Have you ever interacted as a user with a company that impressed you by the way it communicates? Perhaps by the creativity and freshness of its messages, the formats it uses, the timing it chooses to make contact, or the closeness and professionalism it conveys… All these aspects project an image that the audience perceives and that makes them feel more or less attracted to the brand. That’s why it’s so important to carefully manage how an organization communicates with the outside world.
In this post, we’ll talk about the communication style guide — an essential document for designing a corporate communication plan.
Communication is a sum of factors that support and even determine a brand’s image. Among those factors are the style and tone chosen to convey intangible values such as trust, expertise, and transparency.
This also applies to interpersonal communication, where a message can completely change meaning depending on the tone used. In fact, if the wrong tone is applied, misunderstandings may arise. The same happens in the corporate world: if a communication style guide is not established, messages will lack personality and may even lead to communication failures.
It’s important that, in addition to choosing the right message and words, we think carefully about the tone and style we’ll apply. Let’s start by differentiating tone and style!
Tone refers to the attitude, emotion, or disposition the communicator expresses through the message. It can convey emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, sympathy, and others. Tone can vary depending on the communicator’s intent and can influence how the message is perceived. For example, a message can have a friendly and understanding tone or a critical and sarcastic one.
Style, on the other hand, refers to the way the message is presented — including word choice, sentence structure, grammar, and other linguistic aspects. Style may vary according to the context and the audience. It can be formal, informal, technical, poetic, and so on. The communication style affects both the clarity and impact of the message.
A communication style guide is an essential tool for any organization, serving to establish clear guidelines on how to communicate internally and externally on behalf of the company.
The guide should include certain characteristics such as: consistency — ensuring all messages share the same tone and style; professionalism — to convey service quality and trust; clarity — which contributes to transparency and understanding; time efficiency — simplifying the message creation process; employee guidance — helping staff understand how to communicate within the company; brand protection — preventing inappropriate communication and strengthening brand image; and adaptability — allowing messages to flow properly through different channels.
Now that you understand how important tone and style are in shaping your messages, let’s look at the steps to create an effective style guide. Let’s dive in!
Define the objectives of the message: before starting, establish the goals of the style guide. What do you want to achieve with it? Which specific aspects of communication do you want to address?
Identify the audience: determine who the style guide is for. Is it aimed at employees, writers, external agencies, or everyone involved in the company’s communications?
Analyze the current state of company communication: review existing organizational communications such as emails, documents, social media posts, advertisements, etc. Evaluate how the company is currently communicating and what aspects need improvement.
Establish principles and values: define the company’s principles and values that should be reflected in its communication. This includes mission, vision, corporate culture, and brand personality.
Define the tone: decide how you want the company’s communication to sound — friendly, formal, technical, accessible, simple, fun, and so on.
Set specific style rules: such as capitalization, grammar, punctuation, sentence length, and other linguistic aspects. Ensure these are consistent with the brand’s image.
Include examples and media guidelines: provide concrete examples of how to apply the style guidelines in real situations, and create templates employees can use for documents, presentations, and other communication types. It’s also important to include practical examples for various media and channels such as digital press, social networks, review sites, directories, online and offline events…
The answer is: it depends. It depends on the context, the message objective, the content, the target audience, the brand image of the sender… Below, we outline the four main types of corporate communication.
Its goal is to keep employees informed, engaged, and aligned with the company’s objectives. It covers all messages distributed exclusively among employees, generally related to company policies, procedural updates, changes, and corporate culture. These should be direct, detailed, and easy to understand. Depending on the content, the tone can be more or less relaxed.
External communication targets audiences outside the organization, such as customers, suppliers, investors, the media, and the general public. Its goal is to build and maintain a strong reputation, promote products or services, attract investors, and foster positive relationships with the business environment. It can take the form of advertising campaigns, public relations, social media presence, and more.
When an organization faces crisis situations such as natural disasters, scandals, safety issues, or public health concerns, crisis communication becomes essential. This type of communication focuses on managing public perception and providing accurate, timely information to mitigate negative impacts on the company’s reputation. Crisis communication requires a quick, effective response to maintain stakeholder trust.
Strategic communication involves planning and executing strategies to achieve specific organizational objectives. This can include brand management, promoting a strong corporate culture, implementing organizational changes, and influencing decision-making. It focuses on aligning communication with the company’s mission and vision while contributing to long-term success.
And finally… don’t forget that your communication style guide should be a living document — one that evolves and updates as needed to adapt to organizational changes and new trends. Subscribe to Educa.Pro and keep learning more about business management, marketing, communication, and corporate success!
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