How to Be Your Brand’s Editor in Chief with Ann Handley

"The value of an editor cannot be understated. The editor is the proxy for the audience." As the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs and the best-selling author of Everybody Writes and Content Rules, Ann Handley knows a thing or two about writing and editing. Most marketers have staffed up for content creation but what about editing? How do you know if you're creating what's best for your audience and brand. We discussed all of this with Ann on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.

About Ann Handley

Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author, keynote speaker, and the world’s first Chief Content Officer. Ann speaks and writes about how you can rethink the way your business markets. Cited in Forbes as the most influential woman in Social Media and recognized by ForbesWoman as one of the top 20 women bloggers, Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, a training and education company with the largest community of marketers in its category.

She was a long time monthly columnist for Entrepreneur magazine, is a member of the LinkedIn Influencer program , and the co-author of the best-selling book on content marketing, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (Wiley, originally published 2011. Paperback 2012.) The book has been translated into nine languages, including Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese. Her most recent book, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (Wiley, 2014) is a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

She currently has more than 350,000 followers on Twitter and writes about content, marketing, and life at the highly entertaining AnnHandley.com. A pioneer in digital marketing, Ann is the co-founder of ClickZ.com, which was one of the first sources of interactive marketing news and commentary. She started her career as a business journalist and editor.

Episode Highlights

"Most writers are not great editors." Many of us have staffed up for content creation but what kind of quality control do we have in place? "The value of the editor cannot be understated. The editor is the proxy for the audience."

How can brands up their editing game? "Peer editing is a great start. There's also the Hemingway app and Grammarly."

What about your brand's tone of voice? Branding is often squishy to many. Brand voice is something that's harder still for businesses to get their arms around. But a deeper focus on brand voice can yield stronger content. "I always ask, if your logo or label was masked, would your customers' know it's your content and not your competition's?"

Looking for a great example of a brand style guide? Ann points to UberFlip. The best part? Their online style guide is public! Everyone can be involved. Ann also reminded us that a good style guide should be like "bumpers on a bowling alley." It should help you stay in the lanes.

In praise of slow marketing. At Content Marketing World, Ann spoke about slow marketing. "Today we want more funnel, more pipeline, more credit. Conventional wisdom tells you that if you slow down you're road kill." In many cases "you have to slow down before you can speed up."

What brand has made Ann smile recently? Freaker USA. The beverage insulation category is decidedly unsexy but not for her friends at Freaker. Ann loves getting their fun emails.

To learn more, follow Ann on Twitter, check out MarketingProfs, and her website.

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