Content Strategists and Editors

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What Is Content Strategy?

Various sources point that there is a broad definition of content strategy. Kristina Halvorson states in A List Apart that “content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content“.

A well structured, useful, and usable content that is easy to be found is vital to improving the experience of the users of a certain website. Therefore, the goal of the content strategy is to create a meaningful, engaging, cohesive, and sustainable content.

The Role of Content Strategists

Throughout each content project, content strategists define the content that will be published and why it needs to be published. What they do largely depends on what exactly they are specialized in, so there are front-end strategists and back-end strategists.

Front-end strategists focus on the content and customer experience and make appropriate recommendations about the content. They answer the questions like:

  • Who are the target audiences and why they require the creation of content?
  • What content do they prefer and how to respond to their current needs, as well as to those in the future while also serving the goals of the business?
  • How to better coordinate the efforts of content creators?

Back-end strategists, also known as the “intelligent content strategists“, focus on structure, scalability, and technology. They make recommendations on how to use technology (hardware and software) to handle the content in the most efficient way and answer the following questions:

  • How to organize the content so that the authors can easily store, retrieve, and prepare it for automated selection and delivery in the relevant channels?
  • How to avoid creating and recreating the content repeatedly for each channel?
  • How to take advantage of content and surface it for customers in a fresh and valuable way?
  • How to future-proof the content to take the advantage of the next project?

The Role of Editors

Editing is related to a habit of developing practical communication ideas, organizational skills, and the ability to deal firmly and diplomatically with the crew of people involved in getting the content from concept to delivery.

Content editors plan all blog posts, topics, webinar themes, and social media updates, and they plan everything in relation to each other to ensure brand consistency. They also ensure a consistent flow of content from the writing team and guest contributors, set deadlines and confirm that materials are delivered on time and to their expectations based on the briefing document.

Content editors edit all written submissions and ensure that the pieces are easy to follow and read, that they can inform and entertain the reader, and meet the standards of a certain brand. Besides this, they collaborate with writers during the outlining and editing process to ensure that the content covers all essential points, and they point to mistakes in submissions and how to correct these mistakes.

Content editors also work closely with social media managers, community managers, and other key members of the team to engage in the active promotion of each piece of generated content. In addition to this, they are interested in the metrics of performance for each piece and build strategies to properly evaluate those pieces of evergreen content for future efforts.

Why Many Organizations and Individuals Tend To Confuse Content Strategists With Editors?

It is evident that editorial work is closely related to the content strategy which causes many organizations and individuals to confuse content strategists with editors and leads to various questions about the difference between them.

As can be seen, the difference between content strategists and editors is not large. The role of the content strategists is close to the role of marketers. They work across a portfolio of brands and they are concerned with building a larger traffic over time, while the role of editors takes a larger integrity. They are in charge of developing ideas that content strategists can use, as well as developing a compelling content on deadline. They collaborate with all writers and guest contributors to create an appealing and powerful content that will engage their readers and inform them in a way that will make them come back for more in the future.

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