1. Who are you targetting?
The immediate answer to this question is that you concentrate your marketing efforts on your potential customers. However, your answer can be more complex if your potential clients are very different between each other. If you have created your buyer personas, you should already know that each set of potential customers has different characteristics. Each buyer persona has different objectives, challenges, interests, knowledge …
An essential point for your style guide is to take the different needs of your buyer personas into account. Not everyone will be interested in the same topics, nor do they have the same knowledge about technology, so it is vital to offer appropriate content for each group of your target audience. There are cases in which even the right style to use for each buyer persona is also very different – for example, using a different tone of the wording for each buyer persona.
{{cta(‘ff105fc6-d745-453b-83ad-a679d27722c8’)}}
This may cause that you might have to consider creating more than one style guide. Especially if your technology company sells B2B and B2C products or services. The B2B audience has different needs in comparison to those who belong in the B2C audience – it is not the same to address a person in charge of a company than addressing a final customer. It is essential that the content you offer to each one fits each of your buyer personas.
On the other hand, it is recommended your style guides to not remain the same forever. Since the consumer is constantly changing their interests and attitudes, it is essential to adjust the style of your content to these changes. While it is not necessary to change your writing style too often, if you notice changes in the consumer trends of your target audience, it can be a good time to innovate your copywriting style.
2. Who writes the content?
Regardless of the professional who creates the content to be published on your website, your blog, social networks and other platforms, the author of the message you share in your online strategy should always be your company. In other words, it is essential that all content that you share with your audience should be interpreted as a message from your tech company brand.
For this reason, another factor that can help you define your style guide is to apply the values of your brand: your company’s mission, history, objectives … When a user begins to read different content on your website, they would have to easily identify that all content comes from the same source: your company.
This means that all content you prepare would have to follow the same style line regarding the brand of your company, through a unique communication style of your message. A style guide can help you make sure that the contents follow the communication style of your company, which distinguishes you from other tech companies. Of course, this communication style should also be transmitted the same way in all your communication channels.
3. Which value will you share with your readers?
A style guide can help you build an appropriate approach to content creation, but its effectiveness is based on the topics you are going to talk about. For any content to be interesting for the reader, it has to start from a relevant topic, that should be of high interest for the user – basically, that should be related to their problems or needs.
It is very common for companies to write articles about news in their company, or they develop content to explain how good they are in their area through their website pages. However, this does not contribute something valuable to the reader. Something valuable is what is educational for the user, something that helps them to understand better which are their problems or needs, and which are the options that can help the readers to solve them. These relevant topics can be transmitted through different contents: content on your website, in your blog articles, in content offers (ebooks, reports, case studies…), and more.
Which are the most frequent searches about technology in Google? Which are the most common questions from your customers? Which are the latest developments in the tech industry that may be interesting for your audience? If you study the contents that your potential customers need in depth – and provide answers through your online technology marketing strategy – you have the opportunity to become a useful information source in your area.
4. Which tech concepts do you need to explain to your audience?
Each industry has its technical concepts. Some more complex to explain than others, depending on the training and / or experience that your audience has. It is clear that people with essential technology knowledge are able to look for information about technical concepts. However, if any of your buyer personas have no knowledge or experience about technology, it is essential to work on the explanations that should be carried out for them.
Another essential factor for your guide is, therefore, to be clear about the concept approach for each group of your buyer personas. If you mention tech concepts and you do not explain them to your inexperienced audience, they might feel confused and might not fully understand the content you offer them. If you explain concepts already known to your experienced audience, they might feel that you repeat things that they already know. Therefore they might feel that you will not bring them anything new.
An adequate guide for each buyer persona would have to consider the technological knowledge of each one, so the value you offer to the readers is not affected by the explanations that you would have to do in your content.
5. How are you going to explain it?
The tone you use in your content might create a meaningful impact on the impressions that users have on your company. Every user, regardless of their technological knowledge, if you meditate using a language that invites them to educate themselves, they might feel comfortable reading your content.
However, the reader might feel uncomfortable if the language you use in your content is a bit aggressive, of if you make the reader feel ‘scolded’. A user visits your website because they already know they need more information, so they trust you as an information source. If your content feels like you are ‘scolding’ your readers about their mistakes or their lack of knowledge about some topics, the reader might stop reading and look for another reliable source.
6. Which resources will you use?
Since the user who arrives at your website believes that you might be a reliable source, it is essential that the contents are created by editors who have professional knowledge about technology, who know how to adjust their knowledge to teach inexperienced users. As well as knowing how to rely on resources from other websites that are reliable in the tech industry.
By using a link to external websites in the technology industry, you do not only allow the user to verify the source of the information, you also help Google to find the reliable source of your content. Since Google’s algorithms analyze the contents in depth to find the best answers to users’ questions, you might not only rely on your knowledge of the sector; you can also rely on external resources to achieve greater truthfulness for your content.
7. Can you link to related topics of your website?
If you are talking about a specific topic in a blog article or an internal page of your website does not mean that you cannot place links to pages related to the topic. Actually, using the links to other pages of your website allows your readers to find more information regarding secondary topics.
The links that you can post in your content depend on the subject you are talking about. You can link other articles of your blog, you can introduce a CTA (call-to-action) to invite the user to download a related offer, and, obviously, you can create links to your company’s products or services.
However, it is recommended not to excessively use links to your products or services, since the reader might get the impression that the content only has a commercial, non-educational purpose. In addition, the most appropriate links for each content can be chosen taking the different phases of the purchasing process into account.
8. Which other content can you use?
It is true that texts are an essential part of your online strategy, but they do not have to be the only resources you can use when preparing content for your online marketing. Taking advantage of audiovisual content allows you to add a dynamic touch to your contents. After all, we all know that reading so much content might end up feeling boring or overwhelming for the reader.
It is recommended to define within your style guide the types of images that you will use in your content. Not only to respect the designs in your brand strategy, but also to provide a unique style, whereby your readers know how to identify that the source of the content is your company.
On the other hand, videos can provide information in a dynamic, attractive way. In order to break the routine, from time to time you can propose making videos to share your knowledge to your readers – or using video examples to explain case studies.
Images: Anas Alshanti | Luca Bravo | (CC BY 2.0) ITU Pictures
