Editorial strategy

What an editorial strategy is

An editorial strategy is the written statement of what your business argues for in public, and the three or four themes it returns to whatever else is going on. It is the difference between a company that publishes things and a company that is known for something.

It is not a list of subjects and it is not a schedule. The ranked list of subjects is topic strategy, and the dates belong on a content calendar. Editorial strategy sits above both and settles a different question: out of everything you could say, what is the line you take, and what will you refuse to say?

It is one chapter of the content strategy plan, written on its own for businesses that already have the rest of the plan, or do not need the rest of it yet.

When you need one

The usual sign is that everything you publish is defensible and none of it is memorable. Each piece answers a question competently. Read ten of them together and there is no position, no recurring argument, nothing a reader would repeat back to you.

The second sign is more than one writer. Two or three people writing without an agreed line will each write their own, and the business ends up holding four mild opinions instead of one firm one. An editorial strategy gives them something to write towards.

You do not need this if nothing has been published yet. Start with the questions your buyers actually ask and get a few pieces out first. A position is easier to find in work you have already done than in a meeting room.

What goes in it

• The position. One paragraph on what you believe about your trade that a competitor could genuinely disagree with. If nobody could disagree, it is not a position, it is a pleasantry.
• Three or four themes. The recurring arguments you come back to, each stated in a sentence, each with the kinds of pieces that carry it.
• What you will not publish. The subjects you leave to others, the claims you will not make, and the tone you will not adopt. This is the half that gets used most.
• The proof you hold. What supports the position: your own work, your own figures, the things you have seen in the field that a larger competitor has not.
• How it sounds in each place. The same position on a service page, in an article and in a newsletter, with a short worked example of each.

What you get

The editorial strategy. Three to five pages in plain language, in a document you own and can hand to a new writer on their first morning.

A theme sheet. One page listing the themes with example headlines under each, so whoever plans next quarter starts from something rather than a blank page.

A do-not-publish list. Short, specific and blunt. It saves more time than anything else in the document, because it ends the arguments before they start.

A worked example

An illustration. A twelve-person commercial cleaning firm publishes about two posts a month: seasonal tips, a staff birthday, a note about a new floor machine. It is pleasant and it is invisible. In the half-hour call the owner says the thing he has never said in print: most cleaning contracts are priced per visit, which quietly rewards a contractor for rushing, and he prices against an agreed standard instead.

That becomes the position. Three themes follow from it: how cleaning contracts are really priced, what a building manager should inspect before signing one, and what his own crews are measured on. Seasonal tips and staff birthdays go on the do-not-publish list. Over the following quarter he publishes five pieces rather than the usual eight, all five argue the same case, and two sales calls open with a prospect repeating his own line back to him.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, what you believe about your trade, and what irritates you about the way it is usually done. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Scope and number agreed before anything starts.
3. A recorded working session. About ninety minutes with whoever holds the opinions, which is usually the owner. The position comes out of this conversation; it cannot be invented from the outside.
4. Reading. Your last year of published work, and a look at what three competitors are saying, to find where your line is already visible and where it contradicts itself.
5. Draft, then final. Five to eight working days after the session. You read it, we talk, and anything you would not defend out loud in a meeting comes out.

Two to three weeks from first call to the final document is typical.

What it costs

This is a small piece of work, so it is quoted after the half-hour call once I know how much you have already published and how many people write for you. The pricing page shows the four ways of working and the bands they sit in, so you can see the shape of it before we speak. The number is fixed in writing before anything starts and it does not move afterwards.

If you expect to want the audience, topic and cadence chapters as well, buying the full plan costs less than buying the chapters one at a time.

What happens next

Most people do one of three things. They rank the subjects the themes imply, which is a topic strategy. They turn the position into wording the whole company can use, which is a messaging framework. Or they set a cadence they can actually keep and start publishing, which is the schedule decision.

None of that is assumed. The editorial strategy is a finished piece of work on its own. You can take the document, hand it to whoever writes for you, and never speak to me again.