Author: Corinne Rudolph

10 Social Media Tips for Restaurant Marketing

If you own a restaurant and aren’t leveraging social media, you are missing out. 

Think about this: you can reach thousands, if not millions, of viewers using popular restaurant marketing hashtags like #foodporn and #foodphotography.

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook let you upload attractive images with location tags, making them ideal for restaurant marketing. 

After all, who doesn’t enjoy looking at delicious food pics when they’re scrolling through their feed? 

The restaurant marketing hashtag #foodporn has 268 million posts.

Most social media platforms are free, and if you use effective marketing strategies, promotions and advertising can be free (or cheap) as well. 

This article will help you understand how to use your existing resources and create a strategic restaurant marketing plan to grow your digital reach. 

First, let’s talk about why social media is a crucial tool for restaurant marketing. Then we’ll discuss how to stand out from your competitors and find the most effective social media marketing techniques for your business. 

Why Is Social Media Important for Restaurant Marketing? 

Using smart social media strategies for restaurants may sound like a lot of work, but the effort will pay off.  If you’re not convinced it’s worth the effort, here are a few reasons why social media is important for restaurant marketing:

  • Brand awareness: More than 3 billion people use social media. You can post pictures of your restaurant, upload videos of cooking new dishes, highlight behind-the-scenes/facts about your business, etc. to reach the ever-growing audience on social media. 
  • Engage with user-generated content: The interactive nature of social media platforms lets you increase engagement by sharing user-generated content (UGC). This can include photos of people eating at your restaurant, graphics featuring testimonials, or stories of how people found your restaurant. UGC encourages other users to visit, and share own content. 
  • Address customer concerns: Unhappy customers tend to take their concerns to social media. This is an excellent opportunity for you, as a business owner, to reach out and solve their problem. It’ll earn you good press and build a positive reputation while increasing customer loyalty.
  • Get feedback: Use social media to start a healthy discussion and get useful feedback. Ask customers what they’d like to see changed, what new menu items they’d love, or what specials would bring them back. 
  • Increase your reach: You can use location tagging on Instagram and Facebook to reach new customers living in and around your target geographical area. This can also attract tourists looking for a local spot to grab a bite to eat. 

10 Social Media Strategies for Restaurant Marketing 

Restaurant marketing through social media can hugely benefit your business, but how do you get started? 

Trending on social media and reaching the right users can be tricky as algorithms keep changing, but using the right strategies can help you grow your audience and increase foot traffic. Here are the top restaurant marketing techniques to get you started. 

1. Create a Cohesive Brand Voice

If you have a large team managing your social media pages, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent brand voice. Marketing teams that employ different people to manage each social media page may end up with a scattered “style.” 

If you upload funny tweets from your restaurant marketing account but maintain a serious tone on LinkedIn, you risk confusing the customer. They may wonder: is this the same brand? 

Research shows consistent branding across different social media platforms can boost your revenue. 

How do you ensure a cohesive brand voice for restaurant marketing on social? 

  • have a style guide for all team members to use
  • post images with a similar color theme 
  • write your captions with a consistent tone of voice
  • if you use humor, ensure it translates well across different social media platforms. 

2. Optimize Your Bio on Each Social Media Platform

Imagine you do everything right. You upload attractive high-resolution pictures, use trending hashtags and geotag your posts for increased reach. 

Customers see your post, and they’re intrigued. They decide to contact you for a reservation, but they can’t find any phone numbers, emails, or location information because you forgot to include it on your social media page. 

This happens more often than you’d think. As you can guess, it’s counterproductive. 

The main goal of restaurant marketing is to drive customers to your restaurant. If you don’t include the necessary information, you can lose out on valuable sales. 

Here’s a checklist of information you can keep in mind before hitting publish.

  • location(s) address
  • phone numbers
  • email address
  • map/directions from popular landmarks
  • restaurant information

Take Just Falafel’s Facebook page. You can see the phone number, email, address, and a map so it’s easier to find all the information potential customers may need. 

just falafel social media for restaurants example

Note: What’s necessary to optimize your Facebook page will differ from Instagram or Twitter page. Take a look at the settings, profile description options, and other users’ profiles to understand what you should and shouldn’t include. 

3. Use Social Media Tools to Monitor Brand Mentions

When users talk about your restaurant online, it’s like free marketing. You can use this to your advantage by commenting on or re-sharing their posts. 

Fortunately, there are dozens of free and paid tools available to make this easier for you. You can automate name and mention tracking to get instant updates whenever a customer (or a competitor) talks about you. 

Here are some options to help you get started:

  • Hootsuite
  • Google Alerts
  • Talkwalker
  • Reputology
  • Mentionlytics

4. Feature Behind the Scenes Content

Even the best of food pics can start feeling impersonal after a while. When this happens, revamp your feed and intrigue your audience by posting behind-the-scenes content. 

For example, look at Sandwich Hag’s Instagram post. 

Sandwich Hag’s restaurant marketing post highlights behind-the-scenes content

By sharing internal stories, their marketing team establishes a relationship with the audience. 

This works. 

In a study analyzing more than 10,000 responses, researchers found  55 percent of people find stories more persuasive than facts and data. 

You use this to your advantage by posting about what happens behind the scenes in your restaurant. 

Can you post a special story about a particular dish? Can you post pictures of your staff working? Can you share fun facts about your team? Think about how you can offer a personalized feed to your audience. Remember, most users head to social media to be entertained, so make sure to keep their interest. 

5. Promote Seasonal Menu Items

Restaurant social media marketing is ideal when you’re launching new dishes or promoting seasonal menu items. People enjoy novelty. In fact, studies show humans crave newness. 

You can use this principle to promote special items on your menu. 

Posting about a new menu can work as an effective restaurant marketing strategy

Every time you change your menu or introduce new ingredients to your regular dishes, talk about it on social media. Use your business’ novelty as a focal point for restaurant marketing. 

6. Post Employee Spotlights

Just like Sandwich Hag posted about their employees to offer a peek into the restaurant’s behind-the-scenes, you can dedicate special posts to highlight your employees. 

There are many ways to do this: 

  • Post a picture of your employees when they achieve something (graduation, wedding, birth of a child, etc.) 
  • Share a special Facebook post highlighting who they are, what they do, and how your audience can support them. For example, you might share a profile on your chef, including where they’ve lived and studied and how they’ve impacted your restaurant. 
  • Introduce new employees so long-time customers can welcome them. 

7. Share User-Generated Content

One of the best ways to grab user attention is to post something created by them. Open any social media app and you’ll see hundreds, maybe thousands of people tagging brands in their posts. 

Not all of these are sponsored. 

People love sharing their experiences online. If they visit your restaurant and post a picture on their social media feed, re-share it. It’s free restaurant marketing for you and a spotlight opportunity for them. It also helps establish trust with people who might consider visiting. 

You can share user-generated content in many forms. 

  • re-share user photos taken in your restaurant
  • ask users to leave video testimonials for your restaurant 
  • publish feedback and other kind words offered by frequent visitors

8. Engage With Users – Both Positive and Negative Feedback 

Most restaurant marketing teams are happy to respond to positive comments but tend to ignore the negative ones. This is understandable, but it can harm your restaurant marketing. 

When someone talks about your restaurant, others can see their post, too. You can’t make them delete their post, but you can diffuse the situation by responding kindly. In fact, negative reviews can be a good thing—it shows other users you care about their experience and will go the extra mile to solve issues. 

Understand their concerns, see what they have to say. Did they have a bad experience because something was wrong with their food? Were they expecting a particular type of service you didn’t know about? Do they feel your food is too expensive?

Paying attention and responding to user comments helps you understand how to serve your customers better. 

The best part? It also makes you look responsive and approachable. Plus, it boosts user engagement, so your posts can reach more users. It’s a win-win. 

9. Work With Influencers

Influencers and micro-influencers have an eager audience ready to try something new based on the influencer’s recommendation. 

More brands are reaching out to influencers with various sizes of audiences to boost their brand awareness. 

If you’ve never done this before, here are some ways you can collaborate with influencers: 

  • Offer a free meal in exchange for a review.  
  • Offer a discount coupon for every customer they bring in. 
  • Pay money for custom content on their feed, often called sponsored posts. 

10. Use Promotions

Consider using paid promotions if you want to take your restaurant’s social media marketing to the next level. 

While paid ads might not be ideal for restaurants with tight budgets, seasoned entrepreneurs should experiment with paid campaigns for increased reach. 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most other social media platforms offer excellent tools for paid social promotions. You can identify your target audience, set up an ad campaign, and even define a fixed budget for the promotion to run. 

FAQs About Restaurant Marketing

Here are some of the most popular questions people ask about restaurant marketing. 

Can I promote my restaurant on social media for free?

Yes, many social media promotion techniques can be implemented for free. Strategies like using the right hashtags, posting user-generated content, and others outlined above can be executed with little to no money. 

Can social media marketing bring customers to my restaurant?

Yes. If you are armed with a powerful set of marketing strategies, you can reach your target audience and influence them to visit your restaurant. Conversion rates may vary by strategy, but social media marketing can help increase brand awareness. 

How can I promote my small restaurant?

The size of the restaurant has little to no influence on the effectiveness of the social media strategies you use. In fact, as a new business on the market, you have more opportunities to develop your brand voice and intrigue users looking to try something new. 

Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant on social media?

Which hashtags should I use for marketing my restaurant To promote your restaurant on social media, use popular hashtags like #foodporn, #foodphotography, #foodgasm #mealoftheday, etc. You can also use smaller but relevant hashtags like #yummy, #delicious, #brunch, etc. on social media?

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Restaurant Marketing Conclusion

Restaurant marketing is an ever-evolving process. As you get used to interacting with customers online, you’ll encounter new strategies better suited to how your business operates. 

You can start using the strategies outlined above one by one to see what works and what’s not worth the ROI. You can also experiment with your own method to see what resonates with your audience. 

Whether you have a brand new restaurant in one city or operate a chain restaurant across the country, remember to focus on what your target audience enjoys. That will help you create an optimal restaurant marketing plan. 

Which restaurant marketing strategy do you think will work for your audience? 

How to Get Started With Video Marketing

There’s no doubt about it: a successful video marketing campaign will absolutely transform how your business operates.

If you’ve been dreaming about an increase in brand awareness, organic lead generation, and personal connections with your customers – creating video content could be the solution you are looking for.

How?

Let’s take a look at the statistics.

On average, video content is shared 1200 percent more than text and image posts combined – making it the perfect pursuit for businesses looking to increase their organic reach.

Return on investment for video marketing.

Similarly, positive ROI statistics for video content have been booming for years – from 33 percent in 2015 to 87 percent in 2021. Businesses and marketers alike have taken note, diverting budgets towards hiring videographers to create new marketing materials for their website, email outreaches, social media, and even “OTT” video adverts on streaming platforms.

Why? 

It seems the positive results have been due to audience preference, with video content being considered “easy to consume” as well as creating a welcome break from “overabundance of textual information online.” 

For any smaller company with a low budget, creating video content can seem a little intimidating. 

It’s hardly something you can leap into blindly, and understanding the process behind successful video marketing campaigns will help you avoid costly mistakes in the future.

1. Create a Plan, Set Goals, and Measure Them 

As with any successful marketing campaign, you’ll need to start with a plan.

Holding your mobile phone, pointing it in the right direction, and clicking “record” might feel instinctual – but there’s a lot more work that goes on behind the scenes of video content.

Plans will help you slow down, breathe, and give you direction.

If you want your video marketing campaign to be successful, you’ll need as much attention as possible.

Having a plan in place will help you maximize your outreach by posting your video in the right places. Assuming you don’t have completely overlapping audiences, if you want to be sure that you’re reaching every one of your followers, you’ll want to post your video content on all of your social media accounts.

If you play your cards right, you might even see some of your videos go viral.

Additionally, instead of losing progress on a day where you are feeling flat and uninspired, a plan can help you structure content ideas, ensure you have the right tools for the video, and allow you to schedule time to actually edit your footage before posting. 

This will considerably improve the quality of your video content.

Next, you need to make goals based on your plan – and keep track of measurable results.

Consider this: how would you define success?

More sales? A higher CTR? Better engagement on your social media posts?

Take a look at these SMART goals:

SMART goals for video marketing.

SMART is a universally recognized system for creating measurable, trackable, and attainable goals.

If that’s too intense, here’s a condensed cheat-sheet version for your business:

  • Is this goal specific? General goals like “get more subscribers” or “increase traffic” won’t give you much insight in the long run.
  • Is this goal achievable? There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious, but expecting to get 1 million subscribers on YouTube in your first 6 months might be a bit much.
  • Is this goal trackable? The sweet spot of goal-setting is a realistic goal that you can track. Whether you achieve it or not, you’ll end up with valuable data by the end.

Remember: don’t just make goals but actually hold yourself accountable for them.

If you started creating video content today, and six months from now, you had no definitive idea on the future direction of your content, I’d suggest that your campaign was in serious trouble.

Achieving consistent growth with video marketing comes down to two things:

1). Finding what works and recreating it in future videos.
2). Finding what doesn’t work and making sure that it’s not in your future videos.

These are the absolute basics of consistently increasing the effectiveness of your video content.

2. Stick With What You Know

When you draft your plan of action, you’ll likely bounce around ideas for upcoming content or even choose to create a full content strategy.

Before proceeding, you need to remember the importance of staying true to your brand voice and giving your audience what they’ll actually want.

If you’ve been creating educational content on your blog, your best bet would be to start with educational video content and see if that resonates with your audience in the same way.

Stick with what you know.

So many companies are trying so hard to be innovative that they don’t pay attention to the tried-and-tested content types that already work.

Trying to come up with brilliant ideas and then executing them poorly could be harmful to your future video marketing efforts.

When choosing what type of content to make, study the three types of widely-recognized video in the marketing community: 

1). Educational Videos

Educational videos are all about adding value to your audience.

Give them a reason to watch your content, to share, or “follow for more”.

Hint: Nobody wants to get to the end of a video and feel like they’ve wasted their time.

Informative guides, product demonstrations and interesting thought pieces are likely to do really well online as they are great at engaging your audience and making them think.

2). Inspirational Videos

For so-called “inspirational videos”, your job is to capture breathtaking views, change lives, play with emotions, reveal awe-inspiring moments, and produce motivational content designed to fire people up.

3). Entertaining Videos

In this category, you’re trying to get people to laugh or smile.

Your content should intrigue them to investigate your brand further and create a positive experience that they’ll then associate with your brand or product in the future.

If you have no idea where to start: don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world.

Trialing content from each category will help you find your feet, as well as gain audience insight.

As time goes on, you’ll develop a stronger understanding of what type of video content works and what doesn’t.

Trust me, if your audience wants a different type of video, they’ll ask for it.

Pay attention to your comments section! I certainly do.

3.  Start Creating and Stop Holding Yourself Back

Okay, now that we’ve gotten all the planning out of the way, it’s time to dive into the fun part.

Video creation might seem overwhelming at first, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Your first video is supposed to be your worst.

Think about it! If every video is an improvement on the last one, it only makes sense that your first video is your worst, right?

Instead of stressing out over every minor detail, just dive into the creative process.

You’ve already made a plan. You have an idea for your first video.

Instead of trying to figure out the perfect way to start your video content creation journey, just get that first video out of the way.

Trust me, it’s only going to get easier.

Don’t get me wrong. You should still try to provide as much value as you can and be as professional as possible.

But expecting this video to be perfect is just unrealistic.

In the world of written content, you provide value by doing everything from offering tangible advice to being a great storyteller.

As far as I’m concerned, the sooner you start actually making relevant content… the better.

Creation means you’ll get feedback. Getting feedback means you can make changes where required, rather than nit-picking when there are no nits. Your audience will be vocal about what they do and don’t like, so you won’t be stranded for long.

It really is that simple.

Don’t have any of those fancy filming tools yet? No problem. I’ve got just the thing!

Go ahead and reach into your pockets for me.

Feel that rectangular piece of metal in there?

If you’ve got a smartphone, you’ve got what it takes to make a video.

It might not be perfect (although their rapidly improving cameras are certainly making a huge difference for low-budget marketers) and that’s absolutely okay.

As your video marketing strategy develops over time, you can upgrade and invest more time and money into video creation.

You can use InVideo as your one-stop solution for video editing and customization.

The best part?

You don’t need to have a ton of experience with design or editing to make awesome videos.

invideo for video marketing

Why stop when you’re ahead?

If you’re seeing positive results but don’t have the time to handle video creation in the long run, look into hiring professionals to put together your videos, invest in a professional camera and lighting equipment to make your editing job easier, and increase your resources with licensed music, images, and fun little animated intros. 

There might never be “the perfect moment” to post your first video, so don’t waste time and just get started.

4. Search Matters

I love discussing the creative process and useful tricks to use in the world of video marketing.

However, there’s more to executing a successful video marketing strategy than what you can see on the surface.

Behind the scenes, SEO is still massively important, whether you’re a fan of it or not.

It’s so important that I made a video for local businesses on how to pull it off without a huge marketing budget.

Let me be clear. If your video content is not being optimized for search, you are almost certainly missing out on free exposure.

Scary, right? Don’t worry. I’ve got a quick fix to get you back on track.

If you’re familiar with SEO for your blog, this is all going to seem oddly familiar.

The same way your article title should have keywords that you’re looking to rank highly for, your video title is going to determine your ranking on sites like YouTube.

Even if you’re familiar with SEO through your blog, this next part might be news for you.

Those description sections under videos on YouTube? Google’s Algorithm trawls through them for its users. For high-performing video marketing through SEO, the general idea here is the same:

  1. Avoid keyword stuffing.
  2. Make sure your keywords are actually relevant.
  3. Do your research and get into the mindset of your customer.

Typically, the best descriptions are those that accurately explain your video in conjunction with keywords.

Overall, balance storytelling and metrics. Maybe even consider getting a copywriter involved if you are unsure what to write.

SEO is the cornerstone of any truly effective content strategy, and it’s especially important when it comes to video marketing.

5. Partner With Influencers

It wasn’t too long ago that “celebrity endorsement”’ was something that only the world’s biggest brands could actually afford.

Smaller brands and local businesses could only sit back and watch athletes and actors use their mass appeal to help these businesses sell more of their products.

Don’t worry, though, things have changed.

Micro-influencers are on the rise.

They have their own loyal following and a unique understanding of how to appeal to the people in their industry.

Frankly? They can be pretty darn effective.

With the explosion of the internet and social media, our marketplaces look completely different, consumer habits have us browsing for the best price online, and marketing landscapes are almost unrecognizable. 

The best influencers are able to run with your vision for content and provide you with unique and valuable insight on what would work best for their audience. 

Plus, there’s no denying that having your brand presented to a group of anywhere from 100,000 to several million dedicated followers can be massively impactful.

Just take a look at how Dude Perfect partnered with Hasbro to promote the company’s new Nerf product, the Mega Magnus.

Effectively teaming up with influencers comes down to two things.

  1. Choosing your influencers wisely! If your brand is family-friendly, don’t reach out to someone who’s known for being controversial.
  2. Communicating! Don’t assume that you and the influencer are on the same page. It’ll inevitably lead to miscommunication, and you may end up with content you didn’t want.

6. Use Ads to Their Full Potential 

Just because you’re trying something new in the form of video content, there’s no reason to forget the principles of marketing that you’ve used with previous content.

If you’ve been implementing a well-rounded marketing strategy, you should be drawing from both organic and paid traffic.

If you’re completely new to this, or you just want a refresher on how to maximize your ads, this part is for you.

Let’s take a look at the Facebook ads targeting mechanics.

Using Facebook, brands can easily tailor their ads to suit a variety of different users.

Your ads can target users based on key demographics such as their age, gender, location, interest, and much more.

Because of social media analysis, you’ll even know what your typical daily reach is.

Social media analysis for video marketing.

The best part?

You can customize each individual ad to maximize its relevance.

For example, let’s say that you created two videos.

The first video is for people getting ready to retire, and the second video is for people who just graduated college.

Instead of presenting your entire audience with an ad that likely won’t be very useful for them, you can ensure that each video gets its own category and is presented to relevant parties.

When you increase the quality of your video marketing by ensuring your ads are targeted, you’ll inevitably convert more users into customers.

Of course, Facebook isn’t the only place where you could choose to invest in ads.

Which brings up an important question: where should you be spending your money on ads?

Well, remember all the way back in the first section, when I mentioned that posting in a variety of different places would help you in the long term?

This is where that seemingly minor detail comes in handy.

Now that you’ve collected enough information on which platforms work best for your video marketing content, it’s time to put that data to use.

Armed with those metrics, you’ll be able to identify where your content is getting the most attention.

From there, it’s as simple as having a higher ad budget on those platforms.

If your audience likes to consume your videos on Instagram, Instagram ads it is.

If they love Facebook, promote your content on Facebook.

If you’re getting the most exposure out of YouTube, invest in YouTube ads.

Ride the wave of momentum, capitalize on your minor victories, and sooner or later, your video marketing will take off.

Video Marketing Frequently Asked Questions  

How can I start video marketing?

Starting on your video marketing journey is easy. Just follow our 6 steps to maximize your chance at success:

1). Create a Plan, Set Goals, and Measure Them 
2). Stick With What You Know
3). Start Creating and Stop Holding Yourself Back
4). Search Matters
5). Partner With Influencers
6). Use Ads to Their Full Potential

How do I start an online video marketing campaign?

Starting an online video marketing campaign has become easier due to social media. Instead of paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to get your video advert on TV, you can upload video content to your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube accounts anytime you want, at any budget you want. 

How do I get started with creating a video?

Creating video content requires five main steps:

1. Create a goal
2. Film
3. Edit
4. Publish
5. Promote

There’s no limit on who can post video content online, so just start recording and strike for gold.

How does video marketing work?

Video marketing works by providing users with content in a popular format. On top of paid reach, video marketing is great for generating organic leads and boosting brand awareness. It gives businesses the chance to create authentic, personable relationships with their customers.

What budget should I allocate to video marketing?

Video marketing doesn’t technically require any budget at all. While higher quality videos tend to perform better, using your mobile phone and free editing services can, and does, work for many businesses. Marketing budgets should be approximately 11 percent of your overall annual budget, but how much – or how little – you spend on paid adverts, videographers, professional cameras, and editing services is entirely up to you. 

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Video Marketing Conclusion

I’m not going to give you the impression that video marketing is easy. It’s tough, and it will challenge you. 

Creating compelling content can be an uphill battle sometimes, particularly when you’re first getting started. Your first video isn’t going to be amazing.

Which is totally okay! 

Leave perfection to the artists. Out here in the marketing world, I’ll settle for meaningful progress.

Come up with a strategy, and then execute that strategy by creating content as soon as you can. Measure your results, and take advantage of the (free) platforms and resources at your disposal.

Video marketing may not be an easy way to build your brand, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder why you waited this long to get started.

It’s time to add video marketing to your content strategy. 

If you’ve already experimented with video marketing, what’s working for you? How have your paid ads on sites like Facebook and Instagram worked out?

How to Create an Editorial Style Guide

As a digital marketer, you know just how important the tone and message of your blog are to the overall success of your business. A cohesive approach to your digital content, especially the content on your blog, is critical to your brand.

The best way to ensure your site is editorially cohesive is with an editorial style guide.

This article will walk you through the basics of an editorial style guide. You’ll learn the steps you need to follow to create your own style guide whether from scratch, with the use of a template, or with help from a freelancer.

What is an Editorial Style Guide?

An editorial style guide is a set of guidelines for the writers and editors on your team. These guidelines will include standards for grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and image use.

The goal of a style guide is to ensure your content stays consistent and high quality no matter who is writing or editing the article.

Why Does Your Website Need an Editorial Style Guide?

More than just a preferred list of grammar rules, an editorial style guide provides your content team with guidelines for the creation of useful, on-brand content. An editorial style guide ensures a standard baseline for quality and consistency. This will become more critical as your in-house editorial team grows.

Perhaps you think your website is too small, or you can always create your content now and flesh out the details later. The truth is, the sooner you can get your editorial style and processes nailed down, the less work for you and your team.

Without clear guidelines in place, your inbox will soon be flooded with questions from your writers and editorial staff. Your editorial staff may think that lack of guidelines gives them free reign over content. This may result in inconsistent and maybe even poor quality work that has your brand name all over it.

Elements of a Style Guide

There are specific elements all style guides should include, such as:

Grammar

Do you expect your writers to use the Oxford comma? Are there instances where you prefer the semicolon over the em-dash? These are the grammatical rules to call out in your style guide.

Other grammatical elements to take a stand on include where punctuation falls in relation to quotation marks (inside or outside), prepositions at the end of a sentence, and starting sentences with conjunctions.

Spelling

A subscription to services like Grammarly takes care of the majority of misspellings. There may be times where a word can be spelled correctly in two or more ways, so which one should your writers choose?

The most common spelling differences are those with American English versus British English variations. Examples include:

  • Center vs. centre
  • Theater vs. theatre
  • Color vs. colour
  • Criticize vs. criticise
  • Program vs. programme

You should consider where the majority of your audience lives when deciding on a spelling “style.” But the most important thing is to choose one style and be consistent.

Voice and Tone

The voice is the overall expression of your brand, while the tone is how that message is delivered. The tone will vary depending on the medium (e.g. social media post, blog post, newsletter, press release), but the overall brand voice will be your writers’ guiding light.

Is your brand voice considerate and simple like Uber or functional and expressive like Starbucks? Once you have found your brand voice’s sweet spot, it’s time to determine what your tone is and when that may change depending on the medium or circumstances. Perhaps your tone is casual and conversational in blog posts, but witty in social media posts.

You’ll want to include relevant examples here as Uber does in the Applications section of their style guide. These will help to solidify your stance while also giving your writers a handy guide to refer to should they need it.

Sentence and Paragraph Length

From witty one-liners to groupings of five to six sentences, there are many valid ways to form a paragraph. Here you want to outline your general preference and when exceptions should be made.

On academic websites, for example, longer sentences and paragraphs are the norm. This is because there is a lot of high-level information that needs to be delivered at once. On recipe or hobby blogs, however, shorter sentences and paragraphs can help to drive a point home.

Links

This section of your style guide should discuss how links on your blog should be formatted, but also how often to use links and to where (e.g. external versus internal content).

If you’re a medical or academic marketer, for example, you may require that links to outside sources meet a minimum quality standard. If that’s the case, you should provide explicit examples of websites and sources that you trust.

Resources

Your editorial style guide should be in-depth, but if it’s too long it can be difficult for your writers and editors to use effectively. One way to reduce your style guide’s length without compromising content is with resources.

The resource section of your style guide should include links to guides that you have properly vetted. These may include:

  • Academic style guides (e.g. APA or MLA)
  • Grammatical rules and guidelines
  • How-to guides and documentation for platforms your writers and editors will use
  • Database links

You want to set up your writers to be self-sufficient. An expansive resource section within your editorial style guide is a great place to start.

Images and Other Media in an Editorial Style Guide

If you encourage the use of images and other media in your website content, you’ll need to be explicit about formatting, attribution, content, and more. What do these elements cover?

  • Formatting: Specify minimum and maximum dimensions, image size requirements, and placement within an article
  • Attribution: Outline your expectations for how your writers should attribute content to the creator. This will vary depending on the copyright license, but compliance with copyright laws is a must.
  • Content: You should call out any limitations or restrictions you have on certain activities within imagery, such as drinking alcohol. Or maybe you have a style preference for feature images, such as overlay shots. This information is useful for your writers and editors.

There are very real potential consequences to improperly attributed imagery, so this part of your style guide should be very specific. It’s best to provide examples and even templates for your writers and editors to use.

Creating Your Editorial Style Guide

Now you’re ready to create your own style guide. Where should you begin?

Before you become overwhelmed with the process, let’s discuss three ways you can go about creating your own style guide.

Hiring a Freelancer to Create Your Editorial Style Guide

You can hire a freelancer for just about any blog or website-related task, so why not consider hiring a freelancer to create your style guide? Freelancers with experience in writing industry-specific content, including style guides, do exist. If you can find a freelancer with experience creating a style guide in your field, then even better!

There are various freelance recruitment platforms, such as Freelancer and Upwork. You can also reach out to your personal and professional network for recommendations.

An experienced freelancer can walk you through the process of editorial style guide creation. You should come to the table with some information prepared, though. For example:

  • Brand voice and tone (Casual? Authoritative? Academic?)
  • Your preference for tense and point of view
  • Any strong preferences you have (e.g. oxford comma, text formatting, image formatting)
  • Industry or company requirements

You hired the freelancer for their knowledge and expertise, so don’t forget to utilize it. If your freelancer has created an editorial style guide in your niche, then ask them for recommendations based on their previous work.

You may be surprised at the sections you didn’t even think to add, and others that you can cut. Using this previous experience can boost the quality of your style guide and prevent issues caused by ambiguity.

Creating an Editorial Style Guide From a Template

If a freelancer isn’t in your budget, you don’t have to go it alone. There are many style guide templates available for you to work with.

The best place to look for such templates is on marketing, branding, and design blogs.

TechWhirl offers a Word document template for download, and Lucidpress has its own template you can customize using their online editor. You may also have luck with template repositories like this one from Microsoft.

The important thing to remember is a template is a guide, not a rule book. You don’t need to include all of its sections, and you’re free to add any sections you feel necessary.

Creating Your Own Editorial Style Guide

If you prefer to create your own style guide from scratch, then consider the step-by-step process outlined below.

Start With a Solid Base

At this stage, it’s time to choose an established style guide as your base.

There are plenty of options as described below, including APA and MLA. By choosing one of these guides as your baseline, you make it easy to create the foundation of your style guide.

These established guides already include rules on grammar, structure, and formatting. You can then build upon those rules to create a robust editorial style guide for your website.

Establish Brand Voice and Set the Tone

Two critical elements of marketing content are often overlooked: brand voice, and tone. The reason these are so often overlooked isn’t because they’re unimportant, but because they can be difficult to distinguish.

The voice is your brand’s personality. This remains the same throughout the life of your brand.

Skittles, for example, has a playful and upbeat voice. Their marketing campaigns are slightly fantastical with an eye towards bright colors, loud sounds, and catchy quips.

Skittles marketing campaigns as a proof of their use of an editorial style guide

The tone is the inflection on your brand voice that will change depending on the situation. Even if you have an army of writers, you can ensure your blog stays cohesive by setting a tone for your writers and editors to abide by.

Remember the Big Three: Tense, Voice, and Point of View

Now you know the tone of your content, it’s time to outline the “how-to.” How do you intend for your writers to speak to your audience? The answer will depend on the tense, voice, and point of view you prefer.

Writing tense refers to the three tenses: past, present, and future.

There may be reasons all three tenses are used on your website or blog. You should still pick a dominant tense for your writers to defer to in most circumstances.

Voice refers to active voice versus passive voice. That means putting the subject first (active) or putting the object first (passive). Active voice is the standard for most bloggers and marketers. It offers a more conversational tone readers find compelling.

Point of view refers to the perspective of the writer: first, second, or third person.

Bloggers and marketers will typically utilize first person (“I” statements) or second person (“You” statements). The point of view you choose will depend largely on your content niche and your overall tone.

It’s best to have a default recommendation for all three of the above. You may include exceptions to the rule, but be sure to provide specific examples if you do so.

Establish Standard Formatting

The way your content flows is largely dependent on its formatting. Some basic formatting guidelines to consider are headers and subheaders, bold and italic text, and hyperlinking text.

You may want to consider your content management system and any potential limitations when it comes to header tag guidelines.

If you are heavily relying on a style guide such as the APA, you can utilize their recommendations for text formatting. For example, italicizing terms that have a technical or special meaning.

Define Image Requirements

There are many good reasons to include imagery on your website. However, images can take up precious space, and they come with their own copyright risks. This is why you must define image requirements within your style guide.

On the technical side, you should define minimum and maximum image size. This will largely depend on your content platform, and it may vary by image type (featured image versus in-content image). With copyright infringement always being a risk, you also want to provide strict requirements when it comes to including images in content.

If you use a premium image repository, like Shutterstock, you may include account login details in this part of your style guide. You can also link to free image repositories such as Unsplash or Pexels.

Beyond that, you should clearly outline (with examples) the desired format for image references. What should be included, and how should it be formatted? Again, it may be helpful to fall back on your chosen style guide’s standard.

Incorporate Standards of Performance

How will your writers know when they hit the nail on the head or, conversely, miss the mark? This is where standards of performance come in handy.

Standards of performance are guidelines that your writers and editors can refer to when evaluating their content piece. The more objective your standards of performance, the better.

When it comes to establishing standards of performance, it helps to think of a grading rubric. For each standard, it’s possible to score anywhere from one to five points. What standards can you choose that will be easy to evaluate on a five-point scale? A few examples include:

The standards of performance will be beneficial to your writers, as well as your editorial staff.

Picking a Preexisting Editorial Style Guide as a Base

The likelihood is something will inadvertently be left out of your editorial style guide. This is why having a default style guide for your writers and editors to refer to is crucial.

These style guides have typical use cases, though they can be adapted for uses beyond the norm. Let’s look at the four most common style guides.

Associated Press (AP)

The Associated Press (AP) style guide is most commonly used by journalists. Its focus is on disseminating information clearly with simple formatting.

American Psychological Association (APA)

The American Psychological Association (APA) style guide is most commonly used in college in science and social science courses. It has a slightly more formal bent than the MLA, though not so formal as the Chicago Manual of Style.

This style guide is ideal for academic writing, including blogs or websites dedicated to discussing academic subjects.

Modern Language Association (MLA)

The Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide is most commonly used in college-level English courses, and it’s also the default for many bloggers, marketers, and content writers. This guide offers a more laid-back approach desirable to writers, editors, and readers alike.

Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is the most rigorous of the style guides. This style guide isn’t a popular choice for most bloggers due to its meticulous nature.

The key differences between the four style guides are largely related to formatting, though there are some grammatical and structural variations as well. There isn’t one style guide better than the other as they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The guide you choose will depend largely on preference, ease of use, and familiarity.

Picking a Platform to Host Your Editorial Style Guide

You’re ready to create your style guide, but where should you host it? You have a few options, and they each have their pros and cons.

Microsoft Word

A word document is perhaps the simplest option. The most obvious limitation of word documents is the inability to automatically update the guidelines. You would need to send the updated document out to all writers and editors as additions or changes are made.

Google Docs

If you like the idea of a simple document, then consider Google Docs. You will still have access to the basic content tools offered by a word document, but updates will be reflected live. You can also collaborate with members of your editorial team.

Sharepoint

Perhaps you want a more secure platform than Google. If that’s the case, then Sharepoint may be for you. Sharepoint is compatible with the Microsoft Suite, including Word. Using Sharepoint, you can upload an already existing Word document or create your own within the platform.

Just like Google Docs, your changes are reflected immediately and you can collaborate with as many team members as needed.

Confluence

If more robust collaboration is needed, especially when you’re just beginning to create your editorial style guide, you may prefer a platform like Confluence. This is a wiki-style platform that enables you to create your style guide with your team.

Resources to Create a Quality Editorial Style Guide

As you create your style guide, you’ll find yourself going down many rabbit holes. With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of helpful resources to get you started on your research.

To familiarize yourself with institutional style guides, check out these resources on the AP, APA, MLA, and Chicago Manual of Style style guides.

Are you finding yourself needing some inspiration? Take a look at the style guides created by institutions like Princeton and Rutgers. Your favorite companies and brands may also have their style guides publicly available, including Mailchimp, Google, and Atlassian. 

Mailchimps Editorial Style Guide

Conclusion

An editorial style guide ensures there is no ambiguity in your requirements. When utilized correctly, this style guide will help you to maintain a high standard of quality for your site and consistency across your written content.

It can also clear up any confusion or questions from your team and contractors, to cut down on the back and forth questions.

What unique elements will you be sure to include in your editorial style guide?

The post How to Create an Editorial Style Guide appeared first on Neil Patel.

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