What is an Editorial Meeting?
A regular editorial meeting is the key to keeping your content on track with your strategy and ensuring your content team stays motivated and enthusiastic. However, many businesses embarking on content marketing for the first time aren’t yet familiar with this essential process.
Bringing your key stakeholders together to agree the content you’re going to produce is a fairly new idea for most businesses, but it’s an effective one. Here’s how to make it work for you.
It’s a chance to check in
An editorial meeting is a gathering of content creators and stakeholders from across your organization to discuss plans for upcoming pieces of content. It can be held in a variety of formats, including in person, over video or through instant messaging and phone calls.
Editorial meetings are a regular part of publishing, and are crucial to keeping content on track with a strategy. They can also be a great way to share new ideas and spark creativity among your team members.
To get the most out of your editorial meetings, it’s important to plan ahead and organize them in a way that is beneficial to everyone. This can include creating a detailed agenda for your meetings, and inviting relevant team members to attend.
You should also designate someone to lead the meeting. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the most senior member of your team, but they should have the credibility and passion for your content marketing efforts to take ownership of the meeting and guide the team through the process.
A leader will also make sure that the meeting stays on point and ties in with your overall content strategy. They should be comfortable pushing back against other attendees, tabling discussions so they can be discussed after the meeting, and generally maintaining order throughout the session.
Keep a written record of your editorial meetings, so you can capture new ideas and shifting content priorities. It will also help to keep a log of important decisions around coverage, and hold people accountable for assignments and responsibilities.
Depending on how often you publish, you should consider holding an editorial meeting weekly or monthly. However, you should also be flexible and adjust your schedule to fit with your current needs and goals.
Whether you are in charge of creating your own content or working with a team of volunteers, an editorial meeting can be a valuable tool to check in, brainstorm and set goals for the month. It can also be a great way to thank your team for their hard work and let them know that you appreciate all of their efforts.
It’s a chance to brainstorm
An editorial meeting is a time for your content team to come together and brainstorm ideas. This can help your team avoid sloppy or unoriginal ideas; it can also provide a forum for evaluating and prioritizing content ideas. In addition to these benefits, editorial meetings can also be an excellent opportunity for teams to collaborate on content strategy.
In journalism, editors typically hold editorial meetings to brainstorm story ideas and assign topics. This process is similar in content marketing, where meetings can also be a valuable tool for generating unique brand stories and avoiding stale or repetitive articles.
To run a productive editorial meeting, the first step is to create an agenda that will set the tone and guide the conversation. This should include a strategy review, insights summary and upcoming topics and themes for the month/quarter ahead.
Next, it’s important to keep the meeting lively and interesting. You can do this by introducing new features and opportunities, such as reactive content opportunities or new technology platforms to consider.
Make sure that everyone is able to attend the meeting by providing ample notice and clarifying the time and place for each meeting. Online meeting tools like Skype or Doodle polls are an excellent way to check the availability of your team members and enable those who cannot attend a meeting to participate via the internet.
During an editorial meeting, it’s also important to record all the ideas and feedback. This can help you develop a content strategy and ensure that all the best ideas are used to generate high-quality content.
Finally, it’s important to share the results of the meeting with the rest of the team. This can help to ensure that the strategy is implemented correctly and on time. It can also help to highlight any issues that need to be addressed and how they could be resolved.
It’s also important to take the time to thank the reporters who attended the meeting and share any follow-up information that was requested. In this way, you can ensure that your team is satisfied with the outcome of the editorial meeting.
It’s a chance to review
An editorial meeting is a chance for content teams to get together and discuss their latest projects. It’s an important part of the publishing process, as it helps keep your content on track with your strategy.
The key to an effective editorial meeting is to plan ahead and ensure everyone has everything they need to participate. It’s also helpful to create an agenda for the meeting that will help your team prepare and stay focused on the important topics.
Make sure you include everyone involved in the process, whether that’s marketing or brand managers, writers, content creators and other team members. Having all the right people in the room will help you brainstorm ideas, discuss trends and develop a cohesive, consistent content strategy.
You can also use an editorial meeting to share data about your content. This will help you reinforce the value of your content, uncover strengths and weaknesses, and reveal untapped content opportunities.
During the meeting, you can use this data to set goals for future content and identify potential gaps in your current strategy. This will help your team create a more reader-focused strategy.
A good editorial meeting will also include a review of your last month’s content and a brief summary of how it performed. This will help you to plan your content for the following month and identify key areas of focus.
It’s always a good idea to bring in some new and fresh ideas for your content, so make sure you include a brainstorming session. This will help you to generate a wide range of content and make the most of your resources.
Another important thing to do is to establish a no-judgment environment where team members can share their ideas with each other. This will help you to brainstorm and come up with creative and engaging content that your readers want to read.
In addition to these five tips, there are a few other things that you can do to make your editorial meetings more effective. These include establishing an appropriate frequency, inviting relevant team members only and sending a follow-up email after each meeting.
It’s a chance to set goals
An editorial meeting is a time when content creators and other relevant members of the team meet to discuss upcoming pieces of content. Many publishing companies run these meetings on a weekly or monthly basis to ensure they’re creating high-quality content that can be shared with the audience and help their business grow.
In a journalism environment, an editorial meeting is a time when editors, writers and other journalists brainstorm story ideas, prioritize current news and assign topics for stories to be written about. The same holds true for marketing and content production teams; an editorial meeting can help them avoid sloppy or unoriginal ideas, strategize and set goals for their content creation.
To get the most out of an editorial meeting, make sure you have a balanced mix of data and creativity, a diverse team with experience in both fields and a clear process for submissions and discussion. This way, you can get the most out of your team and find unique brand stories that can be leveraged for your content strategy.
You can also use an editorial calendar to keep your team on track. Colin Loughran, editor in chief at Unbounce, uses a tool like CoSchedule to keep his team on task and in sync with one another. It has a color coding system, calendar and task views that make it easy to see what tasks need to be completed and how long they will take, plus drag-and-drop features for putting together social posts across different platforms from one place.
The most important thing is to have a team that’s balanced in terms of skills and experience; otherwise, you could end up with a highly specialized group that won’t be able to work together effectively or creatively. You can also include sales representatives and product managers, who possess a wealth of information about your products, services, customers and prospects that you may not know.
A well-run editorial meeting will result in more streamlined content marketing and will increase the likelihood of your company’s content being viewed as a trusted source for knowledge. It will also increase the chance of your content being viewed as valuable by a wider audience and will be more likely to drive traffic and conversions for your business.