Have you ever wondered how all of those well-known firms maintain such a continuous presence on social media? To tell you the truth, it is not quite as challenging as it may sound, and we the top digital marketing agency in India is here to show you how to achieve it by developing a social media style guide. Continue reading until the very end because there is a helpful checklist at the very end that you are going to absolutely adore.

Why a Social Media Style Guide Is Important

Having a style guide for social media is essential for a number of different reasons. To begin, it gives you the ability to post on a regular and consistent basis, which enables you to develop brand material that is aligned with the values of your firm. It is important to consider how your company presents itself and behaves on social media. The style guide is also an excellent tool for acquainting any new members of your team with the activities that are currently being carried out.

If everyone is aware of what you are doing, you will have a better chance of success and will experience fewer setbacks. To put it another way, having a social media style guide helps you appear consistent across all of your profiles, which gives the impression that you don’t have 10 different people managing them. At the same time, it functions as both a guide and a set of guidelines.

Social Media Profiles & Brand Voice

Create a list of all of the social media accounts that are associated with your company as your first order of business. You need to have all of them consolidated into one location so that you can monitor all of them at the same time. This will also assist you in determining who will be responsible for each account moving forward.

At the same time, you need to determine the tone that will be associated with your brand. Consider the stance you will take in order to apply all of the most effective storytelling techniques in the corporate world. You should give some thought to whether you want to come across as pleasant or savage, informal or daring, sardonic or formal, and so on. You might also include characteristics such as having a deadpan sense of humour, being helpful, fashionable, or young.

Grammar, Terminology & Post Formatting

The second thing you should do is give some thought to which standards of grammar you will be adhering to. This includes determining whether or not you will use slang commonly found on the internet as well as any other vocabulary that is unique to your field. This is incredibly significant since the tone and voice that it gives out for your brand is directly influenced by it.

You should also think about the format of the post that you want to use and keep that in mind. It’s possible that you should also define this aspect of the post, as some companies have a preference for maintaining a particular post style when they place the various components within it. You may get a sense of how your own social media style guide ought to look by looking at how other social media platforms have structured their style guidelines. As an illustration, the social media style guide for Medium utilises simplicity while also using colour.

• BTW: Our guide to Social Media Image Sizes can help you determine the appropriate dimensions for all of the images you share on social media, including LinkedIn.
• Writing Instruments That Can Be Used For Captions
• Utilize the following resources to assist you in the creation of your content or your social media style guide:
• A web application that checks for errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling, Grammarly is available online.
• Trust My Paper is an online writing service that will create material for you based on the instructions you provide.
• The Hemingway Editor is a web application that analyses a piece of text and flags instances of comma splices, adverbs, and passive voice.
• Another fantastic online writing service may be found at Studicus.
• Google Docs is a web-based alternative to Microsoft Office Word that allows you and your team to edit and share word documents.
• Plagiarism Checker is an online application that checks the originality of the content you have created.

Visuals, Hashtags & Other Nuances

When it comes to maintaining a uniform appearance across your social media sites, having graphics rules is quite necessary. The social media style guide for Ben & Jerry’s, for instance, places an emphasis on the company’s distinctive hand-drawn drawings. Utilize anything unique that you have to give in terms of your images, if you have it. Keep in mind that visuals might take the form of photographs, films, GIFs, and many more. Therefore, if you want this part to be useful, you will need to establish guidelines specific to each category.

In a similar vein, ensure that you are familiar with the hashtags that you intend to employ. Think about whether you want all of your posts to have the same hashtags or whether you want posts on various topics to have specific hashtags and decide which option you prefer. Consider the possibility that you might want to establish your own branded hashtags for your followers to make use of. In that case, give some thought to these as well. Don’t overlook the importance of outlining how you want to interact with a variety of people in unforeseen circumstances.

When it comes to your reputation, social media can be a treacherous place since whatever you post or do there has the potential to completely transform it. Because of this, you need to exercise extreme caution whenever you engage in conversation with trolls or even with your rivals.

In addition to that, give some thought to the manner in which you will respond to customers. You need to be prepared with a strategy to implement in the event that you receive a complaint or a negative review. It is highly likely that you will continue to adhere to the same tone and voice standards that you outlined previously in your style guide; however, it is a fantastic idea to make a note of them here and elaborate on them further.

Last but not least, select a method for tagging other users and determine whether or not you will engage in this activity at all. What should you do if you wish to direct your comments on a certain brand and begin a cordial discussion in public? You need to include descriptions of scenarios like this in your style guide.

Your Social Media Style Guide Checklist

Here is a checklist that you can refer to in order to ensure that none of the following are left out of your social media marketing guide as you work to make it the very best it can be:

• Your objectives and goals for using social media are listed here.
• Audience: Your target audience. Additionally, you have the option of listing and describing your customer avatars.
• A list of all of your social media profiles, across all of their respective platforms.
• Voice and Tone: A description of the voice and tone that should be associated with your brand.
• The type of grammar you will be utilizing in addition to the terminology and phrases that you will use in your postings.
• What to Post: Make sure everyone on your team is on the same page by describing the kind of content you plan to share and where they may find inspiration for new articles.
• When to Post: Outline your routine, including how frequently you post and at what times of day you do it.
• Who Owns It? Make the decision as to whether or not the articles that are published through your brand’s profiles should be credited to the brand itself or to the writers who contributed those posts.
• The Way That It Ought To Appear: Include a summary of what should go where in your postings, how they should be formatted, and how they should appear on each site you use.
• Calls to Action: Specify how and where the various calls to action should be incorporated into the document.
• Hashtags: These are the hashtags that you will be utilizing as well as the required placement for them.
• Emojis: If emojis are going to be utilized at all, and if so, which ones specifically.
• News Postings: Indicate whether or not you plan to publish news posts, and if so, provide instructions for the appropriate formatting of those posts.
• Cross-Platform Posts: If you are going to publish the same post on multiple platforms, make sure to give instructions on how it should be prepared for each individual platform.
• Visuals Guidelines: These are the rules and regulations that apply to photos, GIFs, infographics, videos, and anything else of the sort.

Managing Scenarios:

Please provide a description of how you manage trolls, dealings with competitors, interactions with customers, and any other situations that may arise.