Create Style Guides and Crisis Plans You’ll Actually Use

Clients enlist us to provide a range of services.  

Some of the work we do goes largely unseen because the time that went into it behind the scenes means the external audience is none the wise. We often help clients with internal communications. Two documents in particular can set the tone for all other work products. 

Having a style guide helps provide a cohesive brand voice in all communications both internally and externally. It serves as a rulebook for editorial and writing standards.  Style guides provide guidance on voice, tone, grammar, specific terminology, formatting and more.  

Creating a crisis communications plan used to mean only including worst-case scenarios, but our work positions clients to prepare more broadly and more proactively.  These plans should include any issue that may need a strategic communications response. We suggest reframing it as an issues management document to anticipate and address potential issues that may pop up for their organization. This playbook is meant to be a starting point, not a document you simply copy and paste from.  It will help frame your thoughts in tense moments where something is threatening or disrupting your organization – even if the crisis isn’t of your own making.  

Playing to our strengths  

From copy editor to project manager, our support on these projects is multifaceted … not to mention we consider this type of work fun! Creating or updating problematic scenarios in an issues management playbook or determining a glossary in a style guide may sound tedious to some, but it’s right up our alley. We enjoy the challenge of organizing these documents, playing with the right language and determining the right message. It’s almost like figuring out a puzzle.  

While these documents seem like they would be best handled internally, many clients see the value in bringing us on board for the expertise we add. 

A client recently went through a merger. Instead of an internal team, it made sense for us to lead this project and bring our outside perspective to documents they were familiar with. We were a fresh pair of eyes to blend their style guides and review and update their crisis documents searching for inconsistencies and clearing up confusion. As outsiders, we can spot things a client may miss by being more entrenched in a project. We also kept the project on track by creating lists of outstanding tasks to ensure the proper internal teams were reviewing and finalizing sections on time. 

How we help 

We bring a wide range of experience to every project. Our staff has prior experience in journalism, political campaigns, higher education communications, nonprofit advocacy, government press offices and more.  We look at things through different lenses. We carefully consider what is best for communicating with different audiences.  

On this specific project, my experience in higher education communications allowed me to draw from working with a style guide and as part of a team responsible for creating a campus crisis communications plan.  I offered the pros and cons of using a style guide in my daily work life. I shared where I saw gaps and explained how a style guide should be a living document with a plan for updating it regularly. I clarified what was important to focus on, versus what doesn’t need to be included. I referred to what worked well in our crisis plan document and how to ensure a plan doesn’t have blind spots.   

Whether you’re creating a style guide from scratch, merging multiple existing guides or revising crisis/issues documents, we can help make the process clearer and more manageable. No task is too tedious or complex for us; this is what we are here to do. Let us help you strengthen your style guide or refresh your issues management playbook.