{"id":4624,"date":"2015-03-19T10:48:12","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T17:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/blog\/?p=4624"},"modified":"2017-04-12T21:41:04","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T21:41:04","slug":"engaging-social-media-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/blog\/engaging-social-media-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging Social Media Content Versus Corporate Style Guides"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you work in a public-facing content-creation position for a long time, you get used to working under the restrictions of a corporate style guide<\/a>. This guide was developed with one primary goal:\u00a0to make sure everyone across the company is using the same (or similar at least) verbiage and rules. But these guidelines were usually\u00a0created prior to the dawn of social media, resulting in a bit of a conflict for social content creators.<\/p>\n \n \n

So, the big question is: how\u00a0do we create engaging social media content <\/a>that is fun to read and drives interaction while still adhering to corporate style guides?<\/p>\n

Why Do We Need Corporate Content Guidelines?<\/h2>\n

Whether you are developing content for marketing, technical pubs, sales, or other areas, guidelines ensure you use the same terminology. For example, do you call your hardware \u201cdevices\u201d, \u201csystems\u201d, \u201ccomponents\u201d, or what?\u00a0 Do you use gerunds in your section titles, or not?\u00a0 How many levels of headers are acceptable?\u00a0 What sizes and formats do you use for graphics?<\/p>\n \n \n

There are three key reasons we need a corporate style guide that answers these questions and more:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Customer Clarity<\/h3>\n

Maybe these all seem like mundane questions, but\u00a0being inconsistent in this makes your company look amateurish to customers. Imagine if a prospect or customer sees your product name “ABC Devices” on a piece of collateral, “ABC device systems” on a technical document, and “ABC components” somewhere else. What are you? Is it a product name or a description? You don’t want anyone to have to think too hard to know who you are, what you do and what your product or service is.<\/p>\n

2. Brand Consistency<\/h3>\n

What if your branding looks completely different on Twitter versus your website versus a trade show? The result is confusion at best and complete lack of brand equity at worst. Good branding guidelines help ensure your brand is consistently displayed and communicated. People know what you look like and what you stand for, regardless of the implementation.<\/p>\n

3. Legal\u00a0Adherence<\/h3>\n

A style guide can protect you from legal issues (e.g., \u201cAlways include a copyright<\/a> or trademark symbol at a third-party company\u2019s product\u2019s first appearance in content\u201d). It also\u00a0can make things easier for localization\/translation (e.g., \u201cDon\u2019t use contractions\u201d).\u00a0 Some of this is handled by legal review, of course, but much of it gets baked into your style guide over time.\u00a0 Heck, you may not even be aware of it, but I assure you that your content people are!<\/p>\n \n \n

\"Corporate<\/a>

Style Guide Example via Media Bistro: http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/portfolios\/samples_files\/441218_wuvcdivrjd6xkk52csximwsko.pdf<\/p><\/div>\n

Which\u00a0Takes Us Back to Boring<\/h2>\n

This is why so much corporate content is so dull. It’s enforced by style guides, corporate standards and legal restrictions. If you were to poll your content folks, I guarantee you the boring content they crank out is not a reflection of their abilities or creativity. Nearly all corporate content folks I know are working on books or are published authors, have sold illustrations or\u00a0art, have incredibly-creative blogs, maybe have even designed apps or other cool content work.<\/p>\n

Creative people want to create<\/em>; they don\u2019t want to write dirt-dry content any more than you want to read it.<\/p>\n \n \n

And that\u2019s where the problem comes in.<\/p>\n

Writers want to create engaging content that connects with their audience across all channels. Unfortunately, doing this almost certainly puts you in direct conflict with the corporate style guide.<\/p>\n

Corporate\u00a0Style Guide Versus Social Media<\/h2>\n

\"social<\/a><\/p>\n

Think about this:\u00a0 Twitter has a maximum character count of 140. If you don\u2019t use contractions, you are\u00a0avoiding common acronyms that everyone on the platform knows like IMO and BTW and ICYMI. Using “in case you missed it\u201d burns up characters that could be used to deliver your message. You can\u2019t afford to write under style guide constraints when you only have 140 characters to work with. Not to mention your tweets will sound like a corporate suit\u00a0– not exactly matching voice to audience!<\/p>\n

Twitter has been around long enough that its huge install base is very savvy to corporate \u201cTwitter ad accounts\u201d, not to mention bot accounts and the like.\u00a0 People like social media partly because it gives them the impression they\u2019re hearing from a real, live person, and not a corporate entity. If you force Tweets, Facebook posts, Tumblr pages and whatnot into a corporate style guide box, the customers will see it and ignore you. Or block you.<\/p>\n \n \n

You have two potential paths at this point:\u00a0<\/strong> Modify the style guide to incorporate exceptions for social media content, or just do what you need to do.<\/p>\n

I believe quite strongly that having this information in the style guide is critical. But a corporate style guide is like a supertanker at sea; it\u2019s huge, unwieldy, needs a lot of people to work on it, and takes forever to change course. And in the interim you need to keep posting.<\/p>\n

Incorporate Social Media into the Guidelines<\/h2>\n

So post, kids; post like the wind. But work together as a creative team to be consistent at the very least, and make sure that you are coordinating with the appropriate folks<\/a> internally to get your new social media\u00a0styles\u00a0incorporated into the corporate\u00a0guide. Or there will be hell to pay with management or legal later on.<\/p>\n

And being consistent is key. Creative people asked to generate social media content, rather than marcomm or technical content, will feel like they\u2019ve been dumped off in Vegas with $500 worth of drink tickets after spending years in Provo, Utah. They\u2019ll want to let out all the creative urges that have been bottled up for years by admonitions like, \u201cDon\u2019t use contractions; it is hard to translate contractions to Japanese\u201d.\u00a0 They\u2019ll want to create<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n \n

That’s great,\u00a0because they\u2019ll be excited, and that positive energy can be used to make some dynamite, exciting content.<\/p>\n

But you have to be careful and make sure your teams coordinate and are consistent with each other, or you\u2019ll have a big ol\u2019 mess, and people will start saying, \u201cWell, whoever works their Twitter account is great<\/em>, but their Facebook people act like a bunch of Kindergartners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The informal touch is absolutely critical in social media, but it can also lead you into trouble, as so many corporations have found out lately.<\/p>\n

New Rules of the Content Road<\/h2>\n

So in short, write to your platform, and don\u2019t let yourself be constrained by a style guide that was first codified in 1992. However, be true to your “brand” personality and legal guidelines. And you still need to\u00a0be consistent across social platforms.<\/p>\n

Coordinate with each other, leverage the creative nature of your content folks, and make sure the needs of the new platforms get reflected in your style guide as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Do it incorrectly,\u00a0and you\u2019ll be in legal trouble, look like a bunch of corporate boobs, and have management angry at you.<\/p>\n \n \n

But do it\u00a0well,\u00a0and you\u2019ll be a standout in the social media arena.\u00a0 And that\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you work in a public-facing content-creation position for a long time, you get used to working under the restrictions of a corporate style guide. This guide was developed with one primary goal:\u00a0to make sure everyone across the company is using the same (or similar at least) verbiage and rules. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":11571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,24],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEngaging Social Media Content Versus Corporate Style Guides | Rival IQ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Corporate style guides are a content marketers bible. But how do we write engaging social media content while adhering to corporate guidelines? 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