ahead of time. That way, when it's time to write, you'll already have topics readily available.

Delegate It Out

You can also hire a blog writer! I understand that blogging is tedious work. I also understand that it can be hard to focus time on something that doesn't seem to produce immediate revenue for your business. However, you can be confident that a good blogging strategy will gain you more exposure and more customers in the long run. It's a long game!

Therefore, I have made blog writing a service for my clients so that they can keep their focus where it needs to be - on their customers. I would love to support you in your blogging efforts. I understand the elements of blog writing for SEO and I can even design a blogging strategy to help you get the most out of blogging.

You can find samples of my work on The Crafty Musician Blog. For my clients, I create articles as a ghost writer, so they can have full ownership of the articles. You can find samples of that here, here, and here.

My blog writing is affordable! I charge $15-20 per hour depending on the topic. Most blog articles are written within an hour or under. If you'd like to get started with blog writing, feel free to contact me at anitra@yourdesignmojo.com and let's get your business on the map!