5 reasons you need a managing editor

Struggling to keep up with the publishing demands of your content marketing plan? Time to put someone on your team in charge – your very own managing editor…

If you’re producing content marketing, you know that turning out great content can be a real hard graft. Yet for generations, publishing organisations have turned out accurate, fast, valuable copy on a daily basis. So what have they got that you don’t? A managing editor, that’s what.

As anyone who’s worked in publishing can attest, a good managing editor should be fast, firm and slightly fearsome. He or she is the point at which all bucks stop. In a traditional publishing structure, the managing editor is like a stage manager – they keep everything running smoothly and whip everyone else into shape.

If you’ve been struggling to keep up momentum in your content marketing, you need to reflect the value of the operation in your workflow: make it someone’s job. Without this person at the top of the editorial tree, how can you be sure any of this will happen?

Here are 5 things your managing editor should do:

  1. Manage deadlines
    This doesn’t just mean nagging people to get their copy in on time, this means making sure timings mesh across the business. It’s a big-picture management of priorities that takes into account approval time, launch dates and channel-by-channel requirements.
     
  2. Collating your ideas
    In our experience, most brands say they don’t have a problem coming up with ideas – it’s executing them that causes the problem. Your managing editor should be in charge of your editorial calendar and have a process for capturing good ideas from people across the business. That’s a great step towards solid-gold content.

  3. Keeping your quality high
    Even if a managing editor isn’t responsible for writing the content, it’s their job to make sure that what goes out is on-brand, tonally correct and totally clean before it’s published. Tools like copy formats, tone of voice guidelines and a proper briefing process will help, but someone needs to make sure they’re being used correctly.

  4. Getting the furthest reach
    Your managing editor needs to have sight of your content universe – of every channel at your disposal. As part of their calendar planning process, they should be making sure you’re getting the furthest reach possible for everything you’re publishing. Got a white paper coming out? Your managing editor should be spinning that out into a series of blog posts, email articles, Facebook posts, tweets and plenty more.

  5. Checking your performance
    Effective content marketing thrives on getting helpful information back from the content you put out. Hold regular planning and review meetings and ask for reports on how the last period’s content has performed. That way you can start to see what works and what doesn’t, and you can tweak your next pieces accordingly.

Worried about your workflow? [email protected] 

First published on the Sticky Content blog

 

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