But before you go let’s review a few of my favorite tips: Break down color palettes by HEX, RGB and CMYK codes, Print out your brand guidelines and hang it in the office, Highlight the signature feel of your brand, Start with a helpful intro or FAQ section, Expand brand colors to fit any situation or need, Approve of branded tints, shades and hues. Don’t leave any extra room for interpretation if you can, because then mistakes will be made. With this in mind, Slideshare blog posts help you promote your Slideshare so that it can generate a steady stream of visitors. But it can make a huge difference in how easily someone can consume information in your graphic. If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. Take some time to introduce yourself or your employees in your branding guidelines. It’s very important these days to have a unified brand message or voice coming from all of your employees. You could end up getting it to rank on Google's first page of results instead of its second page — and that ain't small potatoes. An easy way to illustrate that to readers is by including a signature section, like in the brand guidelines template above. Establish Guidelines for Tense, Voice, and Point of View. Before you decide on any fonts, colors or graphics I would take a look at what your competitors are doing first. Blogger does not currently allow us to add a template to the template gallery. A solid example of bold brand guidelines comes from Homestar. Make sure your employees know what weight each of your fonts should have. If you took a quick look at the official brand colors from Mozilla you would probably be able to figure out which were the main and secondary colors instantly. This guide will help you to understand to implement blogger markup structure, and template … And the final title ended up being "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post.". How do you convey your company culture to prospective employees and fans of your brand? That is why I’m happy to include this amazing example from the Girl Scouts in the collection. In this space, brand consistency can make or break your organization. When you get an idea for a blog post, a great first … Don't have buyer personas in place for your business? In this example from WebSummit they show which colors should be used with each font. Spotify, and a lot of other examples in this collection used an entire page, or two, in their brand guidelines to outline how to NOT use their logo. And whether it be serious, or playful, they can set that tone from the beginning. So the people over at Disqus decided to create a short video that shows the perfect way to pronounce their name. Generally speaking, it’s good practice to include a paragraph or two to introduce readers to your brand. CMS platforms can manage domains (where you create your website) and subdomains (where you create a webpage that connects to an existing website). This gives creators, designers and the press more flexibility to use their logo in many situations. The sooner you create your guidelines and templates… To keep all your projects, departments and sub-brands straight, try color coding them. Want to create a subdomain for your blog? In this simple brand guide example from Fight To Breathe they go the extra mile and show the origin of their colors. First, grab the reader's attention. This brand guideline from Design Lotus specifies exactly what patterns they want to be associated with their brands. Our Brand Style Guide template is designed to help you lay the foundation for your brand's logo, fonts, colors, and more. There are also hundreds of apps that can be used to design, like Venngage for Business. How-to guides like this one help solve a problem for your readers. But the CTA is also a valuable resource for the person reading your content — use your CTAs to offer more content similar to the subject of the post they just finished reading. I know that you spent a lot of time and effort crafting that logo, but it doesn’t work in every circumstance. Without a blog, you'll find yourself experiencing a number of problems such as poor search engine optimization (SEO), lack of promotional content for social, little clout with your leads and customers, and fewer pages to share your lead-generating calls-to-action (CTAs) on. These creative brand guidelines templates are available in Adobe Photoshop PSD & Indesign formats. Especially when laying out your color palettes. Dropbox was one of the first large companies to embrace this trend fully. Creating a font guide like this also shows that certain fonts are important in maintaining consistent visual branding. Most website hosting services charge very little to host an original domain — in fact, website costs can be as inexpensive as $3 per month. Whether you create a domain or a subdomain to start your blog, you'll need to choose a web hosting service after you pick a CMS. Remember, a good blog post is interesting to read and provides educational content to audience members. It features 20 page layouts in A4 size. We've written more specifically about writing captivating introductions in the post, "How to Write an Introduction," but let's review, shall we? Almost like they each came from a single (overworked) designer. If you’re going to present your branding guidelines to people outside of your nonprofit organization, be sure to make it very eye-catching or interesting. And there’s nothing wrong with that! For the last section of this long article, let’s take a look at some nonprofit brand guidelines examples. The newsjack example above was published by Houzz, a home decor merchant and interior design resource, about a new mobile app that launched just for interior designers. Most blogs look for short paragraphs, so while you’re on the subjec… It jumps off the page and grabs your attention in an instant. The next step — but not the last — is actually writing the content. People want to know that their company stands for the right things and will feel safe working there. Aside from these guidelines, make sure that your blog looks as how you want it to look as it serves as your online representation of yourself, your company, or your organization. Use one of these templates … A logo that was optimized for social media might look terrible on a poster hanging on the wall. To extremely simplify it, that’s like giving someone the hex code of your brand colors, but for photography. Use your outline as a guide and expand on all points as needed. To achieve that level of recognition, they normally use the same camera settings in every photo. Someone will be able to quickly get what their visual brand is about, just by looking at those photos. Don't obsess over how many keywords to include. How to make responsive blogger template, simple responsive blogger template guidelines or customize blogger mobile template. With the 5 primary colors breaking down the somewhat long guide into manageable chunks of information. A simple way to guarantee that your branding is used correctly by affiliates is to show how not to use that content. Also, be sure to read our complete guide to nonprofit marketing for more tips and templates. This is because they’ve created a visual hierarchy using different sized circles. For example, when you're looking to share a lot of statistical information (without boring or confusing your readers), building this data into a well-designed, even fun-looking infographic can help keep your readers engaged with your content. Careful formatting will make your blog posts easier for people to scan. Like I mentioned with the corporate brand guidelines, there is a lot of risk for inconsistent branding when your company expands. See what your first blog post can look like, below, based on the topic you choose and the audience you're targeting. In this roundup post, we are going to present you some of the best and most beautiful brand guidelines templates … In this brand guide example from yelo, they actually have more official colors than we saw with any other guide, with about 90 different colors. You should keep all that in mind while building a one page brand guide. All of this info probably could be placed on a single page, but that approach doesn’t fit their brand. At the end of the post is a CTA referring readers to download a comprehensive guide on how to use Instagram for business: See how that's a win-win for everyone? The trick is to organize the info in a way so readers aren't intimidated by length or amount of content. Before you start writing your blog post, make sure you have a clear understanding of your target audience. Some places may need a bold font, a medium or a minimal font but they will not know that unless you tell them. Each image that they used helps convey the mood, values, and subjects of their brand. Check out HubSpot Academy's free content marketing training resource page.). For a brand that works in a very hectic industry, like healthcare, building that initial trust is very important. No one likes an unattractive blog post. But brand guidelines go far beyond a logo or icon. Start your blog editorial guidelines … For example, the word “YouTuber” wasn’t intentionally created by Youtube but it became synonymous with their brand. Free and premium plans, Customer service software. If you include a culture section in your brand guidelines like Twitter did, you can show how branding goes beyond design–it’s also a mindset. That is why I really like how the Pinterest brand guidelines not only used a brief intro in their brand guidelines but also a “Basics” section. Stay up to date with the latest marketing, sales, and service tips and news. We think that they have outlined basically everything that you need to include in your brand guidelines. With well-outlined guidelines, branding mistakes from your own designers and external creators should be a thing of the past. This approach can help you tell your brand story to new employees as part of their onboarding or people outside of the company. Template for Community Guidelines (Get the Downloadable PDF of this Template here. In the post, she walks through a helpful process for turning one idea into many. Having a bunch of random messages, ideas, or visuals coming from people working at the same company is never good for consistency. Join This means that every smaller brand is going to need its own set of brand guidelines. When your company is spread across the globe, with thousands of different employees in hundreds of offices, your brand guidelines need to be very clear and easy to understand. Unlike blogs, Slideshare decks don't often rank well on search engines, so they need a platform for getting their message out there to the people who are looking for it. If your brand or company has a very complicated logo, it can be a good idea to create a simplified version of it. Just like in this brand guideline example created by a designer for the brand Skyscanner. And it's not just pictures that make a post visually appealing — it's the formatting and organization of the post, too. Your logo is one of the first things people will associate with your brand. Not only will this make your product look amazing, it will help your brand control the visual narrative around it. Or some fun facts about the founders that may have influenced your current visual brand. Blog and content objectives. If you already manage a website and are writing the first post for that existing website, ensure the article is consistent with the website in appearance and subject matter. A guide like this is probably not needed for small teams, but larger companies should already have something like this drawn up. For example, if you want to get an outside expert's opinion on a topic, a guest post is perfect for that. If you work for an extremely creative brand, like Venngage, your branding guidelines should reflect that. Here are the steps you'll want to follow while writing a blog post. Here's what to consider: If you've mastered the steps above, learn about some ways to take your blog posts to the next level. Example: Progressive disclosure#Problem Further information: Mandatory Elements Present If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs — or even sentences — of the introduction, they'll stop reading (even before they've given your post a fair shake). Into writing great content or mulling over a unique new blog post graphic design? To start, a good blog post is interesting and educational. Want to learn how to build your own Brand Style Guide? In addition to breaking down your visual branding, take the time to explain why you may have selected those visuals. This will give the reader a reason to continue reading and offer a connection to how it will help them improve their work/lives. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic. You can create a simplified version of your logo using our logo maker. Many brand guidelines examples that I came across while writing this article used only hex codes to name their brand colors. Overall, it’s one of my favorite examples of a truly ingenious branding manual! To avoid this fate, you should definitely include a section which shows how to correctly space your graphics. This section is a little different than the others, but it still has a lot of great brand guidelines examples. Ensure the problem is also kept separate from the constraints of the Solution. The major sections are separated into sub-sections that go into more detail, making the content easier to read. Most color palettes are presented in a similar fashion. … But keeping a consistent brand is easier said than done, especially when your employees are spread across the globe or working from home. And when it is paired with a minimalist guide, the font looks even better. Maybe because, unless you enjoy writing, business blogging might seem uninteresting, time consuming, and difficult. As you can see above, this brand guide was designed to be printed out and hung up. Not only will this make your brand feel a lot more genuine, these people are an important part of your brand story. Think of it like a PowerPoint, but for the web. The brand guidelines template above outlines some of the most important facets of your visual brand. This was strategically included so that a reader will associate this brand with “an escape”, “a community” and “a haven.” And if that’s the only thing that they remember after seeing this page, then the designer should call it a win! Easily place your Adsense ads or other ads and monetize your blog and increase your revenue quickly. The Guideline theme is a clean, beautiful free multipurpose theme designed for company, agency, business, corporate, informative, agencies, travel, design, art, personal blogger, creative and … Houzz didn't launch the app, but the news of its launching is no less important to Houzz's audience. consistent branding leads to a revenue increase of 23%! Then, work on making your title sexy — whether it's through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic. This can be extremely useful, especially if it’s part of your company’s design language. download and use our free blog post templates, Check out this roundup of sources for inspiration, The Marketer's Pocket Guide to Writing Well [Free Ebook], How to Write Compelling Copy: 7 Tips for Writing Content That Converts, How to Write With Clarity: 9 Tips for Simplifying Your Message, The Kurt Vonnegut Guide to Great Copywriting: 8 Rules That Apply to Anyone, Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your Writing More Interesting, The Beginner's Guide to Starting a Successful Blog in 2019, Confessions of a HubSpot Editor: 11 Editing Tips From the Trenches, How to Become a More Efficient Editor: 12 Ways to Speed Up the Editorial Process, 10 Simple Edits That'll Instantly Improve Any Piece of Writing, content with relevant images receives 94% more views than content without relevant images, How to Select the Perfect Image for Your Next Blog Post, CTA is also a valuable resource for the person reading your content, What to Post on Instagram: 18 Photo & Video Ideas to Spark Inspiration, mobile devices accounting for nearly two-of-three minutes spent online, How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: SEO Tips for a Post-"Mobilegeddon" World, ways to take your blog posts to the next level, 10 Fresh Ways to Get Better Results From Your Blog Posts, What I Wish I Had Known Before Writing My First Book, Ivy Goes Mobile With New App for Designers, The Key Benefits of Studying Online [Infographic], Your Bookmarkable Guide to Social Media Image Sizes in 2020 [Infographic]. Created by Steven Arnold, the directions in this unique brand book example are so simple and straightforward that anyone could follow them. Otherwise, you are going to have too many “official” colors to keep track of. USE THIS BRAND GUIDELINES TEMPLATE At the core of every small business is the founders and employees, no matter what industry you work in. It also gives them a preview of what they are going to find in your brand guidelines! This extra element to their visual brand helps make their content distinct from other brands. Two ways to do this are including your: Before you write anything, pick a topic for your blog post. Especially when consistent branding leads to a revenue increase of 23%! Some brands may use an internal team, or outsource it to another company. Get extra specific with your guidelines as a consistent brand is worth its weight in gold these days. Google Apps Templates and Guidelines. Download your copy of this FREE ebook we created with our friends at HubSpot. High-Quality Brand Guidelines Templates for Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Word These are all high-quality templates designed for print using CMYK colors and 300 DPI. If you can’t come up with five, at least pick three and fill the other two spots out with some neutral colors. From their brand colors to the motto and even the headers of each page. This condensed version of the brand style guide is easy to pin up in your workspace. Don't over-complicate your title by trying to fit in keywords where they don't naturally belong. That’s why it’s important to outline how your company visualizes data in your brand guidelines. And to make things even easier, you can download and use our free blog post templates, which are pre-organized for six of the most common blogs. Sometimes it’s better to show your employees, stakeholders and the general public the good your nonprofit is doing, instead of just telling them. Even at Venngage we have Beam and a few other projects that have their own branding. These are articles that deliver information in the form of a list. Different countries may have different design trends and preferences. Whatever you do, if it makes creating consistent visuals easier for some people it’s definitely worth it. These designers choose to use a bold photo that feels very serious and professional. They can help you boost traffic, brand awareness, credibility, conversions, and revenue. Readers who want to learn more have the opportunity to do so, and the business receives a lead they can nurture ... who may even become a customer! These pieces of information can really help tell your brand story to both people inside and outside the company. In the blog post, "What to Post on Instagram: 18 Photo & Video Ideas to Spark Inspiration," for instance, readers are given actionable ideas for creating valuable Instagram content. By embedding and summarizing your Slideshare on a blog post, you can share a great deal of information and give it a chance to rank on Google at the same time. Need some Slideshare ideas? Even if you only have two fonts, it doesn’t hurt to include specific instructions for using them. It’s a good idea to include the Hex, RGB, CYMK and Pantone codes of all your colors, like in the brand guidelines template above. But don't cram keywords or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density — Google's smarter than that! Check out this roundup of sources for inspiration.). Think of tags as "topics" or "categories," and choose 10-20 tags that represent all the main topics you want to cover on your blog. Another popular option is a self-hosted WordPress website on WP Engine. Showing that nothing should come within 4px of the logo, or else. Obviously, this shouldn’t replace your brand guidelines but instead be supplementary to it. Your visitors read your blog post, they click on the CTA, and eventually you generate a lead. Finding your "flow" can be challenging for a lot of folks. Check out our post on how to incorporate stock photos in your designs for more tips. Additionally, the volunteers working for your brand might not be as aware of your branding or how important it is to your mission. When you are a multinational organization like ILGA+, it makes sense to use multiple logos and colors. Now even if you don’t put a mood or inspiration board in your brand guidelines, creating one is a great way to help flesh out your visual brand. The designers over at Lovelytique went with that shape actually, as you can clearly see. … This time the Blog Guidelines will give you a guide on add_image_to_header_blogger. Well, the time for excuses is over and this guide is here to help you understand why. From the very beginning of starting your blog you need to think carefully where you invest your time and energy. That’s why having strong brand guidelines are essential right now. Within a minute or so you can understand how the entire platform works! If your company has a ton of different fonts make sure to specify when or where they should be used. For some people Reddit is a true mystery, I really didn’t even get what it was until a few years ago. I’m a huge fan of adding a table of contents to any design project that is more than a few pages. It could be a brand new designer, or a reporter writing an article about your company. Here are a few to get you started: For a complete list of tools for improving your writing skills, check out this post. So, how do you ensure your blog post catches the eyes of your target audience, buyer personas, and customers? In this brand guidelines example for Stories, they include five official variations of their official colors. Starting with the very basics, a useful writing style guide for blog contributors will detail specific, desired formatting information. Some brands use photography to tell their story exceptionally well. In this article, we’re going to look closer at what brand guidelines are, 12 examples from companies that nailed it, and some tips for how to create brand guidelines … social media marketing, direct mail campaigns or on your blog. The intro section outlines all the simple rules and guidelines for using their brand. In this article, I’m going to give you 65+ tips on how to plan, draft and present your own brand guidelines. We're committed to your privacy. Standing out in the market is one of the main reasons that you are creating a visual brand in the first place. As you can see in the style guide template above, they outline their slogans, competitors, market and more. Now if you need to make your brand guidelines a little more effective this year, I would recommend checking out some of these 70+ brand guidelines templates, real-world examples and design tips for inspiration. Create a numbered title. I wanted to highlight them because they have done a great job of creating and maintaining a visual identity. In this brand guide example from Bash + Butter they did something very interesting with their official color palette by including an official gold texture. Then they could create a screenshot of really anything, instead of using the perfect one your brand should have already made. In this brand guideline template above, they show you exactly what weight should be used with all fonts. Even though the working title may not end up being the final title (more on that in a moment), it still provides enough information so you can focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic, overwhelming topic. Not every company is lucky enough to have a mascot as recognizable as Mailchimp’s. And, what will resonate with them? Want some real examples of blog posts? But it must be organized! They are very trendy! Review a step-by-step guide plus useful templates to learn how to write an effective blog post for your target audience and customers. With thousands of projects and smaller companies under their control, it makes a lot of sense to have an extended colors palette to choose from. This organization can take multiple forms — sections, lists, tips — whatever's most appropriate. Luckily, we have a simple formula for writing catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Also, by giving your brand guide its own site, you show to the public that you really care about what it says. Determine the Key Takeaway for Your Readers. What better way for a designer to prove how detail-oriented they are than by compiling a detail … Using color to help readers move from section to section is a classic design hack. But they all work very well together! A working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing. There are words out there that no matter how many times you read it, you still will never know how to pronounce it correctly. But it’s worth it in the long run, because inconsistent branding will cost your company revenue and trust. Today, people and organizations of all walks of life manage blogs to share analyses, instruction, criticisms, product information, industry findings, and more. A personal statement can go a long way in helping your audience understand your brand. To make sure your site is getting the maximum SEO benefit possible, check out this free guide: How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: SEO Tips for a Post-"Mobilegeddon" World. New to visualizing data? You get bleeds, master pages, … They are ideally between 150-160 characters and start with a verb, such as "Learn," "Read," or "Discover.". The name between the two periods is up to you, as long as this domain name doesn't yet exist on the internet. In fact, it's been shown that content with relevant images receives 94% more views than content without relevant images. But if you want to break away from the crowd you can use really any shape or graphic you want. A simplified logo can use a more basic font or just the initials of your company name. Describe the problem this guideline is a solution to. Don’t just list the font name on one of the brand guide pages, actually use it! That’s why I think that the designers choose a serif font to use on every page of this brand guidelines template. Then, use examples to keep your readers interested in what you have to say. Our logo maker can help! To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. At the end of every blog post, insert a CTA that indicates what you want the reader to do next — subscribe to your blog, download an ebook, register for a webinar or event, read a related article, etc. This can help give designers and writers a clear idea of what to strive for. Craft a fresh article For example, if you're writing about sustainability and the environment, green might be a color to keep in mind while designing. Be sure to specify that as well. See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? As you can see in this brand guideline example for Crypho, a fake crypto company, they included a branded gradient that people can use. Why not show exactly how a font would look in all your brand colors with a single click? Visitors can quickly learn about their primary and secondary colors thanks to this simple trick. Not only do they have to make sure the branding works on a ton of digital platforms, but also in the real world. I’ve talked a lot about how brand guidelines should help explain the tone and feel of your brand. For me, that was “quinoa” for a while, until I was made fun of and corrected it. In this brand guidelines example for Maison Iggy, they show exactly how to use their logo on different backgrounds. With one of these templates you can quickly outline your brand fonts, colors palettes and other high level brand requirements. Not only will it outline exactly how visual branding should be used, it can provide some insight to the history or culture of the company. It should include company values, your motto or words you want people to associate with your brand.