Create an editorial charter in 7 steps

 Before launching your professional blog, it is essential to establish an editorial charter. This helps you clarify your writing needs and will be particularly useful for you, as well as for the editors who will be in charge of running the blog.

Focus on this essential document for the success of your Content Marketing  !

The 7 steps to follow to write a relevant editorial charter

Step 1: Introduce your brand or business

To be sure you are heading in the right direction, the first step in writing an editorial charter consists of presenting your brand or company. Indeed, this document is intended to be shared internally within the company, but also externally if you use an external service provider.

Start by describing the missions of your company, taking care to talk about its vision and its long-term and short-term objectives. It will also be necessary to emphasize your company's values ​​to understand the way it communicates.

To guide your potential external service providers, talk about the company's ambition and the different phases of development already encountered. Also, do not hesitate to reserve part of the writing of your editorial charter for the organization of your internal team. All people associated with company communications must be mentioned. This way, you can give everyone a role.

Step 2: Define your editorial strategy

Secondly, you can move on to defining your editorial strategy. This strategy must include mention of your marketing objectives in terms of communication. Here are examples:

• Increase engagement on social media posts;
• Increase organic traffic to a website through social networks;
• Promote additions to the basket via a blog;
• Reduce the bounce rate on blog posts.

List all the social networks on which you will rely to communicate. The ideal would be to set objectives per social network so that everyone has a clear and precise vision of the expected expectations.

Define your added values ​​as well as your positioning to implement effective, impactful, but above all unique communication. In summary, list everything that allows you to stand out from your competitors. These differentiating elements must be integrated into your communication to allow you to stand out from the crowd.

Finally, organize all the actions to be implemented in an editorial calendar. The latter is a valuable tool for managing your marketing strategy. By organizing the entire content strategy of your communication in this calendar, you will have an overall vision of the subjects to be covered and the deadlines not to be forgotten.

Step 3: Define your targets

The next step is to focus on the people who will consume your content: your targets.

We strongly invite you to draw up personae, that is to say, typical portraits of your targets. This technique will allow you to understand how they like to consume content. To try to reach them, take an interest in the social networks they use, the times they usually log on and the type of content they like to see and share (video, photos, quotes). The better you know your targets, the better you will be able to interact with them through your content.

Your content strategy must adapt to the type of content your targets like to consume. To give you a concrete example, if you realize that your targets appreciate the video format, you have every interest in focusing on this type of format.

On the other hand, if you realize that your targets like to consume content on the social network TikTok, create the company account now on this network.

Indeed, creating content and posting it regularly is great, but it's useless if we can't trigger actions from users thanks to this content.

Step 4: The language elements of your editorial charter

Once you have defined your targeting, ask yourself about the tone to adopt to address your targets. Is it better to adopt a jovial tone, a neutral tone, or an offbeat tone? It's up to you to decide based on the reactions you want to elicit from users.

In the same way that you need to ask yourself how to address your targets, ask yourself how you want to talk about your business. Will you use the first person singular or the second person plural? All this must be defined within your editorial charter .

The part dedicated to the language elements of your editorial charter must also explain the editorial rules adapted to your company. To give you an example, we don't express ourselves in the same way on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on flyers or even on posters. The main thing is to clearly define the writing practices to adopt on your different communication media.

Step 5: List the media on which your editorial line will be used

After having defined how you are going to express yourself on your different communication media, it is time to define the types of communication media that you are going to use for your business. We advise you to separate your media into two parts: the print part and the web part.

Concerning your print communication, do you want to talk about yourself by distributing flyers? Do you aim to print posters for urban visual communication?

At a time when all companies are highly digitalized, your digital communication must be a pillar of your company's strategy. So clearly define the places where you want to be present and set objectives to follow for all of your communication media.

Step 6: Impose rules for each type of content

Since your editorial charter aims to harmonize your speeches, it is necessary to set a certain number of rules to guarantee the coherence of your company's communication.

Define the rules to follow for each type of content. To make this idea more understandable, let's take a concrete example. If several writers write content dedicated to your website's blog, it is in your best interest to give them a document with rules to follow to guarantee the homogeneity of your blog.

You can define the typology of article titles by specifying the number of characters and the font. We also advise you to regulate the structure of the articles to maintain consistency. For example, you can define the number of characters, the number of parts and sub-parts that an article must contain as well as the obligation to write a chapter and a conclusion.

The more you can standardize your message, the less your company's message will be diluted to the liking of content creators. You will thus be able to maintain control over your communication.

Step 7: Your SEO strategy

Natural referencing is an essential marketing technique for any business. This is a way to gain visibility on search engines and benefit from an increase in organic traffic. So that each member of a team can participate in the SEO work of a company, it is necessary to include the SEO strategy within your editorial charter .

If you have previously carried out an SEO audit for your company, do not hesitate to insert it directly into your editorial charter . The idea is that the whole team can have in mind the keyword opportunities to use to make your business visible to search engines by working on its ranking. Indeed, these keywords can be used on a daily basis by the web editors of your team in blog articles for example.

But actually, what is an editorial charter?

The editorial charter is an official document, presented by the company, which serves as a briefing to web editors.

These rules aim to give all the essential elements to writers to  build blog posts  that will meet your loyalty, acquisition, sales and SEO objectives.

They address both the content and the form of the articles, in order to guarantee your blog homogenized content, which will convey  the identity of your company.

So, what is the essential information that the editorial charter must contain?

The editorial charter defines the objectives of the blog

First, for your writers to find the perfect angle of attack, they need to understand exactly what your blog's goals are.

These can be multiple, but they must be explained in black and white to manage the editorial:  acquire quality traffic, move up in search engines, help customers use your services, promote a service , educate the prospect, etc.

Obviously, it is recommended to break down the rules that we will see below by objectives.

The editorial charter determines the targets

The rules must take into account the profile of the people to whom your content is addressed. We don't write in the same way for business leaders as we do for stay-at-home moms. It is also necessary to define the level of expertise of the target.

These elements must therefore be followed by the tone to be used:

• Professional or offbeat;
• informality or informality;
• Technical jargon or popularized terms…

The editorial charter addresses the content and form of the articles

In this section, list the different blog categories that allow you to structure your content.

Also detail the types of content expected:

• infographics ;
• article ;
• checklist ;
• right wrong ;
• case study, etc.

It is also in this section that you must indicate the required level of precision: citation of key figures, presence of official sources, citation of studies less than 2 years old, etc.

This chapter of the web editorial charter also includes the rules concerning illustrations. Will editors be required to provide visuals to illustrate the article? If so, how many, in what format, where in the article?

Create editorial rules

Finally, be sure to give the desired structure for each article, namely a title, an introduction (approximately how many words?), the number of subtitles and paragraphs, a conclusion, etc.

You will also need to define the total length of the articles: do you prefer short formats of 300 words, classic formats of 500 words or long illustrated posts of 1,200 words?

We also need to think about keywords, how should they be integrated into the texts? For example, you can ask editors to put them in the title, in at least one subtitle and 5 times in the article, in bold.

Editorial charter and editorial line: what are the differences?

We sometimes tend to confuse an editorial charter with an editorial line. However, these are two very distinct documents. To see things more clearly, let us tell you about the differences between the two.

To begin, let's define what an editorial charter actually is and the framework in which we use it. An editorial charter is a reference document defining the way in which content intended for communication (print and web) of a company must be produced. This document must represent the identity of a company by conveying its values. Its objective is therefore to standardize a company's speeches across all of its communication media.

Next to the charter, we find the editorial line. It is a document that defines the choices to make and the axes to respect when creating content. We develop an editorial line to ensure the harmonization of a brand's communication when several professionals produce content for the same media.

In summary, we can say that the editorial line arises from the editorial charter and that these two documents contribute to the harmonization of the communication of a brand/company.

Our advice for writing an editorial charter

The main role of an editorial charter is to guarantee consistency, “a guideline”, of the different contents of a site. So how do you create a good editorial charter? Our advices.

Designate a person responsible for writing

Above all, it is appropriate to designate a person who will be responsible for drafting this charter but also responsible for the project.

Its main mission will be to gather and clarify everyone's ideas in order to clearly identify the identity of the site on a written document.

Determine the main lines of the web editorial charter

The first step, which is not the least, is to determine the main lines of the web editorial charter. It is therefore important to bring the whole team together, because it is the ideal time to exchange or even compare ideas.

To do this you can ask yourself several questions such as:

• What is the mission of the website?
• Who is he talking to ?
• How should the style of content on the site be? etc.

And then develop answer ideas for each of them.

Then the project manager will have to explain the structure of the editorial content, focusing on images, screenshots, etc. with the aim of being more meaningful for the team.

State the editorial rules

Once the project manager has explained the structure of the content, he or she should state the editorial rules .

Namely the style to use when illustrating with examples, the format to adapt to all texts, the writing rules concerning referencing, keywords, key words in titles, etc.

But also other content such as photos, videos, graphics, etc. to be integrated into the site.

Organize the publication of content

The other step is to properly organize the publication of content . We must therefore ask ourselves:

• Who will write what, when?
• Who will validate the texts?
• Who will take care of the images?

This will be the perfect time to find a realistic and rational organization while correctly distributing tasks.

Indicate how to manage exchanges between each person

It is possible that your site manages community content (forum, comments, etc.). It is therefore advisable to indicate how exchanges between each person should work.

For example, you can ask yourself the following questions:

• How are the discussions moderated?
• How are comments featured on the site?

Our tip: send a brief to your editors

Before working with one or more web editors, it is relevant to write an editorial charter to transmit precise instructions to your collaborators. They will then be able to offer you content that meets your expectations and allows you to meet the objectives of your Content Marketing strategy.

Once the editorial charter has been written, the ideal is to send a brief of 2 to 3 pages to each of the editors. This must indicate the writing rules to follow in order to publish a text adapted to your website.