Content marketing guidelines are a set of instructions that specify the tone, voice, length, style, and topics our brand should communicate with our audience about. Let’s see why we need to create this document even if we are a small business and how to do it.
Why Create Content Marketing Guidelines?
- Each writer hires us to create content for our business that highlights our company’s voice.
- In small businesses, one or two writers can produce enough content with a common tone.
- And it gives the reader the impression that everything comes from the same source.
- However, this no longer works if we increase the number of channels or the amount of content production our editorial team or agency can handle.
- The more authors or channels we add to your content marketing.
- And the more diluted or confused our voice, the more competent our readers are.
- This can weaken our content marketing and even harm our brand.
- And content marketing guidelines give our writers the expectations for how the business wants to present itself on each channel.
- You can almost think of them as measurements for each room if they don’t follow the guidelines.
- And we can also send it back to the author for editing and hire another author if they can’t confirm it.
- The guidelines also make it easier to communicate strategy changes to our editors.
- Suppose new research shows that we need to change our marketing personas.
- And let’s also reach our audience through different channels.
- And a simple policy update gives authors what they need.
- Additionally, the author should think about questions and suggestions to strengthen our content.
- You can use the guidelines as a reference point for discussions with your superiors.
- Not all marketers are good writers, so there is something that is still overlooked.
What should we include in our content marketing guidelines?
- We have to imagine that the reader of our content marketing guidelines is a new face who doesn’t know much about our business.
- And the goal of our guidelines is to get them up to speed and give them the opportunity to start creating content. So what do they need?
- First, they need to know the USP and unique selling points of our brand as well as the goal of our content marketing on specific channels.
- And also the target group personalities that our content is aimed at.
- And the bare minimum the author needs to understand our voice.
- We can probably glean this from our content strategy documentation.
- And it tells the author who he is writing to and why.
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