How to plan your editorial process to keep your content from disappearing among the noise of the big wide web!
Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to plan you are planning to fail!” It has never been more true and relevant than in today’s world. Even the greatest of ideas will get lost among the noise if no care is taking on how to present it and promote it.
You have worked real hard at getting you blog up and running (a clever name and tagline, where is hosted, what it will look like, what theme to use for more effectiveness and other myriad of details.) You launch it to your circle of family and friends but then after a few weeks it dies a slow and painful death. Whatever could have gone wrong?
Unfortunately, that is the fate of the majority of efforts by talented individuals that although their content is superior are unable to get it published to a larger audience that would disseminate it further afield.
Here are some guidelines on how to successfully create and continue to grow your online publication.
Get your editorial calendar ready:
“An editorial calendar (as defined by Wikipedia) is used by bloggers, publishers, businesses, and groups to control publication of content across different media, for example, newspaper, magazine, blog, email newsletters, and social media outlets”
Most important a schedule that won’t drain your resources, once/twice a week and on what days. Something that would force you to work consistently on your content and your audience can expect release of new content on a regular basis.
There are many editorial content plugins and a lot depends on specific needs but some of the popular ones that work with many types of websites to get you started such as :
Review the content you are planning to write about. After you decide on the first few posts, look at what you may be missing in regards to topics and assign additional dates to those. As you become more comfortable writing and developing your style more and more will keep surfacing. Don’t restrict yourself too much so as not to (symbolically) paint yourself into a corner.
Once the calendar for the first month is all assigned you can move on to the writing process or assigning it to any other authors if you are working with a team. In that case, regular meetings are also a must so everyone is on the same page of the editorial process.
Content is king:
It can never be emphasized enough the importance of your content having the quality and properties to grab your audience and keep them coming back for more!. Research the topic thoroughly and/or give it a twist to make it your own. If they are anecdotes make sure they are relatable to your audience and easily understood. Read up how other successful online publications handle their content and what attracts and keeps readers coming back time and again. Apply some of those same principles to your own.
The important thing is to remember why you feel compelled to write about it in the first place and what niche you are filling in the online community.
Organize that content:
Before you start writing you may want to put down titles, subtitles, tags and categories. This can ensure that you don’t get so involved in one direction and deviate from the overall flow of the article and will also give you additional inspiration on how to develop the content. Most editorial content plugins help you organize any external source links you may be quoting and it helps give your content validity as well as images, such as a featured image that represents the title.
Keep it short and simple:
Write in short and clear sentences that get the idea across but don’t limit your ability to expand into a much detailed explanation in another section of the post.
If you find yourself going on over your preliminary estimate of the post you may want to consider breaking it into sections that can be published sequentially and fill your calendar.
Add your SEO settings:
Educate yourself social media and how to set your settings that will give you the best results so your audience can find you. If you don’t know how to promote your content through different platforms your articles will not show up anywhere and get buried among the noise. Most editorial content plugins are designed to make this part easier and with a basic knowledge of how social media works you can get excellent results.
Review, review, publish and promote!
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