How To Create A Social Media Style Guide That Doesn’t Suck

Want to learn how to create a social media style guide? I’ve got you covered.

We all know that the key to success on social media is consistency. That’s where a social media style guide comes in. 

It helps to ensure cohesive, on-brand social messaging across the board—but you’ve got to get it right. Overly rigid style guides that leave no room for creativity can do more harm than good. 

That’s why in this post, I’ll be sharing actionable tips to help you create an effective social media guide that doesn’t suck.

What is a social media style guide?

Your social media style guide is your roadmap for consistent and effective social media communication.

It’s a set of guidelines that outline how your brand will communicate across social media platforms, ensuring that everyone on your social media team follows the same rules and standards.

By sticking to your social media style guide, you’ll ensure that all the visuals you create, captions you write, comments you make, and messages you send are on-brand. 

Note: Your social media style guide is separate from your social media strategy but the two work hand in hand. Your strategy tells you what content you’re going to post and how you’re going to grow. Your style guide tells you how that content should look and sound.

The benefits of a social media style guide

Brands of all sizes can benefit from creating a social media style guide. Here are just some of the reasons why:

• It improves consistency. Following a style guide will ensure your brand is consistent in its messaging and tone on social. This helps create a sense of familiarity with your audience and builds trust.
• It boosts brand awareness. Your style guide allows you to craft your own distinctive social media style that sets you apart from your competitors. Having a distinctive tone helps with brand awareness as it makes your brand more memorable and engaging.
• It makes onboarding new team members easier. Formalizing your social media best practices, rules, and standards in a style guide makes it easier to onboard new members to your social team. You don’t have to teach them everything from scratch—they can refer to the style guide as they go.
• It saves time and reduces confusion. With clear guidelines in place, your team doesn’t have to second-guess decisions or seek constant approvals. This streamlines the content creation process and reduces bottlenecks.
• It protects your brand reputation. Your style guide helps you and your team to decide what to post and what not to post, ensuring that all published social media content aligns with your brand values, avoids controversial or inappropriate topics, and adheres to legal and ethical standards, thus reducing the risk of PR mishaps.

How to create a social media style guide (in 10 steps)

Next, I’m going to show you how to create a social media style guide, step-by-step.

Keep in mind, though, that you don’t need to follow this guide to the letter—-think of this more like a general framework to help point you in the right direction.

For example, you might choose not to include every section I cover below. 

Some brands prefer to keep it simple with a one-page summary of key guidelines. Others develop detailed, multi-page documents or online libraries to guide their social teams. Tailor your social media style guide to fit your brand’s needs and resources.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get started…

Step 1: General overview

Your social media style guide should start with a list of all your brand profiles on every social network you’re active on, including your username and a URL link.

NYU’s style guide offers an example of this, beginning with a list of all their active accounts:

Next, add a general overview that explains what your social media style guide is and how to use it.

In your overview, include information on your brand personality, values, and goals. Explain clearly who your target audience is and how you want them to perceive your brand on social media.

Don’t go into too much detail here—we’re going to add dedicated sections with detailed social media brand guidelines about things like tone and language later. This is just to give your team a general idea of what it is you’re aiming for with your social media communication.

By starting with a clear and concise overview, you set the tone for the rest of the guide and ensure that anyone using it understands your brand’s core principles and social media strategy right from the beginning.

Step 2: Brand voice

Every social media style guide should include guidance on your brand voice. This is the tone you communicate in and the personality you try to convey across all your social content. 

A distinctive and consistent brand voice can humanize your brand, help you to stand out, and make you more memorable to your audience.

Start by writing a description of your brand voice, using adjectives to describe the tone you’re aiming for (e.g. friendly, smart, confident, sarcastic, professional, empathetic, deadpan, casual, etc.)

Then, flesh it out with real-world examples to illustrate what that might look like in practice. You can pull examples from your brand’s previous social posts or your competitors.

Your brand voice should align with your brand values. For example, if you’re marketing a funeral service, a sarcastic tone isn’t going to work. You’re probably better off aiming for warmth, empathy, and professionalism.

On the other hand, if you’re marketing something like a fast food chain, you can afford to be more experimental. 

Take @Chipotle, for example. Looking at their Instagram page it’s clear to see they’ve opted for a laid-back, unpretentious, relatable voice that resonates with their audience of casual diners.

Their posts often feature approachable, conversational language and include humor and pop culture references, like the one you see here.

It’s worth researching your competitors when deciding what you want your brand voice to be. What are other brands like you doing? How can you differentiate yourself?

Step 3: Grammar & language

Your social media style guide should include clear guidelines for grammar and language to maintain consistency across your content. 

You can be as brief or as detailed as you want here. Here are some ideas for things you might want to cover:

• Brand terminology. How should people refer to your brand on social media? (e.g. ‘BloggingWizard’ or ‘Blogging Wizard’).  Are there any acceptable abbreviations for your brand or products? How should you refer to your website or app?
• Punctuation. Should links be introduced with a colon, or integrated naturally into sentences? Are em-dashes preferred over hyphens? Do you allow ellipses and exclamation marks, or are they discouraged? 
• Language. What language should your captions be written in? Which version of English (UK/AUS/US/etc.) should they use? This will impact spelling (e.g. color vs colour)
• Unacceptable language. Outline any words or phrases you want to avoid. For instance, if your brand prioritizes inclusivity, you might avoid slang or phrases that could be misinterpreted. What’s your policy on swearing/cursing? Are playful expletives acceptable or is your tone strictly professional?
• Keywords & hashtags. Are there any keywords or hashtags you want to try to include in your post captions to help with discovery? How many hashtags should be used per post? Do you have any branded hashtags? 
• Emojis. Which emojis are acceptable? When and how often should they be used? Keep in mind that emojis can add personality, but they shouldn’t be overused—they should feel deliberate and on-brand. 

Step 4: Formatting

You might want to include notes on formatting requirements inside your social media style guide.

This will cover how your social media content is presented. Here are some examples of the kind of thing you might want to include in this section:

• Should hashtags be placed in the caption or the comments? 
• Should lengthy Twitter/X posts be shared as a thread for easier readability or kept as one long post?
• Should URLs be shortened for a cleaner appearance? If so, what link shortener should be used?
• Where should tags be placed? At the beginning, middle, or end of the caption?
• Should posts include CTAs (call-to-actions)? Where should the CTA be placed?
• Should numbers be typed as numerals (3) or words (three)?
• How should dates and times be formatted? January 27th or 27 January? 3 PM or 15:00?

You get the idea. 

Here’s an example from ECU’s social media style guide. 

They’ve included detailed instructions for formatting dates and times, with examples to illustrate. 

Step 5: Images & videos

A good chunk of your social media content is likely to include visual elements.

As such, your social media style guide shouldn’t just cover written content—it needs to cover guidance for image and video creation too. 

Here are some things to specify in this section:

• Brand colors. Set color schemes to help your graphic designers and video makers ensure all the visual content they create is on-brand.
• Use of logos. Specify any rules on logo usage. For example, which variations of your logos should be used in custom graphics, and when?
• Image formatting. What dimensions should photos/graphics/images be posted in? This will likely vary across platforms. For example, Facebook photo posts may have different dimensions than Pinterest Pins.
• Video formatting. What resolution/quality should videos be rendered in (1080p, 4k, etc.)? And what file type (AVI, MP4, etc.)? Again, you may need to offer platform-specific guidance here. 
• Typography. Which fonts and typefaces should be used in visual content? What font weights should be used? Where should text be placed in different types of graphics/videos? Should videos have subtitles?
• Templates. Are there any templates you’d like your team to use when creating social media graphics or videos? (e.g. Canva templates)
• Assets. Where can your team source visual assets like photos and graphics to use in your social media visual content? Are there any licensing considerations you need to cover? Do you have a shared asset library?
• Software. What tools should be used to make videos and images for social media? For example, Canva, Procreate, Adobe, etc.

Again, it’s up to you how much detail you want to go into here. 

Brink’s goes into a lot of detail in their social media style guide, with multiple pages covering imagery. 

In this section, they offer instructions on how/when to use color overlays to increase contrast in social media images. I like how they share examples of ‘acceptable use’ and ‘unacceptable use’ to provide additional context—it’s always worth offering real-world examples where possible.

Bonus tip: Some social media scheduling tools—like Pallyy—come with built-in media libraries where you can store graphics, photos, and other visual assets for your team to use. This can help to achieve consistency across your social posts.

Step 6: Reposting & content curation

Brands usually don’t only share original content on social media. You might also occasionally want to share or repost other people’s content.

With that in mind, your social media style guide should define when and how your team should repost content from other accounts:

Here are some things you might want to cover.

• Appropriate content: Specify what types of content are worth reposting. For example, is it acceptable to share industry news, customer testimonials, partner content, user-generated content (UGC), etc? 
• Acceptable sources. What accounts/websites/sources can be used to curate social media content? Are there any sources you should never share content from? (e.g. your competitors or blacklisted websites).
• Attribution. Make it clear that all reposted content should give proper credit to the original creator, and explain how this should be actioned. For example, include a tag in the caption, a ‘via @[username]’ mention, or a clear acknowledgment.
• Customization: Decide whether reposted content should be shared as-is or if it should include additional commentary or context from your brand.

You might also want to cover brand alignment in this section. In most cases, you shouldn’t share or engage with content that is unrelated to your brand or that doesn’t align with your values.

Mailchimp is clear on this in its social media style guide. 

It instructs users to never use social media to comment on trending topics or events that aren’t related to the brand and to always be aware of current news events when publishing to avoid PR mishaps.

Bonus tip: If you plan on utilizing employee advocacy to amplify your social reach, you might also want to include guidance for employees who want to share/repost your brand’s social content on their personal accounts in this section.

Step 7: Legal considerations

Include a section on legal considerations within your style guide to ensure all your communications on social media comply with relevant laws, regulations, and ethical standards.

Some examples of things you might want to cover here include:

• Copyright. Explain your policy on using third-party content and stock resources in posts and how to ensure everything is properly licensed. Cover attribution and explain when/how to credit others.
• Privacy & data protection. Explain your data protection and privacy policy and how to apply it when creating social content. For example, you should never share private customer details in posts without explicit consent, always remove identifying information in screenshots, etc.
• Compliance. What laws and regulations are applicable in your region that your team needs to comply with? Examples include GDPR, CCPA, etc.
• Defamation & libel. Cover how to avoid libel in your social content to reduce the risk of costly lawsuits. For example, should your team fact-check all claims made in social posts? Should they avoid using negative or inflammatory language about competitors or individuals?
• Disclosures & disclosures. When should disclosures be added to social media posts? For example, when working with influencers or running sponsored campaigns, you may need to add a disclaimer (e.g. #ad or #sponsored). You may also need to disclose affiliate links in your posts. Make sure you comply with relevant regulations (e.g. FTC).

Bonus tip: You may want to have your legal team or social media manager manually check and approve all social media posts before they get published to make sure they’re compliant. I’d recommend using a social media management tool that lets you set up approval workflows for this, such as SocialBee.

Step 8: Accessibility & inclusivity

Do you plan to make your social media content more accessible and inclusive? If so, this is another area you’ll want to cover in your social media style guide.

Here are some things you might want to cover in this section:

• Alt text usage. Will you use descriptive alt text for images to make content more accessible to users with visual impairments? How should they be written?
• Video captions. Should captions be added to all videos to benefit those with hearing impairments? How should they be formatted?
• Text contrast. High-contrast text improves accessibility by making your content easier to read. Offer notes to help your team achieve the right level of contrast in social media visuals.
• Inclusive language. Offer notes to help your team ensure their language is inclusive. For example, it might include notes on when to use gender-neutral terms (‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’).

Step 9: Engagement & customer care

Your social media style guide shouldn’t just offer guidance on how to create posts.

It should also define how your customer care team engages with audiences on social media through messages, comments, replies, and other forms of engagement.

Here are some things to cover:

• Tone of voice. The tone of voice you use when engaging with customers and offering social customer care is likely to be different from the one you use in your posts. It might be more professional and helpful, for example.
• When to respond. What kind of comments should your team respond to? Which ones should be ignored or deleted?
• Handling negative comments. How should your team address complaints? For example, should they apologize when appropriate? Offer a solution? Etc.
• Prepared statements. Do you provide pre-approved responses for common issues/questions? If so, where can your social customer care team find them?

Bonus tip: Social media inbox management software can help you achieve consistency across engagements. They provide a unified inbox from which your team can reply to comments and DMs across platforms more efficiently. Some offer features like ‘saved replies’, improving efficiency, and ensuring on-brand communication.

Step 10: Competitor interactions

You may interact with your competitors from time to time on social media. How should your team handle this when it comes up?

For example, some brands prefer to take a cautious approach and avoid getting drawn into any social media ‘beef’ that may damage their brand reputation.

Others are more gung-ho, preferring to engage in playful banter or lighthearted rivalry to boost engagement and show off their brand’s personality. 

For instance, Wendy’s is well-known for its humorous and cheeky exchanges with competitors, which have become a key part of its social media strategy. In this Twitter comment, for example, they roast rival McDonald’s over their use of frozen beef.

Your social media style guide should outline your brand’s preferred approach to competitor interactions. 

• Tone & boundaries. Should interactions remain strictly professional or is banter acceptable? Where is the line drawn to avoid posts coming across as mean-spirited?
• When to engage. Which of your competitor posts should your team engage with? Is anything game or should they only respond when directly tagged?
• Handling criticism. Offer guidance on how to handle situations where a competitor mentions your brand negatively on social media. 

Final thoughts

That concludes my step-by-step guide to creating a social media style guide.

Remember that you don’t have to follow this guide exactly—every brand takes a different approach to their social media style guide, and it’s up to you what you want to include. Think of these more like tips to point you in the right direction.

Also, keep in mind that your social media style guide isn’t set in stone. You should review and update it regularly, especially following any major rebrands or changes to your social strategy.

Want more help with your social media strategy? Check out these social media automation tools, and read this guide to growing your social media presence.

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