It’s true, I find myself doing the same thing! I catch all the errors at work, but when I’m reading for pleasure, a typo hardly fazes me. I might make a note of it, but it doesn’t bother me like it would in a piece I’ve worked on. In fact, I usually just feel bad for the author. Finding an error in my own edited work? Now that’s a different story - I’m mortified!
That being said, I’d much rather have a minor slip-up like a missing period or an extra capital letter in my work than discover a logical fallacy or content that misses the mark. These minor errors are easily fixed. But, reworking the entire structure of a guide or coming up with a better example? Those are the changes that require heavy lifting and, to be honest, they make a world of difference for the reader.
Of course, you could argue that this typo could negatively impact the reader.
To ensure your whitepapers, blog posts, ebooks, and other materials are ready for public consumption, you need to address these high-level content issues first. In other words, your content needs content editing.
This guide will equip you with everything you need to know to get the most out of content editing. We’ll cover:
- What content editing is
- Why it’s important for marketers
- How to prioritize your content editing
Let’s dive in.
What is content editing?
Content editing is a specific stage and style of editing focused on evaluating the effectiveness, cohesiveness, and clarity of written content.
But what does that look like in practice? When you’re content editing, you’re considering how the writing aligns with the brand’s voice. You’re scrutinizing a whitepaper for logical inconsistencies or gaps, ensuring the tips in an email are practical and relevant, and confirming that a blog post’s scope aligns with reader needs and business objectives.
You’re also assessing how well the content delivers on the promises made in the headline and subheadings. For example, if this section titled “What is content editing?” didn’t define the term, you’d flag that during content editing and send it back to the writer for revision. We’ll delve deeper into when to intervene and when to delegate shortly.
Content editing vs. copy editing
What distinguishes content editing from copy editing? Here’s a simple explanation. Content editing focuses on ensuring the writing is impactful, unified, and easy to understand. This involves evaluating the strength and logic of the argument, the quality of sources and examples, the alignment with brand voice, and the overall scope of the piece.
Conversely, copy editing focuses on identifying and correcting surface-level errors. This includes checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, and adherence to style guidelines. It may also involve verifying graphs, charts, image placement, and proofreading titles, meta descriptions, and captions.
Why is content editing important for marketers?
In content marketing, this type of editing is often lumped into the final copy editing or proofreading stage. The reason is understandable: Marketers are busy, and when facing a mountain of blog posts, emails, and other content with impending deadlines, combining these two editing tasks seems like the most efficient way to finalize everything.
But this approach isn’t always effective.
Case in point: My own rushed editing fail.
While establishing and upholding copy editing standards for your content elevates its quality, authority, and reflects positively on your brand, the reality is that your audience won’t engage with polished but nonsensical content, and your boss won’t be impressed by content that doesn’t align with overarching marketing objectives. Marketers rely on content editing to ensure they’re producing top-notch content that resonates with readers and drives business results.
Let’s explore how to accomplish this.
How do you prioritize tasks for content editing?
Here’s the challenge. You don’t want to waste time overhauling a section of a Google Merchant Center guide that would be better suited as a standalone blog post. You don’t want to spend hours shoehorning a guest post to fit a keyword that’s irrelevant to your business.
And you certainly don’t want to publish a blog post riddled with embarrassing typos.
During content editing, you need to focus on two key questions:
- Does the content meet quality standards?
- Does the content fulfill its intended purpose?
In content marketing, the primary objective of the content is usually defined well before creation, especially if your company has a content marketing mission statement. Your content should always contribute to your marketing goals.
Quality standards will vary depending on the content format—emails, blog posts, guides, etc.—and your brand standards. However, all high-quality content shares these traits: readability, actionable advice, and shareability.
Once you’ve established the focus of your content editing, you can use a simple tool for prioritization. You might be familiar with the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, a productivity tool that could be the most valuable takeaway from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Its application is straightforward: Categorize your tasks into the four quadrants of this matrix. Your Q3 goals that are overdue? Urgent and important—tackle them now. Your weekly one-on-one with your boss? Not urgent but important—schedule it. Link building for recent blog posts? Delegate. Assisting with the marketing team’s holiday video planning? Not important or urgent—decline for now and eliminate it.
The matrix is incredibly effective for prioritizing tasks, which makes it ideal for content editing as well.
Here’s a content editing version of the matrix to help you prioritize your time and effort effectively:
This will enable the same rapid prioritization, making your content editing not only more manageable but also more impactful. Now, let’s delve deeper into what each of these categories means in practice.
Do now: High importance, high impact
This is the least desirable quadrant, but that’s okay—ideally, these edits will be infrequent. These are critical issues that affect both the content’s quality and its ability to achieve your marketing objectives.
For instance, if an infographic misattributes a customer quote, it needs immediate attention. You don’t want to jeopardize customer relationships or publish inaccurate information. That’s a “do now.”
These issues should be rare, but when they arise, they take top priority.
Delegate: High importance, low impact
Let’s consider a few scenarios. A content marketer writes a blog post about ad copy but forgets to include an example of an ad. A copywriter submits video scripts filled with jargon. A product marketer drafts a one-sheeter for a product launch that uses inconsistent messaging, blurring the target audience.
In these cases, the content’s quality suffers, hindering its ability to impact your business goals. Make note of what’s missing or ineffective and clearly explain the necessary revisions. Then, send it back to the writer for improvement.
Do later: Low importance, high impact
In this category, the content is already strong and well-written, presenting an opportunity to enhance its impact on business goals. This might involve adding links to other relevant content, optimizing headings for SEO, even incorporating low-volume keywords, resizing images, or including a call to action for an upcoming event.
At this stage, you have a solid foundation of high-quality content; now, you’re focusing on maximizing its contribution to your business objectives.
Final edit: Low importance, low impact
Imagine spending time fixing comma splices only to delete those sentences later, adjusting capitalization in subheadings only to realize they need to be rewritten for parallelism, adding figures in a table only to realize a graph is more suitable, or correcting punctuation errors in an introduction that needs a complete overhaul. While the instant gratification of productivity can be tempting, wasting time on these tasks—and potentially repeating them—is frustrating. So, postpone them.
Just make sure to circle back and fix it before publishing something with a mistake like this.
Instead of getting bogged down in grammar or figures, focus on the bigger picture and return later with your content style guide in hand.
Build content editing into your process
To ensure your content is working hard for you, make content editing a non-negotiable step in your content creation process. If you’re responsible for editing, incorporate it into your workflow documentation and block off time on your calendar to get into the habit. If a formal editing stage—or an editor altogether—is missing from your content creation process, collaborate with your colleagues to implement a peer editing stage. Remember, the content editing decision matrix, like any tool, is only effective if it’s readily available and understood. So, bookmark this post, print out the matrix, and most importantly—use it!