What Is an Editorial Plan?
An editorial plan is a roadmap for content deliverables and an essential part of your content marketing strategy. It provides a bird’s-eye perspective on content plans for a given year, quarter, product launch, or campaign.
Your editorial plan builds on the foundation of your larger content marketing strategy and its defined strategies, audiences, and high-level goals. The editorial plan is a more tactical document that describes how you’ll execute that strategy, with specific content themes, topics, channels, and goals. It is a perfect complement to an editorial calendar or content calendar, which provides the most granularity in terms of nuts-and-bolts tactical execution. Some marketers even combine the two as a spreadsheet.
An editorial plan provides an overview of the content assets and strategies needed to achieve a set of business goals. Your editorial plan should include a narrative summary of these content assets, along with their intended audience, objectives, and related social content. An editorial plan can also include guidelines on process, workflow, and the roles and responsibilities of your content team.
6 Benefits to Having an Editorial Plan
- Get everyone on the same page, from internal stakeholders to freelancers.
- Clearly define the biggest priorities, and tackle them first.
- Identify your content asset’s ideal editorial angle, through how it can achieve brand objectives.
- Plan deliverables around industry events, holidays, and seasonal trends.
- Justify your organization’s value, budget, and relevance to stakeholders.
- Assure leaders and executives that their top priorities are recognized and reflected in the plan.
How Editorial Plans Support B2B Marketing
Editorial plans help B2B marketers prioritize top goals and plan execution. By mapping out a content course for an upcoming year/quarter/launch, they get your team on the same page and provide a go-to resource for team priorities.
In addition, editorial plans give B2B marketers a way to communicate plans across and between organizations. Internal teams and clients can have a means of aligning on deliverables, top goals, and strategy. This is especially useful in a B2B context since multiple businesses, all with their own lists of launches and deadlines, can all be accommodated.
Read more about how editorial plans can help B2B marketers boost traffic and streamline content deployment.