WORKWEEK

I perform 3 types of edits on every piece of content that comes my way. The first edit is the largest and most extensive. The final edit takes into account how people read on the internet, and makes sure that our content can stand up to those standards. 

I break it out into these three types of edits because doing all of them at the same time is both impossible, I’ve found, and doesn’t get you the quality you need. Your brain needs to be focused on a type of edit––looking for specific problems––to really hone a piece properly. 

1. Context edit: 

Question(s) to ask: Does this make sense? Have we connected the right dots to present a new, strong case?

This is your biggest edit, and it starts by you diving in and reading the piece. You’ll find that with most articles, you can’t even get past the intro. Trust yourself here, if you can’t read through the introduction without getting confused, bored, or distracted, then your readers won’t be able to either. 

This is where the editing starts. 

More questions to ask (just in the introduction alone):

• How is the argument presented? Could it be better? 
• Is the argument even accurate? 
• Does it convince me that this article (which is likely at least 800 words) worth my time? 
• Does it convince me that this is something I should care about right now? 
• Does it connect dots for me that I previously didn’t see properly connected, but now that I do, feel like I can trust the article and better understand a topic for having read it? 

One thing I’ve needed to teach my content marketers again and again over the years is to read through the lines. Take the Apple iOS update a couple years ago. Apple was telling folks that it was for consumer privacy. And a lot of content marketing teams at tech companies parroted that storyline––cheering Apple on. 

But the iOS updates were never about consumer privacy. That was Apple marketing. It was instead about building a walled garden to keep Facebook and other large tech companies out of Apple’s honey pot of consumers and revenue. It was about making things harder for other companies. It was about a competitive advantage. 

That’s the thing about Apple and Facebook and Google and whoever else. They have built these tools that so many of us have come to rely on, but they are public companies that must grow to appease shareholders and help keep the global economy on pace. 

They will do what they need to, specifically wall out competition, change their algorithms, and lobby politicians, in order to make that growth easier. 

That was the real story of what Apple was doing––and they wouldn’t be the last. It was a turning point within the Big Tech industry, where innovation was no longer the growth lever, but walling out competition and building walled gardens was. 

And the impact that decision had on ecommerce brands and small businesses? Well, that was the story that my teams needed to tell, or at the very least highlight. 

The point here is that this context edit is looking for a unique, accurate point of view––something other people aren’t catching, dots they aren’t connecting. That’s how you crate thought leadership. That’s how you stand out from AI. That’s how you win hearts, and minds, and build content folks want to read or watch or listen to––because you add value. That’s how you build a brand with content. 

2. Line edit: 

Question(s) to ask: Is this consistent with our guidelines?

Line edits are easier than context edits, and the revisions can even be done by an editor themselves (though you often want to leave them or mark them for the writer if they write for you often so they can reduce these errors). 

In this, you are checking for:

• Grammar usage
• Sentence structure 
• Overall clarity 
• Spelling
• Spelling in alignment with your brand standards (ecommerce, Ecommerce, eCommerce, e-commerce…which do you use? Or, do you spell out percent, or just write %?)
• Proper citations (seriously, click through the link and find where they got the info. Make sure it isn’t more than 5 years old). 
• Linking to the brands mentioned, the people mentioned, etc. 
• Interlinking to relevant, existing content on your own site (like case studies)
• Making sure the brands mentioned / included are customers (if you follow that rule, and my teams do)
• Headline and subhead editing and the offering of alternatives
• Potential social sharing scripts / storylines for social media managers to use to help with distribution 

3. Scan edit: 

Question(s) to ask: Can I scan this & still really like it, get what it is saying & have a takeaway?

Finally, you want to do a scan edit. A scan edit exists to account for how people actually read things on the internet. They scan. And that means your content needs to stand out and tell a story with just a scan alone. Here is what to look for/at:

• Headline: Is this compelling enough to make me want to read it? 
• Subheads: Are these compelling enough to make me want to read them, and do they tell a story throughout the piece? Your subheads should tell a story so that when a reader sees them in the table of contents, they can scan and get a sense of the larger article. It should also persuade them to read it. 
• Line breaks: Do you have a lot of big paragraphs? Break them up into smaller ones – ideally no more than a few sentences. It’s easier to read them on screens this way, especially smaller screens. 
• Text breaks: Photos, bullet points, subhead and pull quotes all help pull a scanner further into the story, but if you don’t have one of these elements in nearly every section of your content (i.e. if on a particular part of the desktop screen, it is a wall of text), you are likely to lose the reader there. So, because subheads, photos and bullet points are usually there as part of the story, I like to use pull quotes strategically to break up text and help readers with scannability. 
• Bullet points in general: Do you have a written out list of three or more? Make those bullet points for scannability. 
• Images: Are the images interesting? Are they beautiful? Do they tell a story? Are they blurry? You want to make sure that the in-line photos support the story for the reader, but also entice the scanner to click or pause (longer time on site, woohoo!)––maybe even to begin reading. Ideally these are custom images, and ones that distill down a complex topic within the piece into a scannable image. 

All right, that’s all I got for this week. I’m 100% back from parental leave in two weeks. I’m excited to dive back in, and talk a lot more about scaling content operations to support large organizations, and what me and my team learn from what works, and what doesn’t. 

Remember, content teams function differently at every organization based on that company’s needs. Content’s role is to support the organization, helping it to earn brand affinity, attract prospects, speed time to close, and win customers. Content is the heartbeat of an organization––and figuring out how to produce high quality at scale and speed is no easy task. But it’s fun! 

See you all next week!