Is Copy Editing As Important As Copy Writing?
Content quality is impacted as much by copy editing as it is by authorship.
Professional writers might say content marketing falls within a specific genre in the nonfiction realm, creative nonfiction. Unlike the writers of most other nonfiction genres, digital marketing content writers must present facts, provide information, supply data and statistics...
...and entertain!
Editing the Elements of Marketing Content
Marketing editors target a dauntingly long list of elements, but every marketing editor should perform - at a minimum - three key exercises when proofing marketing content.
In combination, these three editing disciplines separate digital marketing editing from almost all other types.
Proofreading
Spelling, grammar, syntax and style have a tremendous impact on the content's ability to deliver a message, and on the information and/or data contained within. Poorly written content, even when written with an authoritative voice, is quickly disregarded by an audience as amateurish.
An editor must ensure marketing content is packaged in a tight, concise and linguistically precise manner.
Fact Checking
A marketing editor is responsible for verifying sources; sourcing information, data and statistics; sourcing claims that are not common knowledge or commonly accepted; assessing the validity of conclusions drawn from numerical premises and research data; and determining the credibility of sources.
Questionable or outright false claims can not only damage the branding of a product or service, it can harm the reputation of an entire company. In this respect, fact checking marketing content is as imperative as any other editorial marketing-content examination.
Content Originality
Marketing content is the product or service being marketed. Plagiarized, copied, refurbished, re-messaged, renewed, re-purposed and re-promoted marketing content almost inevitably leads consumers to believe the products or services themselves are fraudulent.
Marketing content that is not organic or evergreen - like a false or questionable claim - can damage the branding of products and services and/or hurt the reputation of the company marketing.
SEO Content and Formatting Optimization
While the emphasis on SEO may feel excessive, it isn't. A high degree of weight given to content optimization via keywords, keyword phrasing, latent semantic indexing and formatting (H1, H2, H3, bold, italics, paragraph breaks) is not excessive either. In fact, it probably hasn't been given enough weight.
SEO content and formatting optimizations cannot be overemphasized.
Website and content optimization is often the difference between a successful business and a failure, between a mediocre company with a moderate ROI and a fair profit margin and a company with enough liquidity to go public.
Evaluate Your In-House Editing Opportunity
While some companies have the means to both produce content and edit the copy, managers and business owners who are not certain their staff can perform professional-level copywriting and copy editing should consider a professional service.
In addition to recognizing quality marketing content; having the ability to proof for spelling, grammar, syntax and style; and being detailed enough to check facts, marketing editors must have the capacity and tools to identify unoriginal content in addition to understanding the elements of SEO content and optimization formatting.
It is fair to argue that content companies are generally the only companies with the capacity to produce and edit their own copy.
Simply put, marketing editing is very complex!