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Hello and welcome back. It is a pleasure as always to have you here. I'm back from Canada after speaking at the IABC World Conference, [00:01:00] and I don't know about you, but it doesn't matter how long a flight is, I cannot sleep on planes, so I do tend to get quite a bit of stuff done initially on the flight, which is great.

But, by the end of the flight, it's probably not very high quality. So I did get quite a bit done on a training program I've been working on, and I did a bit of crocheting for my new baby niece or nephew who is due in July. So I was productive in many ways cause I hate wasting time on planes if I'm gonna be awake anyway.

But I'm back on deck this week, back into the thick of work, gym, strategising, workshops, et cetera, et cetera. I'm also back to podcasting, so let's get to it. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing three key documents I think every communication team needs as a minimum. Some teams already have these documents, which is fantastic, but many times my team and I go into organisations and they have none of these documents, which [00:02:00] makes it harder for their teams to work, and it means we spend longer doing more of the, I guess, research work that obviously isn't as efficient for the client either. So these are the tools that help ensure everybody is singing from the same song sheet so you have consistent output. You protect your brand and you protect your channels. Importantly, they also help protect your time, and that's the most valuable resource you have, especially with small comms teams.

Speaking of protecting your time, let's get into it, shall we? So the first document is a writing style guide. This is a document that spells out, pun intended, how you talk about your organisation, your products, your services, your people, your customers, your industry, and so much more. It also provides guidance around the language you use to promote diversity and inclusion.

And it will include your [00:03:00] organisation's preferences on things like capitalisation and use of punctuation and so on. And if you're wondering about that, look, there are some hard and fast grammar rules we all live by. You know, there has to be a full stop at the end of a sentence, typically speaking. But depending on an organisation's brand and preferences, you can determine things like, do we capitalise the first letter of every word in a heading, or is it just the first letter of the first word? Or is it every letter that we capitalise? Uh, do we have punctuation in our acronyms or not? So that might seem like a small thing, but all those small things ladder up to a brand. And we want consistency across the organisation because that protects your brand, but it also shows professionalism.

So if your brand is quite formal, for example, then you might use full stops in your acronyms. But if it's less formal, you probably wouldn't. So that writing style guide [00:04:00] gives you that guidance. It also gives you guidance on how your organisation speaks about certain things. So for example, how do you talk about your people?

Are they staff, employees? Are they team members, are they something else altogether? Like I know Disneyland, they call their team members, crew members because it really speaks to their brand, right? Makes total sense. I've written a lot of style guides over the years. You can make them as big or as little as you want, uh, but if you do want some help getting started with your style guide, in my free 12 month comms toolkit, I'm going to be sending out a quick style guide template as one of the tools over the next couple of months.

So if you want to grab a copy of that, head over to my website, heymelcomms.training/freebies, and sign up to the free 12 month comms toolkit. You'll get access to all the previous tools I sent out and a new surprise in your inbox every month up until [00:05:00] December, 2023. In a future episode, I'm also going to tell you exactly what you need for that complete writing style guide, so stay tuned for that.

And then of course you can hop online and do a template search if you want, for a writing style guide. But really think through how you are going to be talking about those key things, your customers, your people, your sector, your organisation. Um, even things like, I used to work for a financial services company, you know, do you call those branches or stores or something else altogether? So all of those things really just help give people guidance on the dos and the don'ts. And oftentimes those documents become, uh, really central to a lot of people in the organisation and they really stick by it, which is great.

Okay. The next document you need is your brand guidelines. Your brand guidelines include things like fonts, colors, typography, logo use, all those sorts of things, even down to the type of [00:06:00] imagery you use and photography and the icons that you are meant to be using and how those are used. All of that should be spelled out in your guidelines.

Now they do define how your brand is represented across different channels and most brand guidelines, not all, but most, will include a tone of voice guide as well. If your brand guidelines don't have a tone of voice guidelines in there, then absolutely put them in your writing style guide, or you can have them in both.

I've certainly done that before, just replicated out of the brand guidelines into the writing style guide because it does cross both of those and we want to make sure people don't miss that. So like writing style guides, brand guidelines can help everyone be on the same page and produce work that is professional, consistent, and on brand.

When you have consistency, it helps to build trust. It strengthens your brand recognition. It helps differentiate you from your competitors. [00:07:00] So just think about it, if you didn't use your brand colors all the time and just threw in some extra ones for, you know, shits and giggles, or you kept switching your logo to different sides of the page, so every time a customer got an email or a letter, it was looked different.

Or the fonts change from one document to the next, or one email or within an email, right? That obviously doesn't look very consistent. It looks like you don't know what you're doing. It looks unprofessional and it certainly doesn't represent your brand in the best light and you may not notice that you're thinking that, but subconsciously, I guarantee you there's a little piece in the back of your mind going, oh, doesn't look quite right, or that's different to the last time I saw that.

And of course that erodes trust. Now put that against a brand that is always consistently used, and so it's instantly recognisable. That builds a sense of trust and legitimacy, which is really important, especially as we're in this environment where there's so much fraud going [00:08:00] on and, uh, hacking of big companies and those sorts of things.

If you receive something via email or in the mail, If it doesn't look legit, you know, right. So this is where the consistency is so important because there are going to be times when you are going to be relying on people to trust you and trust what you're sending out to them. And if it's inconsistent with everything else they've received, understandably, they're going to be questioning that.

And look, most of what we do as comms people is centred around building trust and maintaining trust. So brand application is absolutely key to that. The other great thing about comprehensive brand guidelines is that they make it easy and therefore they make it efficient. So you're providing clear instructions, templates, and tools to help people get where they need to go much more quickly. You're streamlining the process. That means faster review and approval times and less ambiguity, which means less back [00:09:00] and forth between your client and you and the graphic designer and every man in between, right? When my team and I work on rebrand projects, and I should clarify here, we don't actually create brands.

We leave that to the experts at branding agencies. That's what they're good at. We do the change comms to support that, but what we tend to do is take the brand guidelines that have been developed and create a quick guide version of them. So that's usually like a one or two page PDF where we distill the most important factors out of the brand guidelines that people are most likely to refer to most often into a really simple, quick guide. So if they don't read the full guidelines, at least they've got a two page summary with the most important things or the most, uh, the things that they're most likely to use.

So that typically includes sort of a bit of a table of dos and don'ts and some of the really key items from the brand guidelines, like what fonts to use, what colors to use, some basics around the [00:10:00] logo use. Like when to use what version of a logo, if you've got different versions or where it should be on a page, but very high level because typically that's all most people need, right?

It's more the comms people and design and brand and marketing people who need the full brand guidelines when they're working on their own stuff or working with agencies that support them. So there's a sneaky tip I've just thrown in there for you. Make a quick guide version of your brand guidelines to share with others, and also make a quick guide version of your writing style guide.

Why not? Again, pull out the most important things. Make it easy. Okay. The final of the three documents you should have is a channels governance matrix. I cannot tell you how many clients I've worked with who do not have this or some version of it, which is a little concerning to be honest, because your channels matrix is a governance tool.

It spells out what channels you use and how you use them, who owns [00:11:00] them, how frequently you're posting, what type of content should go in there. What's the purpose of it, what's the tone, all that sort of stuff. What's the review and approval process, et cetera. So why is this document so important?

Number one, it helps your team to organise your efforts so you can go through this process of creating one which helps you really, I guess, decide as a team exactly what you're posting to, what channel, how frequently the audience you're trying to reach. And that helps you tailor that content accordingly, because we all know that the way we write for LinkedIn is gonna be quite different to the way we write for Facebook.

They're different platforms, different audiences, and you need to really spell that out in your governance matrix. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it's also a tool you can use for your stakeholder education. So when you need to explain to them why you're not going to be posting their content on your company's Instagram feed, for example, you pull this out.[00:12:00]

It's a way to demonstrate your strategic thinking behind channel management. So you know, you're not just doing Facebook for the hell of it, it's, there's actually thinking behind that, and a way of demonstrating those careful decisions that you've made about what you'll post and when.

From a consultant perspective, tools like this are gold for us because when I'm coming in to work with an organisation and develop a change comms plan, I need to know what channels are available to me that I can write things for, prepare things for, I need to know how I can use them, who governs them, all those sorts of things. Having this document readily available saves everyone a tonne of time, like even when you're onboarding new staff to your comms teams, give that to them because then they've got a clear picture straight away of what channels you use and how you use them.

So it saves everybody a lot of time and effort, but it also saves money. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I have ended up charging clients for my time to [00:13:00] produce these documents when they haven't had them, because I'm working on a specific project and I need to know what's available so I can build my strategy and plan.

And so for those companies that don't have a centralised comms team, you know, maybe they've got an internal comms team over here, an external comms team over here. Um, maybe they've got different comms teams around, but they're not sure what the others do. That can be quite confusing. It's a lot of conversations to gather all that information and consolidate it into one document, and I've absolutely had to do that when I've gone into clients, as I said, to work on a specific project, but they just didn't have this information available, so I've had to do that for them.

Now, don't get me wrong, they are grateful for that because then they have that to use in the future and keep up to date. But for me, that channels governance matrix should have just been a standard document in the first place for that organisation. As part of the 12 month toolkit, [00:14:00] I did share a template for a channels governance matrix a couple of months ago, which you can grab if you sign up, you'll get access to those older tools that I've sent out.

Okay, so time for a quick episode recap on this very quick episode. The three documents every comms team should have to set you up for best practice and success are number one, writing style guide. Outline how you bring your brand to life through language and your rules and preferences on everything from how you talk about your people to how you capitalise headings.

Number two, brand guidelines. Detail the ins and outs of your brand's visual identity, but also the tone of voice, which is absolutely essential. And actually in a future episode, I'll give you some kind of a step-by-step guide as to how to develop a tone of voice if you don't already have one. But your tone of voice should be embedded into every piece of comms that you do, so that part of it is critical.

And number three, as we just said, [00:15:00] your channels governance matrix, which is that tool that gives you guidance over what channels you're going to use, how you're going to use them, and provides an education tool for your business stakeholders. Or your clients for that matter. And again, that top tip, create a quick guide version of your brand guidelines, and perhaps even your writing style guide so if people don't read the full version, at least they'll read the most important information. As with all of these documents though, you need to invest some time into training people in them. So you can't just put it out there and go read this and off you go. Never works that way. And we all have different ways of learning, different ways of consuming information, which we've spoken about before at length on this podcast.

So absolutely create those documents. Do it in consultation with the people you need to do it in consultation with, but then you have to train people in them. So you know, again, a rebrand project. What we've done is run a couple of webinars different times a day. [00:16:00] We've taken people through the brand guidelines step by step, as well as the assets and tools that available to them.

Record that, put it on the internet, and over time that will change. So you just repeat that process. You remind people about what's available through news stories and updates and those sorts of things as well. But again, don't just set and forget. You have to train people in these documents that they're a, they're aware that they're there and they're available to them, but B, how to use them and how they're relevant for their work. But you also need to make sure these documents stay up to date or they become useless and you're back at square one. So set yourself a schedule. You know, maybe it is once every six months you put something in your diary, an hour to go through them.

Just make sure they're still relevant. Update where you need to. When you have new people joining the team, you'll absolutely notice if something needs to be updated, if you are giving them these documents as part of their induction. So just remember it has to be kept updated, and you have to train people in how to use them and [00:17:00] why they're important and why they're relevant.

If they don't see why they're important, they are absolutely not going to use them. So make that compelling case for why. So there's also plenty of other documents I think comms team should have like a comms plan template obviously, so that everything looks consistent and that you're getting the information you need.

Um, a briefing template, a stakeholder engagement matrix, heaps more. But the three we've discussed today are really those core basics that I think set you up for that success. And they're really foundation documents for comms teams. Now that's it for today. Don't forget, you can sign up to my free 12 month comms toolkit and get all of these templates and more.

I'll put the link in the show notes. It's absolutely free, and you get access to all the tools I've sent out so far, and a fresh one in your inbox every month up until December this year, 2023. After that, you know, I'm starting to think about how I will consolidate all of those tools into one package. [00:18:00] So just thinking through that in my mind.

But if you've got some ideas around that and how you think, you know, if you are a subscriber already, I'd love to hear how it's working for you and how you think others might find them useful as well. So please reach out. In the meantime, have an incredible week. Keep doing amazing things. Bye for now.