How to hire an amazing editor and save your brand from embarrassing gaffes and find your content groove
In today’s fast-moving world of internet publishing, speed often wins over accuracy. While it may seem we’re all getting more lenient with typos, misspellings, and obvious grammatical mistakes, the truth is that our mistakes are still noticed. Individual customer impressions matter, and, if the mistakes go viral, they could have a more amplified negative brand effect than ever before. Just ask the poor brands that ended up on this unfortunate countdown list full of “eggregious” mistakes “thier” surely not proud of.
Hiring an editor brings about a host of benefits, including a reduction in writing and grammatical mistakes and an increase in high-quality content. Most brands and agencies don’t have an editor, but how many can say they haven’t missed spelling or grammatical errors? It’s not a ‘nice’ to have; it’s a must-have.
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Grow your audience and build interest and leads by avoiding these common mistakes. With so much content being produced, it’s important your content marketing strategy cuts through. Our content marketing mistakes guide reveals the most common mistakes, but more importantly what to do about them, with strategy recommendations, examples and relevant resources identified
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Creating great content is not as simple as Mark Twain suggested when he said, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” At my company, PowerPost, our own reputation for visceral opinions via content publishing has earned us many accolades. However, a significant increase in both views and sharing of our content was realized when we put a formal process (and editor!) in place.
The power of the editor
Editors bring a powerful strategy to the table, helping shape the direction and expectations of your content while ensuring consistency. Beyond providing content writers with constructive feedback, an editor drives healthy habits and helps protect your brand’s first impression, reviewing content for mistakes and making necessary edits for the team. This helps to ensure content is on brand, consistent, and high-quality.
In turn, this also helps your team members improve their writing skills. A tone is set that writing excellence is non-negotiable. As members of the team strive to reach these new expectations, the old status quo will fall away and a new, higher level of excellence will become the norm. Internal content, including emails, will see an improvement as well, making communication that much smoother.
In agencies, editors help reduce the number of mistakes and improve quality content across digital marketing, email marketing, print, and other collateral. Editors can save your team valuable time by providing a trained eye to quickly spot where improvements must be made. This allows your team to get back to doing what it does best. We have been able to easily quantify the cost savings in time and energy due to our disciplined editorial methodology.
Content is still an important marketing strategy that must be executed correctly. Our PowerPost team quickly realized our allegiance to our voice earned us a devoted audience. This authenticity has garnered us a reputation as a thought leader in the burgeoning category of brand publishing.
Our editors carefully review all blogs and content, make recommendations, and are religious about creating a consistent voice before distribution. Being acknowledged as the pre-eminent voice in our industry has been a significant win for our firm and wouldn’t be possible without our formal editing process.
How to hire an amazing editor
Now that I’ve convinced you to do the right thing and hire an editor, let’s talk about how you find, vet, and woo this important addition to your team. To start with, put together a great job description and post it on LinkedIn, Indeed, and other hiring platforms. Once you have candidates, make sure you:
1. Vet, sample, and vet again
Résumés are simple screening tools that help you find candidates with specific skills and work experiences. To begin with, editors’ résumés should not have any mistakes. Use résumés to weed out obvious bad fits, and request writing or content samples from the remaining pool. Vet the writing samples for good voice, flow, and grammar, and pair samples with résumés to narrow the set of candidates moving forward.
2. Prod for passionate responses
Once you narrow down your choices and begin interviews, have the editor bring her portfolio to provide additional context to her individual pieces. Many editors come from traditional media and are quite new to brand publishing. Pointed questions regarding their eagerness to edit for brand content should be well-prepared.
Any hesitation or perceived lack of interest in your brand and category should be viewed as a red flag. You need an editor whose tone, authenticity and passion will help connect with your audience. Interested candidates should be able to answer questions about your industry, organization, and basic business easily — this proves they did their homework and are excited about the job opportunity.=
3. Have a skills test
During the final steps of the interview process, it’s important to administer writing and editing tests to each candidate. This is a valuable way to gauge an editor’s skills. These are usually take-home tests, with candidates returning in 24 hours to 48 hours. The test should give you an idea of how well the editor writes, edits content generated by others, structures pieces, and injects creativity. A good editor will also follow directions well, including those regarding tone, length, and layout requirements.
4. Verify references
Ask for a reference list to contact and verify that a candidate’s skill set and work ethic meet your needs. While it’s fine for a candidate to ask when his or her references can expect a call from you, too many questions or nervousness about references from a candidate can signal a problem. Additionally, use your conversations with references to verify skills candidates touted, negatives they failed to mention, and cultural fit.
5. Focus on fit
An editor will be setting the direction and tone of your content efforts, likely leading your writers and marketing teams through the content creation process. If there is ever a position where cultural fit is important, this is it. Great hires align with the values, goals, and practices of your organization and will be harder to find than the basic required skill set.
Ask candidates what work environment they prefer and how they perceive your company’s culture so far. Delve into personal values and motivations for applying for the job. Make sure to walk them around your office or facility during the interview, and look for good questions and comfortable behavior from candidates that will fit in well.
Before you make a final selection, consider which candidates seem to truly understand and take seriously the enormous responsibilities the job entails. Your editor will be the mouthpiece of the entire organization and must be someone you can trust with authority and who displays a passion and understanding for your industry.
Finding the right editor will elevate your content game to the next level and help you achieve the returns on content marketing you’ve been looking for. Plus, you will be less likely to be publicly shamed by the internet or privately shamed by potential customers for obvious incompetence. A win-win if I’ve ever heard one!
Download FREE Resource – Top 10 common content marketing mistakes
Grow your audience and build interest and leads by avoiding these common mistakes. With so much content being produced, it’s important your content marketing strategy cuts through. Our content marketing mistakes guide reveals the most common mistakes, but more importantly what to do about them, with strategy recommendations, examples and relevant resources identified
Access the Top 10 common content marketing mistakes