A social media style guide is a simple rulebook that defines how your business should look and sound on every social post, story, ad, and reply.
Without one, your Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok can start feeling like different companies, especially when multiple people post, respond to comments, or work from templates. With one, your content stays consistent, your team moves faster, and your brand feels more trustworthy to Orlando-area customers who are comparing options quickly.
What a social media style guide usually includes
Think of it as the “rules of the road” for your brand on social. A good guide answers the questions your team runs into every week.
- Voice and tone: How you sound (friendly, direct, professional), words you use often, words you avoid, and how formal you are with grammar and punctuation.
- Caption patterns: Typical length, how you write hooks, when you use line breaks, how you format lists, and how you do calls to action (book online, call, request a quote).
- Hashtags and emojis: Do you use them, how many, where they go, and any that are off-limits.
- Visual rules: Colors, fonts, logo placement, photo style (bright clinic photos vs. lifestyle), and what “on-brand” video looks like.
- Templates: Reusable post types like before-and-after, staff spotlights, FAQs, reviews, promotions, and community posts.
- Community management: How you reply to praise, questions, complaints, and spam, plus what you never discuss publicly (for healthcare, never comment on personal health details, and move sensitive topics to a phone call).
- Accessibility basics: Captioning for videos, readable text on graphics, and avoiding tiny fonts or low-contrast designs.
If you want help turning these rules into something your staff can actually follow, our social media management work typically starts by locking in the voice, post formats, and response rules so you are not rewriting everything every week.
How we recommend building yours (fast, not fancy)
Start with one page. Seriously. A one-page guide gets used. A 40-page PDF gets ignored. List 5 to 10 “do” examples and 5 to 10 “do not” examples for captions, graphics, and replies. Then add a second page only if your team keeps asking the same questions.
It also helps to connect your style guide to a broader brand framework. If your website and social feel mismatched, the fix is usually shared rules for language and visuals, similar to what we describe in what a design system is.
For Orlando and Central Florida businesses, we also like adding a short section on local context: the neighborhoods or service areas you mention (Winter Park, Lake Nona, Kissimmee, Dr. Phillips), the way you reference seasonal needs (storm prep, summer AC calls, back-to-school), and any brand lines you do not cross (no politics, no competitor callouts, no sarcasm in replies).
Finally, keep your guide tied to readability and trust. If your graphics are hard to read on a phone, your message is gone. The same rules that help your website help your posts too, and we break that down in how colors and typography affect readability and trust.
If your content includes short-form video or creator-style clips, the style guide should include filming notes (lighting, framing, pacing, captions, and brand-safe talking points). That is where our UGC content process fits nicely, because you can document what “good” looks like once and then reuse it for every shoot.
When you are done, your style guide should let anyone on your team answer one question quickly: “Does this look and sound like us?” If it does, post it. If it does not, revise it once, then add the rule to your guide so the same issue does not repeat.
