Employee TrainingCorporate Style Guide

Jeanne WinfreeWeek 4

Southern New Hampshire University

Agenda

• Why we need this• Voice & Tone• Formatting Basics• Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation• Images• Text of Articles • Citation of Sources• Wrap-up

Why the Style Guide is Important

• Need a Consistent Voice• Improves customer perception of our brand• Survey by DemandGen and Genuis.com• Found 66% of population make key purchasing

decisions based on consistent communication between departments• Consistency influences customers to buy

• Combine your personality with image of our company

Voice & Tone

• Consistent tone of voice adds to our authenticity and credibility• Influenced by our achievements, future goals and

values• Be informative, educational, helpful, and

entertaining• Our customers will see us as interesting as well as

a trusted source for information

Voice & Tone

We are:• Friendly, honest, & credible• Confident, smart, & purposeful• Clear, concise, & straightforward

Voice & Tone

• Keep articles conversational with simple and concrete words• Use vivid language that evokes a strong mental

image or emotional connotation• Use an active voice• 1st or 2nd person language• No swearing, no profanity• Let your personality and opinion come through

Formatting Basics - Font

Blog Postings use Baskerville Font Only•36 pt. for Title• 24 pt. for Section Headings• 18 pt. for Text

Why Baskerville? Font that most likely influences the minds of readers

• Can use Bold, Italics, or Underlining to highlight key points• Main body text BLACK only• Hyperlinks should be in the default accent color of the site

Spelling, Grammar & Punctuation

• Grammar, punctuation and spelling matter.• Use AP style guide• Free Resource:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/02/• The 2016 edition will be released June 1st

• Spelling – Use the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Use the first spelling listed.• Refer to our House Style Guide for spellings of

industry specific terms and acronyms

Images

• Use at least 1 image per post• Images should be:• Clean• No Watermarks• In focus• Complement the article

• Image should match the tone of your article

Images

Four Major Threats in Financial Services This Year

Images

Images must be in alignment with the values of our company• No nudity or sexually suggestive images• No profanity• No derogatory statements• No badmouthing our competition

Make sure you can use it legally and are not violating any copyright laws.• Access to copyright free images:• http://search.creativecommons.org/ r

https://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

Images & SEO

• All image should be optimized for web viewing• Image File Names• Directly accessed by search engines• Use focused, detail names for all images• First image in post – use main words from post title• Remove all small words (a, an, the, etc.)• Add dashes/hyphens between words of image (not

underscores)• Use Alt Tags & Title Tags

Text of Articles

• English Only• Capitalization• Capitalize the first letter of all words in Titles

and Section Headings, except connectors (an, for, but, etc.)• Capitalize a person’s title only when it is used

directly before their name• Do not use contractions• Add a blank space between paragraphs and

sections

Text of Articles

• Numbers• Use numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) even with percentages (43%, 90%)• Spell out ordinal numbers – first, second, third, etc.• Try not to start a sentence with a number, but if you must,

spell it out.• Can start a Title or Subheading with a number, do not have to

spell it out• Hyperlinks• Do not use the words “Click Here” for a link• Use the words that describe the page you want to link to

Citation of Sources

Use Endnote Format• Place a small superscript number after the

reference in the body of the text• Add the corresponding full citation reference in AP

Style at the end of your article• Superscript numbers for footnotes should not be

hyperlinked

Questions

Information available on internal server for reference

Any Questions?

Thank you all for coming.