To recap, in the first part of this series we discussed the nature of the content industry, why typos occur, and why the editorial process is so important. Now we move on to the elements that make up the actual process, and clear up a couple of misunderstandings surrounding the subject. Let’s get stuck in…

The journey continues

There seems to be a misunderstanding surrounding when the editorial process must be applied.  The editorial process goes hand-in-hand with the entire content creation process, which means your quality control starts with the initial planning and ends with the publishing of that content.

Now, I understand the ‘we needed this done 3 hours ago’ nature of agency work, but your editorial process needs to be factored in as part of your content process, which means you need the person or team in charge of the editorial process to be flexible.

So let it be written

Your company should have some sort of a content guideline or policy in place to ensure the brand’s intended voice and tone is applied to every piece of content. For the purposes of this article we won’t be delving deeper into this subject, but without the proper guidelines to use as reference it is very easy for your content to lose identity and cause more harm than good.

The main purpose of the editorial process is:

Condensation: According to Statistic Brain, the average internet user has an attention span of 8 seconds. As a content marketer that means communicating as much as possible with as few words as possible. It seems like Twitter has been preparing us for this point for a long time, or perhaps it’s part of the problem? Twitter philosophising aside, your content should be monitored frequently to ensure that the information is created as concisely as possible.

Correction: How else are you going to sift out all those pesky typos we discussed in part 1? It is a common misconception that this part is the ENTIRE editorial process; provided I haven’t lost your attention already, let’s see why that’s not the case.

Modification: This applies specifically to content which may not necessarily be incorrect per se, but is not aligned with the voice, tone, or goals of your Content Strategy. Once again make sure you apply your guideline/policy to the content throughout the creation process.

Organisation: Coming back to the issue of creating content for the sake of content, all your content should be part of a bigger plan. If you’re creating content for a blog, you could be creating articles with the purpose of compiling downloadable content to improve your lead generation process. If you’re creating a series of posts for social media purposes, those posts should be organised to ensure your mini-campaign is effective. After all your social media posts are obviously created with purpose, right!?

Last but certainly not least…

Measurement: Monitoring your content is essential if you wish to achieve your goals, how else will you know what works and what doesn’t?

Now that we’ve cleared up the misconceptions around the editorial process and learnt the purposes of one it is finally time to reveal the actual process. So prepare yourselves - part 3 is coming soon!

Julian Karstel is a Digital Marketing, Sharepoint & E-learning Consultant for 
Sound Idea Digital.
| julian@soundidea.co.za | Sound Idea Digital | www.soundidea.co.za