5 Editorial Skills Students Need to Master Now

 Interested in becoming a writer? It doesn’t just take great content creation skills–although that talent is absolutely the core of what you need! Whether you’re writing for a small blog or a big publication, the editorial skills below will help you be successful in any editorial career.

Be reactive. Unless you can predict the future (#wewish), you won’t always have total control over the types of content you’re writing. With news and trending topics on Google, Facebook and Twitter, you have to be able to stay on top of fast-moving events and write an original, fun blurb that covers them–and because this information is available to all of your competitors, you have to do it as quickly as possible.

We recommend putting Google alerts on topics that are relevant to what you’re covering, so that if anything pops up in the news, you’re one of the first people to know.

Be creative. Creativity will help to set you apart from the many other writers out there. If you can find a way to bring a new angle, voice or perspective into an overly-emphasized topic, then you’re on your way to creating original content that your users actually want to read.

Be detail-oriented. We can’t stress this one enough! If you’re going to be a writer, the last thing you want is to publish a post –or promote one on social media — that’s full of grammatical errors. Read over what you’ve written two or three times if you need to, and have a second pair of eyes look over your piece and provide feedback. Then, read over your piece one last time – we recommend doing this out loud to be extra sure that your article or blurb is in great shape. You’ll be surprised how much you can catch even after a third or fourth look.

Being detail-oriented also applies to the amount of research you put into an article. If you’re covering a news story, research every aspect extensively, using and citing reliable sources.

Be comfortable talking to people. Whether you’re required to interview people for your job or not, any piece of content becomes richer when outside opinions, voices and quotes are included. Reach out to people who are experts on your topics, and ask for their insights. Trust us, this will make your content so much more interesting and real.

Be forward-thinking. Guess what? Even though you can’t plan for every piece of content you’ll be creating, you should absolutely have a plan in place. This means making sure that you have your ideas and your content calendar ready a month in advance–all articles should typically be completed (meaning they’ve been through the final round of edits) a week before the published date.

If you don’t have all the editorial skills on this list, don’t panic; you have the time to acquire them- a lot of them come with experience! Make sure to reach out to professional writers and editors who have experience creating and managing amazing content, and apply for internships to gain more experience.  Oh, and speaking of which, we have plenty of jobs in editorial – so don’t forget to sign up for WayUp :).