For a content strategy to be effective, several collaborators and company teams must be aligned and involved in its execution. This is where setting up an editorial committee proves essential.
Discover what a editorial committee brings to your content marketing, how to compose and run it to optimize your marketing strategy, and the essential tools for effective collaboration!
Also consider meeting your article creation needs by hiring a web copywriter freelancer on our writing platform Redacteur.com!
What is an editorial committee?
A editorial committee brings together marketing experts with various specializations (SEO, web writing, social media…) that define the entire process surrounding your company's content marketing strategy.
Through weekly or monthly meetings, depending on your activity and publication volume, members discuss and exchange on all aspects related to your content: writing, promotion, distribution, repurposing, sponsorship, etc.
At the start, it decides on the objectives of your content marketing, the writing standards and the editorial calendar. Subsequently, editorial committee meetings help coordinate marketing teams to ensure a coherent strategy across all channels and align them toward the same goal.
Who should participate in the editorial committee?
Members of the editorial committee include experts from the different departments that play a role in executing the content strategy. Typically, you will find:
An editor-in-chief
Or an editor-in-chief. Whatever the title, the editorial committee must be led and managed by a content creation specialist. The editor-in-chief schedules and runs the committee meetings by setting the agendas.
Additionally, they manage the main editorial calendar, propose and debate article topics, and provide guidelines to improve the content marketing strategy.
A content manager
This broad content specialist will suggest theme ideas for upcoming articles, white papers, newsletters and any other publication. Their role is to list all actions to be taken, whether in writing, distribution, or graphic design.
Once the action plan is defined, they will manage their team of writers, designers, translators, proofreaders and community managers to bring the strategy to life.
A marketing manager
Content must fit into the company's marketing strategy and align with the same objectives.
The editorial committee They schedule themes and the calendar according to other ongoing marketing activities: Google Ads, organizing a webinar, promoting a new product or service, sales periods, participating in a trade show, etc.
The goal is to achieve an editorial line that is consistent with the company’s business and seasonality.
An SEO manager
Creating content inevitably involves SEO! While your articles should primarily appeal to your prospects and customers, also remember to win over Google by sprinkling your content with relevant keywords.
The SEO manager provides insight into the queries used by your leads and can therefore suggest topic ideas to improve your ranking in search engines.
A social media manager
The social media manager defines the distribution and promotion strategy on social networks. By participating in the editorial committee, they can better steer their actions and distinguish which articles to share on LinkedIn from those to promote on Facebook, for example.
It's also the time to discuss the advertising strategy: which content will be sponsored and on which platform(s)?
What is the purpose of the editorial committee?
Editorial committee meetings They must be productive to support the implementation of the content marketing strategy.
Finding content ideas
This is the main axis of your content marketing: article ideas! What topics should be exploited in the coming weeks? The editorial committee lists writing topics consistent with the company’s and sector’s news, as well as with the needs of customers or prospects in the weeks ahead.
Organize production and publishing
Now that the content ideas are listed, they need to be added to the editorial calendar. The committee also considers the format appropriate for each topic: blog post, infographic, educational video, white paper, LinkedIn carousel…
Mobilize the team
During these meetings, you bring your editorial team together around the content marketing strategy. Exchanging, debating and uniting the different stakeholders strengthens employees' sense of belonging. They see the results of their daily involvement, which keeps them motivated!
Boost creativity
Sharing ideas, presenting your monitoring and discussing with your team stimulates creativity. Each specialist can thus find new ways to present content or topics to engage their own channels. The more creative your editorial line, the more you will stand out from competitors.
Enable collective approval of content to be published
The committee allows you to agree on the topics and formats to publish. Adherence to the editorial line is ensured, as is the relevance of the publication schedule. This increases the chances of success for your content marketing.
Review and steer projects in real time
Editorial committee meetings also represent an opportunity to take stock of ongoing projects. It’s the moment to analyze the impact of your content to see if changes need to be made.
How to organize an editorial committee?
Now that the role of an editorial committee is well defined, let’s see how to organize it to optimize your content marketing.
Set up the committee
Who will participate in this committee? We previously reviewed the different stakeholders. You therefore need to appoint each member and convince them of the value of this editorial team. Argue for the time savings, productivity and creativity this committee provides!
Discuss the guidelines for this meeting with them and decide whether it should be weekly or monthly. If they participate in the committee's very foundation, they will be more inclined to join.
Define the tools to use during the editorial committee
The objective of the editorial committee is to think and share ideas. To better visualize, analyze and then validate them, a brainstorming tool is ideal. Among the best known, you will find:
Draft.io
Draft.io, which has a free version, offers you a flexible, visual workspace where you can store and organize your ideas. You can then turn them into cards, maps, boards or even a schedule to guide your decisions.
Coggle
If you have a lot of content to produce and a large editorial committee, Coggle offers a very powerful online dashboard.
You can create complex maps and diagrams to bring your content clusters to life. It’s an opportunity to organize topics by marketing campaign, channel, or format according to your needs.
Lucidchart
The online tool Lucidchart turns your ideas into smart graphics and diagrams. You put order into your proposals to make collective, informed, and high-performing decisions!
Prepare activities
Consider adding a playful touch to this editorial committee. These meetings are also a chance to organize team-building activities. And why not gather the team in a different venue? Restaurant, co-working space, hotel… there are plenty of options!
How to facilitate an editorial committee?
To ensure the success of the editorial committee, it must be run effectively. Duration, workshop, minutes… Take the time to bring structure and a framework to your meetings.
What is the ideal duration for an editorial committee?
Depending on the size of the team and your publishing pace, the editorial committee’s duration will vary. However, these meetings should be efficient above all!
For a very small business, 30 minutes is sometimes enough. It can go up to an hour if you publish daily on social networks and several times a week on the blog.
Avoid exceeding two hours. Concentration tends to drop toward the end of a session…
How often should you hold editorial committee meetings?
Weekly, monthly, quarterly? The frequency depends on publication volume, but also on how much you rely on current events. If your industry is constantly evolving, meetings should be held more frequently.
In fact, the questions to ask yourself to define the ideal rhythm are:
- How often should we analyze the content marketing strategy?
- How far in advance do we want to set the editorial calendar?
Based on these answers, organize an editorial committee weekly, monthly, or quarterly! It also depends on the amount of content you need to produce, the size of the team, and factors specific to your company.
What types of workshops should you use to run an editorial committee?
When setting up the editorial committee, you might start with an introduction to each person's role. Members can outline their background as well as their daily responsibilities.
Each meeting can also begin with a quiz prepared by the editor-in-chief or the marketing manager. Questions will cover new digital trends and/or market developments. It’s a playful way to share monitoring and knowledge.
Feel free to run different workshops at each committee. Work from personas to find topic ideas, do a competitor benchmark for the next session, or find article titles based on the company's products or services.
There are multiple approaches to running your editorial committees, which also depend on the industry.
Produce a committee report
At each meeting, you must designate a member to take notes and send minutes to everyone. Ideally, assign this task on a rotating basis.
This document will serve as a roadmap until the next committee. In fact, at the start of each meeting, you can review the minutes to check that all items were addressed.
Our tip for setting up an editorial committee
Setting up an editorial committee It sometimes takes time, but in the long run it allows you to gain productivity and efficiency. You ensure a strong guiding line for your content marketing. All expertise converges toward the same goal and works together to achieve it.
Would you like support creating your content and strengthening your writing team? Order the texts identified during your editorial committees by hiring a writer on our writing platform.
The article How to create and run an editorial committee? first appeared on Redacteur.com.
