I began my career by training as a proofreader, so keeping things consistent is a hobby-horse of mine. Recently I've been drawing up style sheets for Redhouse Lane and some of our clients.

Not enough organisations maintain a style sheet - and when I say "maintain," I don't just mean "draw up," I mean "draw up and update continuously". A style sheet shouldn't be a snapshot, showing whether the organisation preferred its quotation marks straight or curly at a particular point in time. It should evolve as the organisation evolves - particularly when that evolution includes establishing a presence aboard diverse and numerous social media platforms, all of which need to look and sound consistent with the parent brand.

But even though social media have made it more of a hassle to maintain consistency - goodness knows some sites don't make it easy to put your stamp on them - they're also part of the solution. After all, their purpose is to enable sharing, collaboration and communication.

That's why our style sheets are now hosted on the company wiki, instead of as static documents on our file server. Everyone at Redhouse Lane can both view and edit the wiki, so the moment there's consensus on whether "style sheet" should be closed up, spaced out or hyphenated, the decision can be enshrined in policy and relayed instantaneously to everyone that needs to know.

What tools and controls do you use to keep your presence consistent across different platforms? Let us know in the comments below.