Writing for marketing

Marketing content follows the rules laid out in the above sections: We have the same voice and tone, we aspire to the same level of empathy with our audience, etc.

That being said, we’ve found a few areas where marketing has evolved its own set of rules.

Email marketing

Consider your audience

One of the great things about email is that you can communicate with specific segments of people. As a general rule, it’s great to make the email feel personal, while being mindful of any assumptions you might be inadvertently applying across the recipient list. Use the Skylight voice and tone guide as a baseline (let empathy inform how you communicate) and feel free to tweak your message based on your understanding of the recipients’ shared characteristics.

Be open and forthcoming about why the recipient is receiving the email and what’s in it for them. Where appropriate, it’s great to acknowledge that people receive a lot of marketing emails and encourage recipients to change their preferences or unsubscribe if they wish. A small, engaged email list is better than a large, disinterested list.

How to write subject lines

There’s no such thing as a subject line that’s too long. Ideally, you’d test a long subject line with a short subject line and see which one performs best. For subject lines, as with headlines, we want to honestly communicate what’s in the email without being too “gotcha!”

Social media

Much of what we’ve shared so far applies to social content, both what we post from our own Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, but also some things to consider when posting about our work from your personal channels.

We use social media to build relationships with Skylight partners, recruit great talent, and share all the cool stuff we do. But it also creates opportunities to say the wrong thing, put off future partners, and damage our brand. So we’re careful and deliberate in what we post to our social channels. Here’s how to strike that delicate balance.

Write short, but smart

Some social media platforms have a character limit; others don’t. But for the most part, we keep our social media copy short. To write short, simplify your ideas or reduce the amount of information you’re sharing — but not by altering the spelling or punctuation of the words themselves. It’s fine to use the shorter version of some words, like “info” for “information.” But don’t use numbers and letters in place of words, like “4” instead of “for” or “u” instead of “you.”

Emoji

Emojis are acceptable, but should be used sparingly as a way to visually emphasize the sentiment behind our post.

If an emoji is in the middle of a sentence, there’s no punctuation, just as there wouldn’t be if the emoji was absent.

If you’re using an emoji at the end of a sentence that has punctuation, or between sentences, the emoji comes after the terminal punctuation for each sentence.

Engagement

Do your best to adhere to Skylight style guidelines when you’re using Skylight’s social media channels to correspond with users. Use correct grammar and punctuation — and avoid excessive exclamation points.

When appropriate, you can tag the subject of your post on Twitter or LinkedIn. But avoid directly tweeting at or otherwise publicly tagging a post subject with messages like, “Hey, we wrote about you!” Never ask for retweets, likes, or favorites.

Hashtags

We employ hashtags to connect to broader communities (e.g., #CivicTech, #DigitalGov), be part of event discussions, or to highlight team members as part of an affinity month (#PrideMonth, #BlackHistoryMonth, etc.). Use CamelCase in hashtags with multiple words, lowercase for single words.

Trending topics

Don’t use social media to comment on trending topics or current events that are unrelated to Skylight.

Be aware of what’s going on in the news when you’re publishing social content for Skylight. During major breaking news events, we turn off all promoted and scheduled social posts.