Create a simple style guide for your membership content

When a membership is young, consistency takes care of itself. You write everything, so everything sounds like you. Then you bring in a guest coach, hire a freelance writer or ask a long-standing member to contribute, and the library starts to wobble. One lesson calls it a “tempo ride,” another a “threshold session.” Some pieces use headings and bullet points; others are long blocks of text. Some are chatty, some formal.

Members notice, even if they cannot name what feels off. Inconsistent terms confuse them, and inconsistent formatting makes the library harder to use. A style guide fixes this. It does not need to be a thick manual. For most memberships, two or three pages covering voice, terms and formatting is enough to keep every contributor, including future you, pulling in the same direction.

What a membership style guide covers

A content style guide is a short reference that answers the small questions that come up every time someone writes for you. It usually has four parts:

• Voice: how your content should sound.
• Terms: the words you use for key ideas, and the ones you avoid.
• Formatting: how pieces are structured and laid out.
• Mechanics: spelling, numbers, capitals and other small decisions.

This is different from a visual style guide, which covers colors, fonts and images. The two work well together, but this one is about words.

Describe your voice with examples

“Friendly but professional” describes almost every brand and helps nobody. Describe your voice with three or four traits, and for each one say what it means and what it does not mean. Then give a short example.

Imagine a hypothetical membership for amateur cyclists training for their first long-distance ride, run by Imani, with two guest coaches contributing lessons. Her voice section might read:

Encouraging, not gushing. We believe members can do this, and we say so. We do not call every ride “amazing.”

Plain, not simplistic. We explain terms the first time we use them. We do not avoid useful technical ideas.

Honest about effort. Training is hard sometimes. We say so, and then we say how to get through it.

Example: “Your first ninety-minute ride will probably feel long. That is normal. Eat something every forty-five minutes and keep the pace easy enough to talk.”

Build a word list

The word list is often the most useful part of the guide. It records the terms you have chosen for the core ideas in your membership, so every lesson uses the same name for the same thing. Include:

• Preferred terms and the alternatives to avoid: “easy ride,” not “recovery spin” or “zone one.”
• Definitions in one line, so contributors use terms the same way.
• Names of your own things: what you call your membership levels, courses, live sessions and community spaces, spelled and capitalized exactly.
• Words to avoid because they confuse or put off members, such as insider slang or phrases that make beginners feel behind.

Start with ten or fifteen entries and add one every time you notice two versions of the same thing in your library.

Set formatting rules members will feel

Formatting rules make your library predictable, and predictable is easy to use. Decide how each main type of content is laid out. For a lesson, that might be:

1. A title that names the outcome.
2. A two- or three-sentence opening stating who it is for and what they will be able to do.
3. A “what you need” list, if relevant.
4. Sections with descriptive headings.
5. Numbered lists for steps, bullet points for everything else.
6. A short summary and one next action at the end.

Add a few rules for length, too: paragraphs of no more than four or five sentences, and a rough word range for articles. Members stop noticing a consistent format, which is exactly the point. They notice an inconsistent one immediately.

Decide the small mechanics once

Small decisions eat time when they are made fresh every time. Settle them in a short list:

• Numbers: spell out one to nine, use digits for 10 and above, or whatever rule you prefer.
• Headings: sentence case or title case.
• Units: miles or kilometers, and whether to give both.
• Abbreviations: which are fine, and which need spelling out on first use.
• Links: descriptive link text, never “click here.”

It matters less which choice you make than that everyone makes the same one.

Help contributors use it

A style guide only works if people read it. Keep it short enough to read in ten minutes, and put the most important rules on the first page. When you bring in a new contributor, send it with the brief and point out the three rules that matter most; the advice in briefing freelancers so you get what you need applies to writers as much as designers. Include a finished lesson as a model, since many people learn faster from an example than from rules.

When a contributor's draft comes in, edit it against the guide, and turn repeated corrections into new entries. The guide also makes your own editing faster; it pairs naturally with the process in editing your own content: a practical checklist.

Keep it alive

A style guide is never finished. Keep it in a shared document, note the date of each update, and review it every few months. Remove rules nobody follows and add the questions that keep coming up. If a rule no longer suits your members, change it and update the most visible pieces in your library to match.

Write your first version this week

1. Choose three or four voice traits and write what each does and does not mean, with one example.
2. List the ten or fifteen terms most central to your membership and pick one name for each.
3. Write down the standard structure for your main content type.
4. Settle five small mechanics: numbers, headings, units, abbreviations and links.
5. Attach a model piece and share the guide with anyone who writes for you.
6. Add a new entry every time you correct the same thing twice.

A few pages of decisions made once will save you hours of fixing and give members a library that feels like it came from one careful hand.