The question of how to create your own brand guidelines is a complicated one for individual freelancers. Do you need to? What should you include?It’s less of a question for companies, most of which have established brand guidelines. For example, Starbucks has a website detailing its own Starbucks brand guidelines and employs a large team tasked with creating brand guidelines for partners (employees) and vendors to follow. Logos have to look just right and be the exact shade of green; internal PowerPoint presentations have to be drafted using a certain template. On and on.

If you end up freelancing for a large company, you will most likely be given specific instructions about how to adhere to their brand guidelines. This page is for those who are thinking about their own personal brand and how they want their online presence to appear.

Is SEO the goal?

Any freelance writer knows the importance of SEO. Potential clients large and small are out there competing for just about every keyword imaginable. This blog post is technically designed to rank for the “how to create your own brand guidelines” keyword. Right now the top-ranking page for that KW is a Canva article. Second place is Adobe, and third is Bynder. There is a 100% chance this post will never appear on page 1 of any related SERP.

So what’s the point of trying to structure the page so that it gets noticed by Google? For me, it’s to prove that I understand the fundamentals of SEO and that I have the knowledge and capabilities to structure a page according to SEO best practices. But since this blog is my own, I’ve been thinking about how I want it to look. My own brand guidelines, if you will.

Personal Brand Guidelines

My previous job was at a digital media company that owned several websites. The company brought different properties together under one corporate umbrella but there was no brand consistency. Over time the parent company did install some guidelines but the entire organization was siloed, much to my frustration.

For example, all of the websites but one capitalized their headers. It drove me nuts to see inconsistent brand guidelines among all the company-owned websites. Things need to be done in a consistent manner, both for the employees and for the audience. It’s easier to create and update pages company-wide if you have a template and a consistent web presence looks more professional to the public.

Ted Dahlstrom brand guidelines

As far as my own brand guidelines, I’ve made two decisions thus far. I prefer lower case headers mostly for style. I think it looks a little more interesting. Looking at the headers above, doesn’t the lower case have a certain appeal? It’s personal preference. When deciding how to create your own brand guidelines, you may decide to capitalize your headers. That can be the first step toward your own brand guidelines.

Another brand guideline I’ve developed is my own preference to write run-sentences from time to time. All the SEO guides say to write short sentences and chop up pages into short sections separated by headers but sometimes I like to carry on a big longer than I should when writing a sentence. I just like the way it flows. Will this hurt my SERP rankings? Probably, but the point I’m making is that your own content doesn’t always have to follow the rules. Having a personal portfolio website and a personal blog is a great way to express yourself and you should write however you like to write, SEO be damned.

When to follow the Rules

Ugh, I can barely look at that header. It’s so ugly! Seeing inconsistent formatting on a published website drives me nuts. Paying attention to the little things is vital to success as a freelance copywriter. Clients are paying us to make sure things are done correctly 100% of the time. And something that is done correctly has to strictly adhere to established brand guidelines. If you submitted a draft article with a header looking like the one above, your client will notice it right away. Since we are all professionals, we follow the rules of copywriting and SEO, particularly when creating content for a client. What I’m saying is that our personal styles can deviate a bit from established SEO norms and from what is required for a client. When you’re on your own and not on the clock, it’s ok to be different!

When to go your own way

As I mentioned above, I created this website and blog to showcase my skills as a copywriter and content manager. I’m managing my content using WordPress and I’m writing my own copy on whatever topics come to mind. Lots of writers do something similar. There are thousands of sites like mine out there in the digital universe. That’s why I’m concerned less with SEO and SERP and more about how my site looks to me.

My audience is pretty limited; my wife doesn’t even read all of my posts :). So I can bend the rules when it comes to my own personal brand guidelines. My rule of thumb is to set up the structure properly but fill in the details with personal touches. Sort of like decorating the interior of a house. The outside needs to be structurally sound and look good but the inside can have a personal touch. Plus, there’s more to life than chasing the latest keyword. Potential clients and employers will appreciate seeing your own voice in the content you create as opposed to just filling your blog posts with targeted key phrases. Go your own way!