How to define an editorial line for your website?

What is the editorial line of a website? Why is it so important when you create a blog or a website?

How to develop your digital editorial line and make it effective?

We will try to give you some tips to help you create the editorial line of your website: follow the instructions!

What is the editorial line for your website?

The editorial line makes part of the graphic charter. It’s a written document that enables you to determine, from the creation of a blog or the launch of a website, the tone, the point of view, the editorial style… It enables you to create a coherence, and stick to the brand identity of your company or personal branding.

You must define the editorial line before publishing on your website.

But why should I define an editorial line for my website? Is it not easier to write web content instinctively?

Why should you write an editorial line for your website?

It is essential to define a clear editorial line and not to start writing your texts arbitrarily. Apart from the coherence of your brand identity, a web editorial line will give professionalism and credibility, and will enable you to retain your lectors.

But that’s not all!

We will see that an editorial line helps you enhance your conversion rate and page rank. Your digital editorial line refers to all your publications on platforms such as your blog posts, newsletter, social networks, email marketing campaigns, editorial contents of your website…

To sum up, the definition of an editorial line consists in stacking all the odds in your favour to write powerful texts for the web.

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Steps for the creation of a digital editorial line

Be clear on your objectives

It is always easier to reach your goals with a precise guiding line.

Clarify the objectives of your website or blog creation.

Define your marketing strategy accordingly: do you want to increase your visibility, improve your brand image, create a community to share your passion or business sector, get more contact files…?

To sum up, editorial content gathers 3 types of main objectives:

🚀 Informing

🚀 Promoting

🚀 Converting

Know your public 

Another key point: when you communicate, you need to know the public you are addressing. Otherwise, which tone, words, or register should be used?

It is essential to know your target audience to define the way you will speak to your lectors. To identify the standard profile of your audience, don’t hesitate to use marketing technics to define your persona.

Get information about their age bracket, the main gender (female or male), their habits, tastes, behaviour, etc.

You must also define them in terms of marketing: are they customers, potential customers, influencers, professional partners…?

All this knowledge will enable you to create the most effective contents depending on your ambitions.

Study competition

Use business intelligence to get information about your competitors’ offer. Therefore, you will have the possibility to stand out from the competition: in this way, you will create your added value with a personal touch.

You are unique: show it and stand out from the others!

Define contents

The formats of your contents: If you analyse your public, you will know their expectations in terms of tone and style (informative, funny, humoristic, technique, direct…). You will also learn about the favourite format of your contents for your blog or website (videos, images, texts, podcasts…) to get higher commitment from your public.

Here is how you can keep your lectors engaged, not bore them, and bring as many people as possible:

• Use different supports and republish the same content on different media. For example, a recipe or DIY tutorial may take the form of videos or illustrated articles.

• Think about the length of your contents. You can also alternate long and short publications to meet most people’s needs.

The topics of your contents: Then you must define the topics you will handle. It’s better to classify if you want to get everything clear.

For example, the categories may be:

• Professional tips

• Top products

• Behind the scenes

Classifying your topics makes browsing easier.

You will probably have many published articles. Therefore, it’s important that your lectors browse your articles and find the publications that interest them easily.

Try to create complementary categories and publish them alternately to create a dynamics and not bore your audience.

To sum up, be biting, interesting and entertaining.

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Create your wording    

Wording corresponds to the semantic field of your brand.

In general, these words will be part of your communication regularly, in your articles, in the editorial content of your website or within your publications on social media.

Moreover, write and highlight key phrases as a summary of your philosophy.

Here is the example of SiteW: “Easy, fast and free”.

Determine your frequency of publication  

Try to plan the frequency of publication.

Define it according to your time and human resources. Stay realist as for your possibilities and don’t give priority to quantity over quality.

However, remember that you need to publish at least one article per month to retain your lectors. Regularity is essential because your lectors’ commitment and loyalty will be more important if they are expecting the next publication.

The secret? Ensure your lectors can’t wait to read your posts!

Create an editorial calendar

Now, let’s move on to the practice!

Once you have defined your digital editorial line, first, list some article ideas and create your editorial calendar where you can:

• Give the title, semantic field, tone, number of words, point of view, publication date… of an article.

• Mention the writer: each member of your team has their core business and specific knowledge, and is capable of creating an expert content.

• Precise the workflow (status) of the article: In progress, Validated, Redacted, Published…

• Add different notes or precisions such as the essential keywords, the structure of the article or the documentary resources to exploit.

Editorial line and article circulation

You can create the best contents, but it’s essential to offer them high visible.

Therefore, the last thing you need to think about is the diffusion circuit of your publications: how to promote your contents effectively?

You need to choose your means of promotion according to your target public and their internet browsing habits.

Let’s see how to increase the number of lectors and retain them at best.

And then? Evolution of your editorial line

As an exception, you can break rules of editorial line.

Tips

If the exceptions become the rule, you may create another blog or website to differentiate your orientations and keep editorial consistency.

Increase your conversion rate with a good editorial line

The conversion rate of your article will depend on its nature and the objectives you have for this publication. For example, if you want to inform your audience, you can offer the possibility to download a white paper.

On the contrary, if you want to convince your audience, opt for interviews or customer testimonials with a call-to-action button.

An effective editorial line indeed can help you increase your turnover!

Your editorial line will boost your SEO

A good editorial line that makes sense will boost your SEO.

➡️ If you use a regular semantic field, the keywords related to your business sector will rank higher.

➡️ Moreover, search engines will appreciate the creation of new pages.

Pay attention to your Author Rank

Author Rank is a Google’s scoring system to determine the quality of an author.

To that end, the Authorship enables you to connect contents to an author through their Google + profile. This will boost the SEO of your articles.

Author Rank will take into account many criteria to evaluate the quality of your publications, especially your contacts on Google + or the quality of the websites where you have already published.

Editorial line and guest-blogging

Which editorial rules do you need to respect in case of guest-blogging?

The detailed redaction of your editorial line is important, especially in case of guest-blogging. If you invite an external writer to publish an article on your website, they will have to respect your redaction rules. Therefore, it’s useful to give them a specific reference document.

On the contrary, when you write for an external website, you will have to respect the editorial line of the host website.

Now you are almost an expert of the digital editorial line! Don’t wait anymore and create your editorial line to get the best web performances! 🚀