04 · Content standards
Content Style Guide
Shaped fragmented content into a scalable system 200+ people use, cutting drop-off by 18% across three product verticals.
829
Pieces audited
565
Pieces updated
18%
Drop-off reduced
200+
Active users of the guide
Overview
During the pandemic Quartz Network moved from events to software. Products shipped fast, with no shared content structure or voice, and the experience fragmented. I joined six months after launch, audited every piece of content, and built a style guide that scaled across all three product verticals.
What I did
- Built a content inventory across three products (15 days)
- Audited each piece - keep, edit, discuss, or delete - and aligned stakeholders on terminology (1 month)
- Published a style guide for 200+ people and gamified rollout with Friends-themed trivia (3 months)
- Created a reusable Figma content library using variables (15 days)
- Ran company-wide workshops and training on applying the guide
Keep, edit, discuss, or delete?
The inventory became a working database for the audit: current copy, decision, proposed copy, owner, and product. Forty-one dev tickets came out of it, written for easy handoff.
Identifying content gaps
One example: the onboarding banner assumed users knew terms like “Solutions” and “Campaigns,” and the body copy contradicted the CTA about contacting a CSM. Rewriting it lifted customer activation by 7%.
Gamifying adoption
As a Notion doc the guide was overlooked by everyone but five people on Product. A Friends-themed trivia challenge on product terminology plus two company-wide workshops turned it into a cheat sheet 200+ people use regularly.
Next steps
- Build an advocacy team of trained style guide champions
- Run an internal survey to measure effectiveness and track usage over time
Learning
A little competition goes a long way. Letting people play the trivia sparked genuine interest in terminology while exposing how hard content decisions really are.