Your teams need content guidelines more than ever

Hello again! Admittedly, I’ve put writing on here to one side the last year or so (life gets in the way sometimes), but I’ve missed it and I’ve got something to say — your teams need content guidelines more than ever.

Last year, I was working away on creating a content playbook for our hundreds of stakeholders as one of my ‘side of desk’ jobs, but it became a burning priority that I couldn’t let slip as I knew my stakeholders needed them.

The rise of AI

(As I wrote this a year ago and it’s been sitting cosy in my drafts, it’s fair to say AI has fully risen but we’ll keep the title for now).

As Gen AI is consuming our professional lives one way or another, it’s becoming more apparent that your teams need to have a set of guidelines in place before you start pouring your own content into an AI tool.

Working in the financial services (and well underway in AI experimentation), it’s clear that to make these AI tools your best ally, you need to input your own guidelines behind the scenes first to generate the most relevant output that’s as closely aligned to your brand as possible. The tool needs to get to know you and all your best practices. In other words, your brand still needs to sound like your brand.

But what if you don’t have guidelines yet or a consistent voice and tone? How can you create engaging content? How can your customers trust you, relate to you and ultimately stay with you? The ugly truth is that if customers can’t do any of the above, and you’re not making it easy for them, they’ll go elsewhere.

Be the change you want to see

Enough about AI for a minute, it’s important to be clear on why we needed to create content guidelines and make this change now.

• Often enough, stakeholders hold the pen on content and have control over that go-live button which creates inconsistency because everyone is writing from personal preference, not always best practice. It’s not just writers writing — it’s well known that designers, product managers and developers pick up the slack in the absence of content design team. But it shouldn’t be on them to set the guidance.
• New joiners — where do they go when they need to write good content? Being able to point them to a fancy set of guidelines from the off-set builds credibility as a brand and ensures a smooth onboarding process.
• Guidelines help to build brand awareness and identity. If your content is clear, consistent and relatable i.e. no jargon, no complex language, digestible sentences and a conversational tone, you’re off to a good start. If you’re not sure, guidelines will help you get back on the right track.
• Content design is still undervalued as a practice and other teams need to know about what we do and why we do it — guidelines are a starting point to showcase all the good stuff and prove our value to the business.

It takes an army to build something great

So with all that in mind, let’s breakdown how we created our content playbook in a few simple steps:

• We established a content scrum made up of experts across the business in UX, SEO, accessibility, marketing and more.
• We audited the existing guidelines we had across the business — we found years-old Word docs, PowerPoint's, PDFs. It was endless!
• We mapped out a new navigation on the current platform we use: www.frontify.com
• We assigned area leads within the scrum to own their page.
• We requested feedback from writers in other parts of the business.
• We user-tested the new navigation with our internal target audience to help shape the next iteration. (Our audience is UX/UI designers, journey developers and product managers).
• We added “Intro” sections so our colleagues could understand the discipline a little more before jumping into the guidelines.
• We included ‘what good looks like” examples with screenshots to lead by example and highlight where we’ve done it well already.
• We included ‘Do’s and Don’t’s’ of each practice to up-skill colleagues even more.
• We have an open feedback culture so we finished off with a ‘Get in touch’ section so if anyone loves it, sees something missing or wants to get involved they know who to message.

How to keep the momentum going

So the guidelines are in place, and we’re ready to show it off. Now, how do you get it out there?

• Invite all your stakeholders to one call, split the presenting between those key people who worked on it with you and record it for those who can’t attend
• Drop into smaller team meetings and host a spotlight session — even it’s it’s for 10 minutes I guarantee people will be intrigued and want to find out more
• Run drop-in sessions for a few weeks after the big presentation to allow those who want to ask questions on a 1:1 basis or have more private feedback
• Drop it into conversations with your stakeholders and into your own meetings — we host weekly content drop-in sessions and it’s embedded in us to mention it to everyone who drops in.
• Ask colleagues to bookmark the link so they always have it to hand.
• Regularly check the analytics of each page — where is it performing well and where does it need some work?

It’s definitely one project that I’m proud of. Being able to showcase something people didn’t know they needed and creating that ah-ha moment is a good feeling as a content designer, especially when a lot of your time is trying to get that seat at the table and proving why good content is instrumental in the overall success of a business. So, I hope I’ve sold it to you. Your teams need content guidelines.