Many organisations have complex strategic plans and large marketing teams. They have editorial calendars written months ahead. But when it comes to Monday morning and your newsletter is due out on Wednesday, how do you make that baby sing?
What do you tweet about? How do you link your key messages to things happening in the world that people care about? Most important: Why aren’t more people following you on instagram? That’s the difference between the best made plans and feeling stuck.
To sort this out, have a weekly editorial meeting. Or if you’re too scared, pay me to run one for a few weeks to get you up to speed.
The most important way of engaging people is weaving yourself into the news cycle. I recommend you have an editorial meeting on a Tuesday. Invite anybody who is important. Do it once you’ve all read the newspaper and the week has gotten under way. What’s bubbling up for you? What about your colleagues? Don’t limit yourself to your issues. I mean what’s got everyone’s attention? That’s where we start.
When I say “once you’ve read the newspaper”, I recommend buying the New York Times or similar every day. Read it in the paper edition. There’s a daily commitment involved in reading the paper copy you don’t get online. I also recommend buying a tabloid, but that’s extra. I respect your weekly budget. You may also want to check Twitter and your social feeds.
Last week, for example, news broke that Rihanna was pregnant. It was all over Twitter. What else? Facebook’s stock plunged. Amazon’s stock soared. What else? The British Prime Minister is still facing pressure over his COVID parties. This meeting is the time to ask: What’s on the front page and at the forefront of your mind? What do you remember after you’re done?
If your operation is you, your partner, and your dog, you can still run an editorial meeting. I favor such meetings. This isn’t only for large teams. You can even meet with yourself, actually. If that’s not too weird.
Then, rank it. Create a “news run”. Do so against the interest level for your audience. Then try to figure out if you have anything to say about each piece of news. Do any of your colleagues or messengers have anything to say of relevance? For example: it’s great news that Rihanna is pregnant. If only America celebrated all Black women’s pregnancies as we are hers. If your audience is legislators mulling family leave then there’s your angle. Now, who might write a piece with a personal story attached? If you’re lucky, the personal story will also work as an opinion piece and you might also be able to submit it. A colleague of mine from a young women’s political organization did that last week. Here’s the result. The engagement on social media around this issue and framing was also superb.
I’m evolving this approach into the best way to deliver for many of my clients. It’s based on my days working for weekly newspapers and it tends to follow a nice rhythm. You get to take your weekends off to relax (and avoid burnout) and then do the bulk of the work in the week. By Friday you’re thinking ahead to the following week. You’ve had a little time to recover from the last news run, and you’ve had time to prep for next week. I have less time for thinking about content months in advance. It’s the way I’m wired. I like to be in the moment. The good news is so do your audiences.
More and more as I do communications work I come to realize: I’m a news cycler. I like to work in rapid response teams with others who plug themselves in as much as I do. This approach is iterative. You have to try it a few times to get comfortable with it. Then you have to try it a few more times to learn where you’re missing out. It helps a great deal if you enjoy the company of your colleagues. In fact, that can be decisive. It’s how the best news rooms function. With people being nice and fun to work with. Most of the time.
I learned how to do it at Money Marketing, a financial paper in London, back in 2005. Those lessons still come back to me today from the best editorial meetings I’ve ever attended. I’m very grateful to be able to bring those lessons back to my clients today.
Why I Love Editorial Meetings
