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CREATING USEFUL STYLE GUIDES FOR WEB PROJECTS - PART 2

In part two of two, we'll explore different ways to create styleguides and what works and doesn't about each method. Throughout, we'll look at examples. If you haven't read the first part of this series from last month, or need a refresher, click here.

We have already defined what a styleguide is, and what types of visual definitions need to be in them - and I've made recommendations about when to create them. This post will dive into the different ways of actually creating the styleguide.

Method One: Static Old School

I'm calling this the Static Old School method: A designer or production artist lays out a styleguide based on the design system for the project in Illustrator or Photoshop. They export it as a PDF, get client approval, and move on to layout. The PDF is handed off to the developers to begin their baseline work.

Pros:

  • Gets the job done
  • Gives designer complete control over formatting and layout, which may be useful for client presentations

Cons:

  • Not easily updated - requires a designer to maintain
  • Does not keep designers honest - a label indicates that this blue color is #3c89bf — but is it actually?
  • Not interactive - cannot demonstrate rollover states or add code snippets
  • Developers cannot easily highlight text to inspect additional properties that may not be defined, such as line height

Verdict and Recommendation:

On a small project or one with a short timeline, this approach will suffice. There are enough "cons" to avoid it if you can though.

Method Two: Use a Plugin!

Since a designer has her layout in a design program like Photoshop or Sketch already, wouldn't it be really convenient if a magic button could be pressed and a styleguide is automatically created? Fear not, this magic button exists.

The most well-known style guide generator is Craft by Invision. Invision is an online collaborative prototyping tool that allows designers to upload their layouts, request reviews or comments from other team members or clients, and simulate interaction by creating clickable hotspots.

If a layout is uploaded correctly, developers can interact directly with the app to inspect fonts, measurements, and CSS properties:

Invision has created a plugin called Craft that allows designers to automatically generate a styleguide based on all of the existing properties in their layout. The plugin will analyze all of the font properties and colors used in your various page layouts and generate a separate static styleguide for you. This can then be exported as a PDF / static styleguide and shared, or uploaded to Invision for review and for developer inspection.

I created a demo of the plugin in action which you can view below:

https://youtu.be/BzENA_cibds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzENA_cibds

Craft is not the only game in town - zeroheight uses a Sketch or Photoshop plugin to generate a styleguide based on a layout as well. There are additional steps and control given to this tool, since zeroheight lets you create products with technical specs as parameters (such as the design and screen resolution). In this way, this solution is a combination of a local design plugin and an online management tool.

Unlike Craft, the designer has more control about what ends up in the layout to begin with - avoiding the scenario where every single color or font on the layout ends up in the styleguide that later has to be removed. Zeroheight will also allow designers to define entire component definitions, which make for a much more robust styleguide.

Once the designer defines the parameters and what layers should be included, zeroheight will export the generated guide to its server, where the interactive styleguide is automatically created based on the export. This is where your living styleguide is put for further editing, viewing and sharing with other team members. Unlike Craft, where the generated styleguide is just another page in your layout, the zeroheight styleguide is managed within its website.

A risk I see with this approach is if a design changes but the styleguide is not synced, there's no guarantee a developer is seeing the latest changes. Deciding on a proper workflow can help mitigate that risk.

zeroheight has other bells & whistles, such as JIRA and Slack integration, that can notify team members when the styleguide defintion is updated.

It's unclear how much this service costs, but since it's more than just a plugin, I am guessing there is a subscription model involved. The website provides no pricing model, no demo (I found a few on YouTube) and no trial version, so you don't really know what you're getting without having to go through a sales call and presentation. Likely, the people making the decision to purchase the product aren't the people who are sussing out whether the tool works for them or not, which can require a lot of legwork for the team just to find out whether the tool is going to do what they want or not.

Pros:

  • Reduces the amount of work required by designers to create the styleguide
  • May help keep designers honest - in the Craft demo video above, you can see I had multiple similar shades of grey and orange that were not intended. In a real-world example, I'd need to decide whether those colors are still required, or remove them from my layout.
  • Removes any ambiguity in the definitions - yes, that really is 60pt font, and yes that really is #3c89bf
  • Excellent Sketch support
  • Can be easily re-exported as your design changes to capture more definitions

Cons:

  • Requires the layout to be defined first
  • While it may keep designers honest, they may not go back to actually address duplicates or ambiguous definitions in their primary layout, leading to more ambiguity.
  • Outputted result is still static unless you use Invision or zeroheight, which is not free
  • Not sure if it works as well for Photoshop, unknown whether it exists for other layout tools at all.
  • No way to make Craft interactive
  • Craft only captures colors and fonts; doesn't capture button styles or any additional design language components that should be in a complete styleguide (zeroheight is more comprehensive)

Verdict and Recommendation:

This is better than doing it entirely by hand if you're using Sketch (and even moreso if your team is using Invision anyway), but the output result of Craft is not enough to be considered a complete styleguide, and there's no real way to make it interactive.

zeroheight shows more promise, but without the ability to try the product out, you have to hope that that it does everything I think it does. I can't make a strong recommendation for or against it at this point without knowing more or having some hands-on time with it.

Method Three: Generators Upon Generators!

David Hund was kind enough to compile an enormous list of code-driven generators, of which ... there are many:

Without the luxury of going through each individual tool and testing it out, these are very cool for a few reasons - they can live in your existing code projects which means you are not creating these based on the prototype layout, but actually basing it on production code. The end result is an interactive styleguide based on code you've already written. Some of the tools will automatically generate the styleguide, meaning you can continue writing the code for your project and the styleguide gets continuously updated; others require more input from the developer.

A few examples and demos for some selected items are below:

  • Stylemark, which will generate a nice page for you based on markdown format;
  • Patternlab
  • React Styleguidist
  • KSS, which generates a styleguide based on /* comments */ developers put into their CSS and HTML templates. The comments are parsed by the tool, which outputs a HTML file with visuals and code snippets.
  • Storybook.js, a UI development environment for JS projects (React, Vue Angular)

Many of these tools have the same or similar functionality as their counterparts, and many of them won't apply to your specific project based on the platform it is living on. That said, there are many to choose from for a variety of platforms - and additional research and trial & error is likely the only way to find the one with the right feature set for you.

While these are pretty slick and ultimately devs like me are easily impressed by any tool that "automagically" does something, the big unspoken issue here to me is that these tools cut out the designer from the process, and developers don't just make up the styles from scratch in the development phase. Thus, these tools are not a replacement for a styleguide, since a designer is going to need something to even start the project - they are likely going to *still* need the designer to hand something off statically at the start.

So, that means these tools are likely a way to convert the styleguide from its initial form to a living form - but are not a replacement or the only styleguide to be created on the project.

Pros:

  • Reduces the amount of work required by developers to create an interactive styleguide
  • Can be integrated with source control so there's never a disparity between the core site code and the generated styleguide
  • Generates something that can be pushed to a public (or protected) URL and visited / referred to easily - eliminating the "Which is the the latest styleguide PDF?" question
  • Since the styleguides are based on existing code, what is in them accurately represents the current state of the project.
  • Can be continuously updated to reflect the latest styles and code

Cons:

  • An overwhelming number of choices
  • A lot of these options are open-source and/or undermaintained - meaning no support if something doesn't work
  • Ability to implement may require developer resources and hours that aren't available
  • The tool you like may not be compatible with your framework or project platform
  • Learning curve range depending on which tool is used and how involved it is.
  • Often dependent upon learning and installing additional technology (various node packages, third-party dependencies, etc)
  • Totally cuts out the designers from the process, unless they are also writing the code.
  • Since the styleguides are based on existing code, what is in them may not *accurately* represent what the design was *supposed* to be!

Verdict and Recommendation:

Smashing Magazine has a nice, more in-depth review of some of these tools - though it's a few years old - worth checking out if you are compelled to move in the generator direction.

Other Web Applications

We've already briefly talked about Invision, which is more of an online prototyping tool. It becomes more than just that when using the Craft plugin. However, there are also online services tailored specifically for generating styleguides, for a fee. Two additional examples are Frontify and Patternry; zeroheight would also fit into this category as outlined above.

FRONTIFY

The approach for Frontify is to allow users to upload or add specifications via WYSIWYG editor. This could be done before, during, or after high-fidelity design by a designer, and can easily be updated as code snippets become available by the developer. It appears to allow for a collaborative approach that could be integrated at various points along the phase of a project.

Frontify Style Guide from Frontify on Vimeo.

Frontify offers additional services, such as a media library for storing image assets, and what they call a Brand Portal, for entire brand identity suite. The product aims to be a central repository for any given brand or product's guidelines, to be shared by designers, marketers, and developers alike.

PATTERNRY

If Frontify is trying to be everything to everyone, Patternry narrows its range of services and its target user. In Patternry, building a style guide requires a developer to write code that is hosted within Patternry. The target user for this product is a UI designer / developer - the product does not run off of drag-and-drop or WYWIWYG tools. The end result is more control.

The component definitions inside Patternry seem to depend upon production-ready CSS and JS to function, introducing some concern about keeping code in sync between your code repository and Patternry. This also limits the collaboration aspect, as a designer without code experience can't dive in to make adjustments.

Verdict and Recommendation:

It's clear that these types of services wish to make the creation of sharable and maintainable style guides quite easy, but also wants to hitch users into a subscription model where they are dependent upon them as part of their workflow. That may not be in your budget, and may be yet another thing to track (along with GitHub, JIRA, Basecamp, etc).

Some of the features are fairly robust, though, and the idea of not having to create any code from scratch is appealing. The feature set of Frontify seems pretty broad, so if your team can define a workflow that works for everyone, it may be a very useful suite of tools that act as a central repository for your style guides and brand standards. With Patternry, it seems to be more of a framework for an online styleguide than an actual generator or creator. That may be okay, but keep in mind that it's likely going to introduce code disparity between your repository and styleguide. Using a code-based generator tool as described above may be more useful.

Some More Online Styleguide Examples

FRONTIFY

Frontify - covered above - used their own tool to generate their styleguide. Always nice to see a company pracitcing what they preach and using their own tools. I like how it mixes both visual definitions, when to use what, and provides code samples. They also categorize the sections into Design, Identity and Communication. Very thorough, but goes beyond a styleguide for a website and into the brand identity / pattern library for the entire product. View it here.

Frontify ColorsFrontify Typography


YELP

Yelp provides its styleguide online publically, which provides nice code-toggle ability. The visual layout of the styleguide is less engaging than the previous example, which is perhaps emphasises the utilitarian nature of it. View it here.

Yelp IslandsYelp Color - including SASS variablesYelp Typography - Including utility class definintions for front-end developers or content editors


PAGEUP PEOPLE

This is a styleguide that clearly took a lot of time to build. I like how this styleguide includes code samples for each component along with usage notes to remind authors how to utilize each component. I think their foundation area could use some more baseline code samples (typography, for example) but it possible that is baked into their global stylesheet, and developers would not have to touch it. View it here.

PageUp color - nicely designed color blobs, though users have to hover above them to view the hex value.PageUp Buttons - Very thorough with helpful do's and don'ts and code samples.PageUp Component example - includes code sample and usage guidePageUp Typography - This section looks nice but is lacking for more detail around the values (line spacing / letter spacing, weights, etc)

More examples:

  • via CreativeBloq — Three Online Style Guides That Do It Right
  • via Hubspot — Apple, Google & Starbucks: Inside the Web Design Style Guides of 10 Famous Companies

Conclusion

The takeaways here are that there will not likely be a single tool for solving the styleguide portion of the project. Nor should the responsibility of creating styleguide be assigned to only the designer or developer — it should be a collaborative process between technology and creative. We have found out that in some cases, two styleguides will need to be created - one static, perhaps for client approval and tech handoff; and one dynamic / interactive that will be the evergreen and living document to be referenced.

It's also clear that everyone has their own definition of the right order of operations for creating styleguides. In my previous post, I had recommended starting with the styleguide, but also recognize that this workflow is not possible for everyone or for every project. Some of the tools outlined above will be more flexibile than others to fit your approval process and work style.

I would suggest that an important criteria for selection is the ability for the tool or methodology to be flexible enough to work with you, rather than one that forces you to change your workflow in order to use. Hopefully this post has given you a good overview on the types of methods available and the pros and cons of each.

Resources and Citations

Related Posts

This post is part of our ongoing blog series highlighting our CMS practice at AMPXD; learn more about how we select CMS solutions through our other stories. As a large worldwide enterprise software organization with multiple product teams, marketing teams, customer communities, and outreach programs; VMware knows the daily challenges of managing a robust blog ecosystem and its content.. With over 40 different corporate blogs, VMware tasked our CMS experts at AMPXD with creating and managing a centralized authoring environment. Before our engagement the VMware teams had disparate blog instances in multiple platforms which made both content and user administration difficult to coordinate and manage. The organic growth of the various blog platforms also created the situation where they lacked brand consistency with various blogs’ look-and-feel resembling different brands. This lack of cohesion resulted in end users browsing between properties having jarring experiences as brand assets and user interface elements were unique to each blog. The AMPXD team in coordination with VMware stakeholders audited their internal workflows and business needs and identified WordPress Multisite as the ideal platform to enable blog authoring for the entire organization. The extensibility and control features of creating a WordPress Multisite network allowed for consistent user interfaces via brand controlled themes, a centralized user repository integrated with SSO, and one true dashboard to manage content and sites across the organization. AMPXD completed the migration of the existing VMware corporate blogs to the WordPress platform and, as part of the work, unified all of the disparate user interface elements of the blogs into one true corporate blog theme. The VMware blog network now has consistent styling elements whether you are browsing content from VMware Latin America or reading about the latest tips for utilizing vSphere The flexibility of the WordPress platform and the ability to create multisite blog networks has enabled VMware to create a robust blog ecosystem with over 40 blogs specialized to VMware products and disciplines. Utilizing content syndication mechanisms, VMware now has one blog space that is an aggregate of all corporate content across the blog network, giving customers one portal to discover and consume corporate content from across the whole ecosystem. By centering on the authoring workflow and optimizing the WordPress platform, the VMware team’s ability to easily manage authors, themes, system integrations and plugins has allowed the enterprise to focus on creating rich content and communities. Over the course of our ongoing series of posts around technology, we will share stories of uniquely different CMS solutions in practical implementations. If you have an upcoming CMS project or need to discuss content management strategies, the team at AMPXD would love to assist you with your needs. Reach out to us via our Contact Us form. You can also read about our entire suite of Experience Design and Website Development capabilities on our Services Page.

  • 3 min read
  • September 14, 2023

In our continuing series of examining Google Search Trends to gain insights into the top keywords queried in the USA, we present our findings for July 2023. Every day, we capture the top three keyword phrases in terms of search volume as reported by Google Trends (US Only). Each term has an estimated query volume attached to it, which we also record. The number scale tops out at 10,000,000+ with a lower limit of 200,000+ (sometimes 100,000+). After the conclusion of the month, we look at the phrases we collected along with their volumes to get an understanding of what drove queries for the month. Search Is Sizzling In July Actually, the total search volumes for the phrases we collected in July 2023 were lower compared to June so sizzling may be an exaggeration. We can’t say for certain why the reported search volumes were lower. There could have been a change in the way Google Trends was reporting query volume. The team likes to think that the people are out and about and not looking at their phones as much. Oh sure. Looking across the keywords, we had several celebrity deaths that made up the most searched topics of the month. The 4th of July holiday and the guy who seems undeniably connected to it made our report. We have an understanding at what movies, TV, and music were popular last month along with how much big jackpots of money captivated the search audience. Carlee Russell was someone people wanted to know more about and there was a lot of interest in the sport of soccer. Lastly, changes at Twitter and the launch of Threads had us excited to share more from the category of social media. Here’s what we have for you in this report! We Say Goodbye Sadly, the queries with the most volume from the past month were driven by celebrity deaths: Tony Bennett - 7/21/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries Sinead O'Connor - 7/26/2023 - 5,000,000+ queries On the last day of the month, two other entertainers passed away. Angus Cloud - 7/31/2023 - 5,000,000+ queries Paul Reubens - 7/31/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries We tend not to report on the query related to celebrity deaths but last month, two of these phrases were the only ones to be reported as having over 5 million queries for the day. The Fourth Fireworks, parades, and Joey Chestnut. These are the things that come to mind when we think about the Fourth of July holiday. You may not agree with the last item in the series, but the competitive eater has made our report over the past 3 years! Joey Chestnut - 7/2/2023 - 100,000+ queries Independence Day - 7/3/2023 - 200,000+ queries Fourth of July - 7/3/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries Joey Chestnut - 7/4/2023 - 500,000+ queries Take a look at the rising search popularity of his name in this Google Trends graph! Like it or not, Joey Chestnut is becoming a regular feature for the holiday. Summer Entertainment There were a few movie titles in our list from July 2023: Sound of Freedom - 7/3/2023 - 200,000+ queries Wonka - 7/11/2023 - 100,000+ queries Barbie movie - 7/20/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries The Sound of Freedom was released in theaters on July 4 and the Wonka film trailer dropped on the 11th. What seems to be the movie of the summer if not the year, Barbie hit the big screens on July 21st. Here are the queries that made our list that are related to TV shows. Emmy nominations 2023 - 7/12/2023 - 200,000+ queries The Summer I Turned Pretty - 7/13/2023 - 200,000+ queries Golden Bachelor - 7/17/2023 - 100,000+ queries Lastly, Travis Scott released an album on the 28th and people wanted to know more: Utopia Travis Scott - 7/27/2023 - 200,000+ queries Dreams of Free Money It seems like once or twice a year we get a large lottery jackpot that stirs up search interest. In July, we had two: Powerball - 7/8/2023 - 200,000+ queries Mega Millions - 7/8/2023 - 200,000+ queries Powerball - 7/11/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball - 7/15/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball numbers - 7/18/2023 - 500,000+ queries Powerball - 7/18/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Powerball - 7/18/2023 - 2,000,000+ queries As you can see, the Powerball lottery game was very popular in July. Even though Mega Millions saw one entry in July when no one won the $427 million prize, The Powerball jackpot hit 1 billion dollars on the 18th and there was one winner for the drawing on the 20th. The Curious Case of Carlee Russell Carlee Russell’s name was reported on news outlets as someone who was kidnapped. Carlee Russell - 7/14/2023 - 500,000+ queries Carlee Russell found - 7/15/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Carlee Russell - 7/19/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The Alabama woman admitted later that she staged her own kidnapping and turned herself in and was charged with making false reports. Some Keywords Related To Politics Here are the phrases that made Google’s Daily Trends top 3 last month. Cocaine found in White House - 7/4/2023 - 100,000+ queries Student loan forgiveness - 7/14/2023 - 200,000+ queries Mitch McConnell - 7/26/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Besides all the holiday festivities, people wanted to know about the cocaine found at the White House. We guess we’ll never know. On the 14th, the Biden Administration announced it would forgive the loans for 804,000 borrowers and on the 26th, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell had an episode where he stopped talking while being interviewed by reporters and was escorted from the podium where he was speaking. Soccer Keywords We are going to call it soccer in this report, but the sport better known as football around the world drove many people to search last month. The USMNT was involved in the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. Here are some queries that were related to it that made our collection. USA vs Trinidad and Tobago - 7/2/2023 - 100,000+ queries Mexico vs Costa Rica - 7/6/2023 - 200,000+ queries USA vs Panama - 7/12/2023 - 200,000+ queries The USWNT played in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and search interest in that team and their matches was strong and they also made the list. Women's World Cup - 7/19/2023 - 500,000+ queries USWNT - 7/20/2023 - 100,000+ queries U.S. Women's Soccer - 7/21/2023 - 200,000+ queries USA vs Netherlands - 7/26/2023 - 200,000+ queries Women's World Cup - 7/27/2023 - 200,000+ queries It figures that after a world famous player joins your club that suddenly the team name is getting queried every time you play. Inter Miami - 7/21/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Inter Miami - 7/25/2023 - 500,000+ queries We’ll keep an eye on how many times this team makes our list for the rest of the year. Major League Baseball There is another major league playing games in the summer. MLB had their All-Star game in July but searchers mostly cared about the Home Run Derby. Home Run Derby 2023 - 7/9/2023 - 200,000+ queries Home Run Derby - 7/10/2023 - 500,000+ queries The trade deadline for the league actually occurred on the first of August but people still wanted to see the flurry of trades. MLB Trade Deadline - 7/31/2023 - 200,000+ queries Sorry Mets fans. Interest In Other Sports Too Queries related to big events in Tennis and Boxing made our list. Carlos Alcaraz - 7/14/2023 - 200,000+ queries Wimbledon - 7/16/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The Wimbledon tournament was played in July 2023 and Carlos Alcaraz was the Men’s Singles winner. Spence vs Crawford - 7/28/2023 - 200,000+ queries Crawford vs Spence - 7/28/2023 - 200,000+ queries Errol Spence Jr vs Terence Crawford - 7/29/2023 - 200,000+ queries The boxing match between Errol Spence Jr. and Terrence Crawford was fought on the 29th. As you can see, there were many ways to search for this bout. On the 29th, Crawford defeated Spence via TKO. Prime Day Amazon had their big deal day for Prime members as they typically do in July. Amazon Prime Day - 7/10/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries The search volume is almost back to pre-pandemic levels but not quite where it was in July 2019: ‘ Twitter, Threads, and X We finish up this edition of our search trends report with all the big happenings with social media platforms. Here’s a timeline of all the things searchers wanted to know more about with the changes at Twitter (X) and Meta: Rate limit exceeded Twitter - 7/1/2023 - 200,000+ queries Threads - 7/5/2023 - 1,000,000+ queries Twitter rebrand - 7/23/2023 - 200,000+ queries For some reason, there were limits put in place for the number of tweets users could view in a day, with different limits for verified and unverified accounts. Meta launched Threads on the 5th, much to the surprise of social media managers everywhere. We shall see how this new platform evolves as we have been viewing Twitter’s many changes over the course of 2023, which includes its rebrand to X. Update all of your social icons! Thanks for reading. If you liked this article, we utilize search trends data for all of our clients and we invite you to learn more about our SEO services.

When you’re first starting out on social media, you may be heeding advice to “just show up” on each platform. Great advice, nonetheless, but there’s an opportunity to diversify your content and give it a more native fit for each social media platform. Establishing distinct channel strategies ensures that you’re engaging most effectively with that channel’s audience. Consumers use different apps for different reasons.Your audience on Instagram is completely different from your audience on Twitter or TikTok. More importantly, media dimensions, character limits, and the overall strategy and objective vary depending on what social media platform you’re using. Content can be repurposed to ensure it communicates the brands' message across different platforms,however, it should always be tweaked to fit the social channel’s needs and to increase engagement. Let’s take a look at a few popular platforms and how to optimize your content on each one. Instagram Instagram is a staple when a brand is trying to showcase their visual DNA. Most brands only have about 3 seconds to capture consumers’ attention, so they’ll want to get a good understanding of what you’re about from just a photo. No matter the industry, people will be coming to your brand’s Instagram profile to see what the products or services offered look like and take a peek at the aesthetics offered inside as well. Instagram is a visual storytelling app. Feed posts allow you to show the bigger picture, while story posts are where your consumers can see every step along the journey. Through story interactions, reels, and direct messages, there’s also a wide-open opportunity to develop a community surrounding your brand. X (previously Twitter) A community manager’s dream (or nightmare), X (previously Twitter) allows you to speak directly to your audience—and they’re likely to respond! X gives your brand an avenue to speak on what speaks to them, interact with consumers, and easily repost relevant content, all great ways to lean into your brand's personality. Most brands allow the witty, not-so-serious side of themselves to live on X, leaning into gifs, memes, and trends that float across the text-first platform. You could use this platform to engage jokingly with your competitors, start conversations about the products or services you offer and have a little fun. TikTok TikTok is a great platform to push your brand creativity and have your content reach new audiences using unique trends. For your brand, TikTok is a creative playground. With trending sounds, filters, and templates, there are so many ways to present your brand in a way you may never have before. The platform’s motto, "Make TikToks not Ads," is a great guardrail for developing content. Consumers on TikTok learn about hidden gem products, new recipes, or product hacks. Optimal content on this app is very immersive, so you have an opportunity to find more information and insights about your consumers. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a great place to show off some thought leadership and anything interesting you’re doing in your industry. Think of LinkedIn as your brand’s professional landing, a place to network and mingle in a more formal setting. Brands could use this to showcase their values, employee spotlights, and business achievements. This could spark an interest in future customers, employees, or investors. So, before jumping into a new social media platform, (like Threads), develop a channel strategy. If the app is primarily visual, take some time to solidify pictures and videos that will add value to your page and engage your audience, like relevant infographics or shots of real people enjoying your brand. For more text-first apps, take advantage of the opportunity to let your words do the work by starting engaging conversations with your consumers or answering FAQ. Most importantly, get to know your consumers! Understand how your audience behaves and engages on each specific channel so you can tailor your content to fit right in.