When the GAP analysis is done, there is a list. Fifty, a hundred, sometimes two hundred pages that need writing. Usually in a hurry, because the new site is already waiting.
That is the moment brands dilute. Not because anyone writes badly, but because four people are writing at once and each carries their own assumptions about how you sound.
Why a style guide usually does not work
Most organisations have something on file. A document with three adjectives in it: approachable, expert, engaged. Nobody can work with that, because everyone fills those words in differently.
What does work is more concrete. Not the impression you want to make, but the choices you make:
- Do you address the reader formally or informally, and does that shift by audience
- Do you use technical terms, or explain them every time
- How long does a paragraph run before you break it up
- Do you lead with the conclusion or build towards it
- Which words do you never use — that list is often the most useful
Structure counts as much as tone
A services page that opens with a problem and closes with a call to action reads differently from one that opens with specifications. Readers notice that difference sooner than your word choice.
So set out the structure per page type. For a services page, for instance: problem, approach, what you get, proof, call to action. Then nobody has to invent that sequence again and every page is recognisable.
—Consistency is half language and half sequence. The second half is rarely considered.
Map your templates to your content types
Your website probably has a handful of page templates. If the writer does not know which one will be used, they deliver text that does not fit — too long for one block, too short for another.
Record the mapping: this content type uses that template, with these blocks and these maximum lengths. Then what gets written matches what can be published.
And with multiple languages
Translating is not the same as rewriting in another language. A Dutch sentence that reads as direct can come across as blunt in German; an English phrasing that sounds fluent quickly reads as laboured in Dutch.
So set out per language what shifts. Usually that is the degree of formality and the length of sentences. The core of your brand stays; the execution adapts.
Why we built this into the platform
All of the above is work you do once and reuse afterwards. That is exactly what a brand profile is: you record how you sound, which brand kit you use, which templates you have and how you build up your pages.
Our Content Agent works from it. Not because AI writes better than a good copywriter, but because it approaches a hundred pages in a row the same way — and that is precisely where people under time pressure start to drift.