08.10
Not many public relations and marketing executives have had the luxury of knowing what exactly goes on behind the gilded doors of editorial. As someone who spent the first part of her career climbing up the editorial ranks of a trade journal, I’d thought I’d dish a little dirt.
Being an editor isn’t glamorous work. Only a select few sit behind mahogany desks sipping designer cappuccinos while penning their memoirs. Many editors can be found working in a maze of cubicles, sitting in uncomfortable desk chairs parked at ergonomically incorrect workstations. They toil through planning meetings, sales meetings and art meetings, where they haggle with respective departments about what’s “right” for the magazine.
Add to that the day-to-day tasks of interviewing, writing, editing and fielding phone calls, and an editor’s work is rarely done.
In this first installment of From the (former) Editor’s Desk, I’ll tell you about how editorial calendars are born in trade media.
Sowing the seeds of content
Editorial calendars, unlike Chia Pets, don’t crop up overnight. They are carefully planted with ideas that will provide a magazine with an abundance of content — and advertising revenue, hopefully. Here’s one way editorial departments build their calendars.
1. Brainstorming. An editor and his or her staff will look at the magazine’s standard subjects and brainstorm the preeminent topics for each. This process can take as long as six to eight weeks. At my old stomping grounds, each staff member developed at least five ideas for each subject. That meant my editor received at least 20 ideas for each topic! Not long after, the editor culled our lists and put the first draft of the calendar together.
2. Sales input. Many trade publishers rely on their revenue to publish each magazine. That means the page count is determined by the percentage of ads in each issue. For this reason, sales departments get some say as to what editorial topics will help drive sales the next year. Once the sales department signs off, the calendar can be finalized, posted online, and mailed to marketing agencies and potential advertisers.
3. The Media Kit. Here, or on the publication’s Web site, you’ll be able to find the finalized editorial calendar. Note that some magazines may have last-minute changes throughout the year, so it’s always wise to check their Web site before pitching a story for a topic that no longer exists.
What does this mean to PR pros?
Why is understanding editorial calendars important for PR professionals? For starters, we need to realize that the root of content starts growing up to as early as six months before the January issue. Taking a look at my calendar, I realize a good number of trade journals have already started the planning process.
It also makes me wonder how it’s almost mid-August, but I digress.
As PR experts, we need to be ready for whatever opportunities editorial calendars throw our way. Here are just a few different ways to do this:
• Read voraciously. If you’re like me, day-to-day PR work keeps the trade publications piling up on the corner of my desk. And on my spare desk chair. Take the time to scan the table of contents to see what jumps out at you. Keeping up with industry news not only helps us learn our clients’ business better than they do, but it also allows us to stay on top of trends that may be moving into the next year. If it’s a trend that appears mid- or late-year, chances are editors will cover it in the late winter or early spring, and it will appear on the editorial calendar. Take the time to bone up on the trends and determine how your client can leverage article or interview opportunities from them.
• Look at last year’s editorial calendar and find out where the magazine sees bonus distribution (i.e., trade shows). You can plan a bylined article for a client that targets something in the industry that a trade show covers. It’s a great way to develop thought leadership and get in front of an audience that might not otherwise be privy to what your client does.
• Get case studies in the can. If there’s one thing I didn’t have enough of as an editor, it was quality case studies. Editors receive bad pitches all the time for case studies that basically are glorified product releases. (Those go right into the circular file.) A detailed story about how a specific type of product — and, yes, usually we have to talk about that product generically — solved a problem that is told from the customer’s point of view usually makes for a good supplement to a story. Speaking from experience on both ends, a good case study can make an editor your friend.
That’s it for now. Hopefully this shed some light on the creation of the editorial calendar and how to use it.
If you have a PR question relating to journalism or publishing, please feel free to contact me at debray@schubert.com. I’ll do my best to answer it in another post. Cheers!
Related posts:
About the author:
Debra Yemenijian joined Schubert as a Sr. Social Media & PR Executive after six years as a medical editor and writer. She is a Penn State graduate and currently is pursuing her MBA. Debra is also a ballet teacher and dabbles in community theater and jewelry design on the side.
No Comment.
Add Your Comment