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Editorial Strategy: The Ultimate Guide
Crafting an effective editorial strategy is an essential step in content marketing, ensuring measurable outcomes and success.
Editorial strategy:
What’s it all about?
Editorial strategy: the heart of content marketing
Content is king. But what kind of content? What message is being conveyed? And who is the target audience? These are the central aspects of an editorial strategy. It represents the process of creating content to showcase a company, enhance its reputation, and drive sales, forming the essence of content marketing. The editorial strategy encompasses the choices, strategic decisions, and resources that shape a company’s communication when engaging in content marketing. It enables the development of a relevant and effective content strategy, defining the needs and goals, addressing key challenges, and communicating thoughtfully with the audiences. It manifests through the actual content itself, preceded by reference documents that contribute to implementing the strategy, such as an editorial charter.
The company’s digital strategy and positioning
The editorial strategy is also an integral part of the overall digital strategy of a company. It reflects the company’s mission, values, purpose, and major objectives. Implementing an editorial strategy involves understanding the company’s identity – its business nature and intended achievements. It also prompts considerations of the company’s position in the market relative to competitors and what distinguishes it. The aim is to understand the unique value that can be offered to customers and identify unaddressed pain points of competitors. With an effective editorial strategy, the focus goes beyond sporadic blog articles; it revolves around conveying meaningful messages and embodying core values.
A long-term strategy
An editorial strategy should always be developed with a long-term perspective because simply publishing content is not enough to generate results! Content marketing yields benefits gradually: on average, it takes between 4 to 6 months to start reaping its rewards. In return, content marketing is characterised by its effectiveness, longevity, and profitability. It allows for guiding prospects throughout their buying journey, fostering their loyalty, and turning them into brand advocates. For this reason, implementing an editorial strategy (coupled with an SEO strategy) is essential.
Good to know
The editorial strategy differs from the editorial line. It serves as the true “thematic thread” of content marketing, guiding the choice of topics, the tone, the writing style, and more. Any effective editorial strategy must define an editorial line that is as precise as possible.
What is the purpose of an editorial strategy?
Implementing an editorial strategy: why is it important?
Setting up an editorial strategy is not a complex ordeal, quite the opposite. Once established, this strategy becomes a valuable management tool that enables the implementation of a well-structured content strategy and the achievement of the company’s marketing objectives. It is far from being an optional step in content marketing; rather, it is a crucial process that can make a significant difference between a strategy that yields results (in terms of performance and profitability) and one that remains stagnant. In fact, successful marketers who excel with content rely on a well-documented editorial strategy.
What is the purpose of an editorial strategy?
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Producing relevant content
An editorial strategy serves as a guiding framework for content marketing, determining which content to produce, who to target, and which issues to address.
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Educating prospects and customers
Content marketing plays a role in educating prospects and customers from a marketing perspective. The editorial strategy aims to ensure that they are provided with valuable insights and knowledge.
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Speaking with a unified voice
An effective editorial strategy enables all stakeholders to communicate consistently across various platforms such as websites and social media, maintaining a coherent brand voice.
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Framework for digital strategy
Within a content strategy, multiple contributors are involved, including project managers and web writers. The digital strategy provides a framework to ensure content consistency and coherence.
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Strengthening brand image
Implementing an editorial strategy helps reinforce the brand image, ensuring its consistency and coherence across different formats and channels.
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SEO positioning
The editorial approach is an integral part of an SEO strategy, aiming to enhance visibility on search engines and improve organic rankings.
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Identifying areas of expertise
Setting up an editorial strategy provides an opportunity to assess and identify the company’s areas of expertise, as well as pinpoint the right internal experts.
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Guiding qualified prospects
On average, a prospect engages with 3 to 5 content pieces before taking action. An effective editorial strategy enables the seamless guidance of prospects throughout their journey with tailored and relevant content.
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Boosting sales results
A well-defined content strategy, supported by a robust editorial strategy, fosters trust, nurtures relationships with prospects, and ultimately drives sales.
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59%
of successful marketers
have a thoroughly documented editorial strategy. -
67%
of marketers
consider SEO to be the most effective marketing lever. -
84%
of B2B marketers
delegate their content creation and rely on a well-structured editorial strategy.
How to establish an editorial strategy
Tailoring an editorial strategy to each business
Every editorial strategy is shaped by the unique characteristics of a business: its industry, market competition, commercial objectives, expertise, available resources, target audiences, preferred platforms, and more. Some businesses focus on niche content, while others prioritise search engine optimisation or social media engagement. That’s why no two content strategies are alike. This tool must be specifically tailored to the business that intends to use it, and the business must take ownership of it to achieve desired outcomes. It is, however, possible to outline a general framework for implementing an editorial strategy, as the overall steps to build one are generally the same. So what does this framework entail?
A step-by-step guide to establishing an effective editorial strategy
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STEP 1
Identify your target audience
Just like any marketing strategy, implementing an editorial strategy begins with identifying your target audience and creating personas. Who are your audiences? What challenges do they face? What content formats and platforms do they prefer? Remember, your content should provide them with added value!
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STEP 2
Define your marketing objectives
An editorial strategy serves as a roadmap, showing you where to go. What are your objectives for content marketing? Building brand awareness? Increasing visibility on search engines? Driving traffic to your website? Generating sales?
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STEP 3
Develop your editorial line
Editorial lines play a crucial role in any digital strategy that involves content. They help define the overall direction of your content marketing, including topics, angles, writing style, tone, and more. These guidelines ensure consistency across all stakeholders involved in the strategy.
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STEP 4
Establish an editorial calendar
In content marketing, it’s crucial to consistently publish a variety of content in different formats. This is where an editorial calendar comes into play. It helps determine what content (blog articles, whitepapers, infographics, social media posts, etc.) will be published on which platforms and at what times. This document enables effective planning and resource allocation.
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STEP 5
Allocate roles and responsibilities
An effective editorial strategy relies on a team (editorial committee, project manager, web writers, etc.). Therefore, it’s important to assign roles, determine who will write about specific topics, identify internal and external experts to contribute to the content, and ensure proper supervision of the process.
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STEP 6
Make a writing brief
As the majority of marketers delegate content creation, web writers benefit from clear guidance. A writing brief serves as a tool to provide detailed instructions (format, word count, target audience, angle, title, outline, etc.) so that writers can carry out their tasks while adhering to the editorial guidelines and maintaining the brand’s image.
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STEP 7
Create an editorial style guide
An essential component, the editorial style guide is a reference document that ensures consistency in the content produced within the content marketing strategy. It defines the editorial guidelines, writing rules, graphic standards, language elements, and more. In short, it encompasses everything necessary to maintain a coherent brand image.
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STEP 8
Promote your content effectively
Promoting your content is a crucial aspect of a successful editorial strategy. It’s essential to select the appropriate platforms that align with your target audience (company website, blog, social media, newsletter, etc.), customise the accompanying messages, encourage sharing, and include compelling call-to-action buttons to drive conversions.
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STEP 9
Measure marketing performance
Establishing an editorial strategy also entails defining performance metrics to assess its effectiveness. This is the only way to determine if your content marketing efforts are bearing fruit. These metrics should be aligned with your strategic objectives and regularly evaluated to track progress.
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
Our Commitment
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Expertise
Since 2010, we have worked with over 2000 clients across 90 countries.
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Passion
We are a team of passionate, industry-focused individuals who are committed to your success.
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Performance
We’re committed to implementing a data-driven strategy, making a real impact on your bottom line by providing avenues for growth.
Any questions?
An editorial strategy is at the heart of content marketing. Every company that wants to engage in content marketing needs to start by implementing a suitable strategy to define its goals, methods of action, target audiences, performance metrics, and more. It serves as the key foundation for a relevant and effective content strategy.
Implementing an editorial strategy allows a company to streamline its content creation, identify areas of expertise, produce relevant content, ensure a consistent brand voice, strengthen its brand image, guide prospects throughout their buying journey with tailored content, and boost overall results.
Implementing an effective editorial strategy involves following a series of steps: identifying your target audience, defining your objectives, developing an editorial plan and publication schedule, assigning roles and responsibilities, creating a clear writing brief and editorial guidelines, planning content promotion, and selecting appropriate performance indicators to measure success.
