What Is Editorial Management?

Editorial management is the overseeing of a company’s entire editorial team. This includes the editing, design and marketing of its publications, websites and books.

Editorial directors work with other senior managers and executives to set overall goals for the parent company, as well as for individual publications and websites. Their duties include communicating the standards of coverage, tone and audience to editors.

Definition

What Is Editorial Management?

Editorial management is the process of planning and implementing the content strategy for an organization. It focuses on creating quality content that provides value to audiences and helps achieve company goals.

An editorial strategy outlines all the necessary elements of your content creation and distribution workflows, and it sets firm standards and expectations for your team to follow. It focuses on your audience at every step, which means you’ll always have a consistent message that is relevant and engaging to them.

Creating an editorial strategy is crucial for any organization looking to maximize their content marketing efforts and generate maximum return on investment (ROI). The first step in developing your content strategy is to define your target audience, objectives and key messaging. This helps your team create content that aligns with your business goals and builds trust with your consumers.

Another essential step is to create an editorial style guide for your team to follow. This includes defining your brand voice, tone of voice and preferred writing style. It also features guidelines on your company’s unique value propositions and positioning statements to ensure a consistent message across all content produced by the team.

Once you have established your editorial style, it’s time to home in on topics for your team to write about. This can include industry news, current events, and popular culture.

In addition to this, a solid editorial strategy should also include a calendar that identifies the topics and dates when content should be published. It should also identify distribution tactics such as email, social media and video.

By focusing on the topics your audience wants to read about and establishing a schedule for releasing this content, you’ll be able to maximize the impact of your content marketing. This will help your team reach their KPIs and drive a high return on investment.

An editorial plan is an invaluable resource for any B2B marketer. It combines your top content goals, strategies and deliverables into one comprehensive document that can be shared between internal teams and external clients to align on priorities. It also helps your team stay on track, ensuring that everyone is focused on the same things at all times.

Scope

Editorial management involves the coordination and control of content in various forms. Whether it’s written, video or web content, the editorial manager is in charge of making sure that all content is high quality and relevant to the target audience. This includes identifying stories that need updating or revision, and developing a content roadmap to keep the team on track.

The best editorial managers are those that can show a clear understanding of the industry they’re in, and can communicate this to their teams. A strong work ethic is essential, as is a willingness to work with others. If you have the skills and experience, an editorial management job may be the ticket to your dream career.

A good editorial manager will have a keen eye for detail, and be able to manage the needs of many different people at once. They are also responsible for the day-to-day activities of their colleagues, which can include organising meetings to make sure that news is published in an orderly fashion, preparing budgets and making decisions about what is worth printing and what can wait.

The most important aspect of any editor’s role is to ensure that the journal is on the right track and that the aims and objectives are clearly defined and communicated to staff at all levels, and especially to readers. This is best done by a good and up to date aims & objectives document that spells out what the journal is all about, explains Trade Association Business Publication International.

Responsibilities

Editorial management is the process of coordinating the editorial activities of a journal. This includes establishing policy, selecting content, preparing manuscripts and editing them. It also involves promoting the journal at conferences and meetings.

In addition, editors play a key role in the social performance of their journals (Feldman, 2008). They demonstrate appreciation for the work of authors and reviewers; facilitate team building; provide developmental feedback to editorial staff; fairly and conscientiously distribute work; and facilitate effective manuscript evaluations.

The trade-off between being an excellent editor and maximizing one’s research performance is a difficult ethical dilemma for editors (Barley, 2008; DeNisi, 2008). In other words, should editors strive to give timely feedback to authors instead of allocating this time to their own research?

However, this dilemma is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many issues related to the interaction of editorial economic, social and environmental performance that must be addressed.

First, there is the issue of defining the appropriate measurement tools for these three performance dimensions. It is important to understand the cyclical and temporal nature of relationships among these performance dimensions (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2010).

Second, given the ambiguity of the relationship between editorial economic, social and environmental performance, it is necessary to conduct longitudinal designs to determine the effects of different processes and behaviours on each dimension in the context of a single publication. In other words, how does one virtuous cycle of editorial economic, social and environmental performance develop over time?

Third, there is the question of whether a single editor can make a difference in terms of their social and environmental performance. This is particularly important for smaller journals with fewer resources and limited editorial support, as the effect of a single editor’s tenure on a journal’s social and environmental performance may not be observable.

Fourth, there is the issue of how much an editor should invest in providing feedback to authors whose papers have been rejected. This may be especially relevant for small journals that are understaffed, as the time spent on this type of feedback can be a significant expense.

Qualifications

Editorial management involves ensuring the quality of the content of publications, websites or divisions that belong to an organization. This position typically involves supervising several editors and writing teams, which may include reporters, photographers, designers and copywriters. It also involves establishing standards for publications, websites and products and working with executive executives and senior management to ensure that all these entities are meeting the goals set by those individuals.

Qualifications for this career usually involve a bachelor’s degree in English, journalism or another field and experience editing publications and web sites. They should have a keen interest in the English language and grammar, be detail oriented, and keep up with the latest media trends.

Managing Editors work for both online and print publications, depending on the company they are employed by. They are responsible for overseeing their content team and ensuring that the work they produce is accurate, engaging and on time.

These professionals work from onsite offices with their employer or remotely from a remote location, using computer and publishing software, scanners, and electronic communications equipment. They use these tools to draft and proofread articles, news stories, and reports, and then send them to the press for publication.

Other responsibilities include editing articles, press releases and newsletters, and monitoring social media platforms to determine which ones are effective in reaching their target audiences. They must also have a strong understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing best practices.

Most editors are based in their companies’ headquarters, but some work remotely for clients. They need to have flexibility in their schedules because they often have multiple writing projects at one time, which can result in deadline stress or fatigue.

Those who are interested in editorial management can find resources that help them prepare for this role, including associations like the American Copy Editors Society and the American Society of News Editors. In addition, they can look for professional development opportunities.