Edmodo Voice and Style Guide

Context: As part of joining Edmodo as a Content Strategist, I was tasked with defining the new Voice and Style for the company’s brand. This was a major project that involved getting key stakeholder approval and coordinating across departments.

Contributions: All Copy and Content, Coordination with Stakeholders, and All Edits/Updates until 2020

Results: An editable, regularly-updated document with Edmodo’s brand voice clearly spelled out for each of its audiences. This guide was used regularly well past my tenure there, until Edmodo’s closure in 2022.

Introduction

This guide is intended to help you, as an Edmodo employee, do two things:

Explain Edmodo itself to interested users in a clear, succinct way.
Write copy or article text that stays consistent with our tone, brand, and voice.

“Gee, that sure sounds awfully stoic and distant, why can’t we all just write how we feel about Edmodo, especially if we’re passionate about it?”

Good question! While Edmodo is made up of dozens of employees and millions of users, having a clear voice helps us better share our message with people. If we have an inconsistent voice that speaks wildly differently to everyone we meet, it may come off as Edmodo simply trying to say what people want to hear, instead of carefully presenting our ideas to interested parties. Passion is great! Especially if we’re moving toward a common goal together.

This guide is split into three sections:

Who We Are – A series of explanations of Edmodo as a product in varying lengths to different audiences.
What to Say – An explanation of what Edmodo does for our users and what to keep in mind when you’re writing copy.
How to Write Edmodo Copy – The nuts and bolts of writing copy. Which grammar rules to follow, which to purposefully break, and which to disregard.

Who We Are

Edmodo is a lot of things to a lot of people. But at the end of the day, Edmodo is a learning-first network.

We connect teachers with students to help them learn.
We connect teachers with other teachers to help them learn how to teach better.
We connect students and teachers with resources to increase learning outcomes.
We help admins bring their schools and districts on Edmodo so teachers can focus on helping students learn.

Our features and platform are built around learning–and learning about learning. With that in mind, here’s a quick explanation of Edmodo depending on the user type.

Edmodo for Teachers

Short	Edmodo is a learning-first network for teachers.
Medium	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts your classroom in the cloud, powered by teachers around the world.
Long	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts your classroom in the cloud. You can find lesson plans, send digital assignments, and host classroom discussions all in the same place.

Edmodo for Students

Short	Edmodo is a learning-first network for students.
Medium	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts your classroom in the cloud, making sure you never miss an assignment.
Long	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts your classroom in the cloud. You can submit assignments, learn with your classmates, and practice your skills all in the same place.

Edmodo for Parents

Short	Edmodo is a learning-first network for parents.
Medium	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts the classroom in the cloud, giving you visibility into your child’s learning.
Long	Edmodo is a learning-first network that puts the classroom in the cloud. You check your child’s progress, send messages to their teachers, and support your child’s academics all in the same place.

Edmodo for Admin

Headline	Communication built for learning.
Short	Edmodo is a learning-first network that powers communication for your entire district.
Medium	Edmodo is a learning-first network that powers the communication you need to keep everyone updated and connected across your district.
Long	Edmodo is a learning-first network that powers the communications you need to keep everyone updated and connected across your district. The one place to handle communications in the classroom and across your school or district. Simplify your tech stack and save everyone time, money, and energy.

What We Say

We’re here to help. Our messaging should reflect that. We’re not just building features with teachers and students in mind, we’re here to help guide users through those features and help them learn how to use Edmodo.

There are two parts to this section: What we do (features) and what we need to keep in mind when we talk about our users.

Features

Edmodo does a lot, and there are a ton of different ways to talk about it. When it comes to features, there are three main categories that we want to focus on:

Communication Tools:
- Harness the power of social learning. Send messages to everyone involved in a student’s education. Parents, teachers, students, administrators — it’s easy to keep everyone engaged and learning.
  - Subfeatures: Class/Group Posts (T/S), Direct messaging (T/S/P), Small groups (T/S), School pages (Admin)
  - Stats: 380 million messages sent, 85 million members
  - Testimonial: “Edmodo is the best! I use it with students in high school and adult education. It is one of the best tools I’ve used in my 15 year career, and I recommend it to teachers all the time. I call it an ‘academic Facebook.’ Thank you, Edmodo, for all that you do!” – Mrs. Pierce.
Your Classroom in the Cloud:
- Your classes are more than a room. Edmodo is the safe digital classroom environment that you can use to expand learning beyond your walls. Hold discussions, send assignments, and connect your Google/Office accounts for a unified learning experience.
  - Subfeatures: Posts, Digital assignments, Quizzes, Google/Microsoft integration, Small groups (T/S)
  - Stats: 400,000 schools, 7,400 districts, 190 countries.
A Global Teacher Resource Network:
- You don’t have to teach in a vacuum. Get the help and support you need for your classroom. Find resources and discuss with other teachers to discover how to reach each student in your classroom.
  - Subfeatures: Edmodo Groups, MyPLC, Topics, Spotlight, AskMo (T)
  - Stats: 600 million resources shared.

Our Users

Edmodo is a platform for a lot of different users. We serve teachers, students, parents, and administrators. And while our voice will shift subtly from audience to audience, we’ll need to keep some core things in mind:

Edmodo is always:

Forward-thinking
Supportive
Empathetic
Passionate
Understanding
Experienced
Global
Comfortable

Edmodo is never:

Traditional
Apathetic
Narrow
Overly Professional
Stiff
Disinterested

In addition to these key elements, consider the average Edmodo user in our different audiences:

Newer Teacher User

Age: mid-20s

Goals: Use more PBL in the classroom; go paperless; gain classroom management skills; learn to use planning and grading time efficiently; foster better communication between students.

Pain Points:

It’s hard to find lesson plans.
Classroom management is not a natural skill for me yet.
I spend too much time planning or grading that I can’t focus on working with students.
I’m required to use a certain tool for my class.
I haven’t taught long enough to have a library of great lesson plans.
I don’t have a strong teacher support system at my school.

When speaking to new teachers, we should respect their time, help them grow as a teacher, and look for easy ways to cut down prep time so they can focus on students.

Seasoned Teacher User

Age: mid-40s

Goals: Use more PBL in the classroom, go paperless, allow students to get comfortable with digital tools (digital citizenship), reach more students through technology, increase engagement through new methods.

Pain Points:

It’s hard to find lesson plans.
Students need more diverse methods of learning.
Using technology in the classroom is hard.
I’m required to use a certain tool for my class.
Technology sometimes adds more problems than it solves.
I’m used to using traditional methods of teaching.

When speaking to seasoned teachers, we should respect their time, assume that they’re interested in using technology in the classroom, and help show them that they can save effort with technology.

Student

Age: 11-18

Goals: Turn in homework. Keep track of assignments. Ask questions that teachers or other students would have the answer to. Participate in class. Feel part of the group. Have my voice heard. Make friends

Pain Points:

I keep forgetting my homework.
I’m very shy.
I need help with my homework.
I’m not using the tools that I’ll need in college and beyond.
I need more information from my teacher or classmates.
I’m bored in class or at home.
I need time to think of my responses.
Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help.
I have a hard time participating in class sometimes.

When speaking to students, we should engage and entertain them, respect their desire to learn, and understand that using Edmodo may be more their teacher’s choice than their own.

Parent

Age: 30s-40s

Goals: Track their child’s progress. Talk with teachers. Stay informed of their child’s calendar and homework.

Pain Points:

I don’t know what or how my child is doing in school until it’s too late.
I can’t find the right way to contact my child’s teacher.
I don’t want to bother my child or their teacher with constant questions.
Different teachers are using different tools and it makes it hard to keep up.

When speaking to parents, we should support their child’s academics, encourage a healthy relationship with their child’s teachers, and help prepare them for the cost of higher education.

Administrator

Age: mid-40s

Goals: Keep teachers focused on teaching. Make sure teachers get professional development. Make sure students are prepared for higher education or their careers.

Pain Points:

My teachers don’t know how to use technology.
My teachers are on different systems and this makes it difficult for students and parents.
Students and teachers forget the passwords all the time.
Tools move so quickly I’m worried we’ll spend more time adjusting and adopting than teaching.

When speaking to administrators, we should emphasize the ease of using Edmodo and how we’re an authority in the edtech space.

What This Means For Our Copy

Now that we’ve covered who we are and who our audience is, let’s talk shop about grammar and content. And there’s one golden rule when it comes to copy:

Clarity is key.

Whatever we write needs to be clear. Often, this means short and simple. But sometimes a longer explanation is necessary—Don’t shy away from a longer sentence if the end result is a clear communication of meaning.

In order to communicate clearly, we need to write how teachers speak. We’re not here to provide an academic essay on the value of Edmodo, we’re here to speak to our users plainly and clearly.

Based on the above advice, you might feel a need to over explain, but we definitely want to avoid that too. In fact, a good rule of thumb here is the 80/20 rule: If you can get 80% of the concept across, trust the audience to fill in the other 20%. If you’re including a sentence that covers an edge case or a small detail, consider cutting it entirely.

The rest of this section is divided into three parts:

Rhythm
Punctuation
The Visuals of Copy

Rhythm

You don’t need to be a poet to write copy, but it’s important to keep the rhythm of speech in mind when you do. For example, in the above section we mentioned that sometimes longer explanations are necessary. But so are short ones.

In fact, if your copy consists only of short or long sentences, it will quickly become robotic or intimidating.

Just look at this. How does it read? These words feel stilted. Especially after a few sentences.

Conversely, if you take every opportunity to lengthen your sentences, even artificially, the reader can lose track of what you’re talking about, especially if you repeat words or use a lot of commas, which we’ll get to later.

Also consider: too much prefacing can become stilted as well. For example, starting all your sentences with transitional phrases like “for example”. In this way, you can feel overly academic. Additionally, it can feel as if you’re attempting to come across as intellectual.

Varying your sentence structure helps a lot. Even if it means committing a few grammar sins, like sentence fragments. Yes, really! It’s okay to use sentence fragments, because this is how people speak.

Lastly, try not to join phrases or clauses in a way that moves off the rhythm of the sentence. Consider this example:

“You can use Edmodo to send digital assignments and message students and parents.”

There are two “ands” in the sentence, but they function differently. The first “and” joins the two features, but the second “and” refers to the audience of students and parents. However, as English readers, we’re used to “and [noun]” being the end of a list, which makes the above sentence more difficult to read. If you were explaining this in person, it might be fine, because your tone and intonation can emphasize the first “and”, but we can’t guarantee that in copy.

Instead, try this:

“You can use Edmodo to send digital assignments, message students, and keep parents updated.”

A good rule of thumb is to read your copy out loud. If you have trouble saying it on the first try, people will probably struggle to read it too.

Punctuation

Readers and writers both can get caught up in a fuss over punctuation. But let’s address a few of the most common uses:

The majority of your sentences should end in periods. There are always exceptions, but putting in too many question marks or exclamation points can add an interrogatory or angry tone to your copy. Save your exclamation points for one or two punchy sentences.

If you ask a question, be prepared to answer it. You might be asking a rhetorical question like “Do you enjoy having more free time?” Or you might be asking a quick survey like “What’s your favorite feature on Edmodo?” Regardless, have an answer in mind when you write the question, even if you don’t intend to answer it in the copy you’re writing. It’ll help you keep your question clear.

Use commas only when necessary. A common rule for commas is to use one when you’d take a breath but that’s flat-out wrong. A misused comma in this way can cause a reader to stumble through a sentence and need to re-read it. Instead, try to use commas in lists or transitional phrases. If you see a comma that feels like a “breath comma” or otherwise out of place, see if you can break the sentence into two. This should help keep things clear!

Use other punctuation sparingly. Irregular punctuation like em-dashes (—), en-dashes(–), colons, semicolons, forward slashes, and parentheses all represent a speed bump for readers. That can be a good thing: These speed bumps make readers slow down and consider what you’re saying. But overusing unusual punctuation is the linguistic equivalent of driving on a bumpy dirt road and quickly fatigues the reader to your writing.

Visual Language

Copy is more than just words on a page. Much like a poem, the visual arrangement of words on a screen or page matter more than you might think. These visuals can influence how readers react to your messaging.

Here are a few tips that you can use to get the right reaction:

Line breaks draw attention to the first sentence in a paragraph. People are often intimidated by long blocks of text. And a good way to call attention to something is to do the following:

Put it on a new line.

If you’re writing a short message that can be read in a hurry, consider bolding key phrases so that the reader will take your strongest point with them.

If you really want to emphasize a word in a sentence, use italics if possible. Try not to italicize entire sentences, as that just makes them more difficult to read. Use bold formatting for that. Also, avoid bolding and italicizing words at the same time, if you can help it. (You usually can.)

If you’re writing longer-form content or copy, try using a bulleted or numbered list where you can. Why?

People’s eyes are drawn to breaks in convention, like the change in margin for these lists.
Numbered lists imply a certain process or simple steps that can be taken to complete something, which can give the reader satisfaction when they finish.
They’re an easy way to call out key points (again), often as an introduction or summary.

Conclusion

Thanks for taking the time to look over this guide! Hopefully it helped you understand the craft of writing Edmodo copy a little better and gave you some tips you can use in your day-to-day work. If you have any questions, send me a message!