For businesses, publishing consistent, high-quality content helps draw customers, increase sales, and achieve marketing goals. But what are users looking for from your content when they visit your website? According to one survey, the majority of consumers want to make a meaningful connection with the brands they interact with – almost 70% look to shop with businesses that understand their unique buying needs.
One way to foster loyalty and make a lasting connection with your audience is to maintain editorial consistency across all published content. However, this can be a challenge, especially if you publish a high volume of content or work with a global editorial team.
Want to learn how to achieve content consistency across a distributed editorial team? In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at how to keep your editorial team aligned with your goals – and how Proofed can help you scale content creation while maintaining consistency.
desired tone, style, and intended purpose, readers can easily recognize your brand voice, which means they’re more likely to choose your brand over others and become repeat customers.
A lack of consistency, on the other hand, can negatively impact your bottom line. Inconsistent content can confuse readers, dilute your message, and cause your business to appear unprofessional or disorganized. These days, all ecommerce businesses rely on content marketing to some degree – whether through email, social media campaigns, or website content. According to one study, 97% of marketers incorporate some type of content marketing as part of their overall strategy. No matter your industry or the amount of content you produce, it’s important to establish a reliable system to ensure a productive editorial process, especially when working with remote in-house editors or a distributed editorial team of freelancers.
The first step to maintaining brand consistency across your entire editorial team is to establish clear content goals. You may have a wide range of objectives for your marketing content, so it’s essential to consider what you want to achieve with each piece of writing, including blog posts, landing pages, and newsletters. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, boost sales, drive conversions, or inform your target audience?
Remember that some business content will be written with more than one goal in mind. For example, a blog post could drive conversions with a strong call to action and increase brand awareness by offering valuable, shareable content that customers are searching for.
Defining one or more objectives for all published content and communicating them to your editorial team helps everyone stay on the same page.
Create a detailed brand style guide to ensure consistency across all content distribution platforms. A style guide is an important tool to have in your content marketing toolbox, especially when updating your goals or training new editors on your team.
A comprehensive brand style guide serves as the foundation for all content creation for your business. Think of your brand identity as your business’s “personality.” A style guide helps develop the core traits and characteristics you want reflected in your content. Establishing a clear brand persona and creating unified guidelines also minimizes inconsistency, which avoids confusing your target audience.
Here are some of the standards you should include in a style guide to help your brand stand out:
Be sure to include a section in your style guide that specifies the dedicated roles and responsibilities within your editorial team.
If necessary, Proofed can work directly with your editorial team on style guide creation. Style guide management is also essential – after developing your guide, be sure to share it with all relevant teams to ensure standards are closely followed.
Even with clear goals and a style guide in place, keeping up with high-volume content can strain internal resources. Outsourcing to a managed editorial service like Proofed can help bridge the gap. A managed editorial service works directly with groups of freelance editors, led by dedicated project managers, who can quickly learn your business’s style guide and apply it to your content. This ensures that no matter who writes the original content, every piece is reviewed using the same standards for tone, grammar, formatting, and terminology.
Outside editors bring a fresh, unbiased perspective to help catch inconsistencies your in-house editors or other internal teams might overlook. They are trained to flag deviations from your brand voice or messaging and suggest improvements that align with your content goals. As your content needs grow, consistency can suffer due to tight deadlines or stretched internal resources. Outsourcing editing services allows you to scale content production without compromising quality, as every piece goes through the same thorough editing process.
A strong quality assurance (QA) process is the last line of defense against inconsistent content. Well-established editorial agencies have optimized workflows and QA processes in place. This reduces variability between editors and ensures consistent editing practices – regardless of whether an in-house editor or freelance editor is assigned to the project.
If your business uses AI-generated writing or tools in content production, it’s even more important to implement a rigorous QA process. While AI tools can be useful for producing a high volume of content relatively quickly, AI-generated content must be fact-checked for accuracy and thoroughly edited for consistency with your brand’s style guidelines. One benefit of partnering with a managed editorial agency is its ability to keep pace with efforts to scale content creation and the increasing volume of AI-generated content.
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Collaboration and clear communication are key to editorial consistency in a distributed setup. Encourage regular check-ins to review content goals and discuss challenges and updates. Effective, streamlined collaboration decreases the risk of discrepancies among in-house editors and outsourced editors.
Collaboration tools such as Slack, Notion, and Google Workspace make it easy to stay connected and work together in real time, regardless of location. These tools also make it faster and easier for an outsourced editing team to seamlessly integrate into your current workflow.
If you outsource editing services to a professional editing agency, be sure to meet regularly with your team’s project manager to communicate updates regarding your style guide, content goals, and delivery times.
Consistency should also be tracked with measurable key performance indicators. Review performance metrics data regularly to evaluate whether your content is hitting its targets. For example, are posts with a certain tone or structure performing better? Are customers engaging more with specific types of content?
To answer questions like these, you can use the following tools to review performance metrics and adjust your SEO techniques and content marketing strategy accordingly:
Consider your content goals and analyze metrics such as bounce rate, conversion rate, organic search traffic, and time on page for best results. This will help you effectively plan your content types, formats, and distribution channels.
Consistency across all content plays an important role in helping your business establish trust and loyalty with your target audience, and it moves leads through the sales pipeline. When you work with a distributed editorial team, it’s especially important to prioritize consistency in your content.
At Proofed, we have experience implementing style guidelines and maintaining consistency for large-scale content distribution for a wide range of businesses and organizations. If you’re ready to learn more about how Proofed’s highly skilled, cohesive team of editors can support your content production process, schedule a call with us today.
The key is to develop and enforce a detailed brand style guide that outlines voice, tone, and preferred terminology. Training your team on the guide and providing examples ensures every team member understands how to write in your brand’s voice.
Collaboration platforms like Slack, Notion, Trello, and Google Workspace help teams communicate and share documents in real time. For editing and version control, tools like Google Docs and editorial plugins for content management platforms can streamline workflows and ensure consistent formatting across documents.
If your internal team lacks specialized editing skills or is struggling to keep up with volume, outsourced editorial services can provide consistency and quality without overloading your staff. Services such as Proofed offer expert editors who can align with your brand guidelines and ensure editorial consistency at scale.
To ensure alignment, start by providing a detailed brand style guide that outlines your preferred tone, terminology, formatting, and grammar rules. Proofed offers onboarding processes where editors are trained on your specific requirements. Clear communication, sample content, and regular feedback loops also help maintain consistency and reinforce your brand voice over time.
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