How do you determine your editorial line?

Following on from our CMS tutorials, here are a few useful tips for defining your editorial line. It's essential to define one before writing content for the media, on your site or on social networks. To communicate, is it enough to publish content about whatever comes to mind on a sporadic basis? No. The pace, nature, tone and angle of your content are crucial.

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How do you define your editorial line?

Thinking ahead

To structure your communication actions, you need to ask yourself three questions beforehand:

• For what purpose are you writing?
• Who are you writing for?
• From what angle do you write?

What is an editorial line?

The answers to these three questions will help you define :

• your content ;
• your target audience ;
• your tone.

These three elements are the basic components of an editorial line.

What are your communication objectives?

The profitability issue

To communicate, yes. But you need to know what you're aiming for in terms of profitability! Because communicating takes time, or represents a cost if you outsource.

That's why you need to ensure that the communication you deploy serves a concrete, measurable and useful objective for your company.

Your ultimate objective

Your communication can pursue a number of different objectives. The important thing is to identify them in order to determine how you will communicate.

For example, you may want to :

• acquire new customers ;
• expand your network of influence ;
• inform your partners of your latest news;
• etc.

That's why it's so important to make sure your texts are SEO-friendly!

Five principles to follow when choosing your editorial line

Adapt to your target audience

The target audience, nature and angle of your editorial content should naturally flow from your objectives. For example, it might be interesting to tell your partners about your latest news.

For prospective customers, the idea will be to demonstrate your expertise, through success stories for example, or through sector-specific themes that concern them and in which you have experience.

Establish a framework

By developing your editorial line and writing strategy according to clear objectives, you'll be sure to structure a coherent approach over time.

After all, in communications, almost everything is a question of endurance. It's all about establishing a framework and sticking to it.

Building reader loyalty

How do you build reader loyalty? Your editorial line needs to be clear, so that they can understand it and know what to expect.

This way, as soon as you coincide with their interests, they'll have "spotted" you and will follow your next issues.

Organize your content

Over time, your content will become increasingly numerous. Your readers need to be able to easily find the content that interests them.

That's why you need to offer relevant indexing, through well thought-out categories or a fluid keyword system.

Renew yourself

While it's important to set a course of action and stick to it, don't fall into the predictable. Surprise your readers, and alternate the type of publication.

Alternate feature articles, news briefs and infographics, for example.

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How can you orchestrate your communication actions?

Blogging

Many companies implement a content marketing strategy on the web by keeping a blog.

They manage it using a CMS (Content Management System) such as Wordpress, Hubspot, CmonSite or SiteW.

Create your own newsletter

Sending a newsletter at regular intervals to your contacts is an excellent way of maintaining the link.

If you run a blog, the best way to do this is to include some of the content that's been published recently.

Better still, you can personalize this selection according to each of your recipients. ExpertSender 's behavioral segmentation software allows you to do just that, as does Send-Up to a lesser extent.

Communicate on social networks

Social media is a powerful lever. Depending on your activity, the practices of your sector and the habits of your customers, identify the right social networks for your company: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn?

Beware, however, that community management can quickly become time-consuming. Use a tool to simplify management. There are Hootsuite, Buffer and Agorapulse, all of which are highly specialized in this area.

Coordinate a multi-channel marketing strategy

Orchestrating your communications across multiple channels can be a real headache. To avoid being overwhelmed, marketing automation features are invaluable.

It's a matter of considering all channels and defining upstream the actions to be automated. In this way, your company sets up a high-performance funnel as part of an inbound marketing approach.

It's essential to define an editorial line to guide your communication actions. Whether it's press, radio or web, your editorial content must be coherent and legible, as guaranteed by this global approach.