What Does a Blog Editor Do?

Some blogs, particularly well-trafficked blogs, have a paid or volunteer blog editor who manages the content publishing for the blog. For most smaller blogs, the blog owner is also the blog editor.

The role of a blog editor is similar to the editor of a magazine. In fact, many blog editors were former online or offline magazine editors, but just as many are highly experienced bloggers who have transitioned to the editing side. The key responsibilities of a blog editor are outlined below. An experienced blog editor will bring writing, editing, and technical skills and experience to the blog, but as the responsibilities described below show, a blog editor also has to have great communication, leadership, and organizational skills.

Managing the Writing Team

A blog editor is usually responsible for managing all of the writers (paid and volunteer) who contribute content to the blog. This includes hiring, communicating, answering questions, ensuring deadlines are met, providing article feedback, ensuring style guide requirements are adhered to, and more.

Strategizing With the Leadership Team

The blog editor will work closely with the blog owner and leadership team to set and understand the goals for the blog, create the blog style guide, determine types of writers they want to contribute content, the budget for hiring bloggers, and so on.

Creating and Managing the Editorial Plan and Calendar

A blog editor is a go-to person for all content-related matters for the blog. She is responsible for the development of the editorial plan as well as the creation and management of the editorial calendar. She identifies content types (written post, video, infographic, audio, and so on), chooses topics and related categories, assigns articles to writers, approves or rejects writer pitches, etc.

Overseeing SEO Implementation

The blog editor is expected to understand the search engine optimization goals for the blog and make sure all content is optimized for search based on those goals. This includes assigning keywords to articles and ensuring those keywords are used appropriately. Typically, the blog editor isn’t expected to create the SEO plan for the blog. An SEO expert or SEO company usually creates the plan. The blog editor just makes sure the plan is carried out through all content published on the blog.

Editing, Approving, and Publishing Content

All content submitted for publication on the blog is reviewed, edited, approved (or sent back to the writer for rewrites), scheduled, and published by the editor. The editor ensures content is published to the blog in strict adherence to the editorial calendar. Exceptions to the editorial calendar are made by the editor.

Legal and Ethical Compliance

The editor should know the legal issues that affect blogs and online content publishing as well as ethical concerns. These range from copyright and plagiarism law to providing appropriate attribution through links to sources and avoiding publishing spam content. Of course, the blog editor is not a lawyer, but she should be familiar with common laws related to the content industry.

Other Possible Responsibilities

Some blog editors are also expected to perform other duties in addition to traditional editor responsibilities. Those might include:

• Record and report writers’ activities for payroll purposes.
• Manage the blog community by moderating and responding to comments.
• Handle social media marketing activities such as posting to Twitter and Facebook.
• Answer emails on behalf of the blog.
• Perform blog maintenance activities such as updating plugins.
• Write content for the blog.
• Analyze web analytics data to gauge content performance.
• Manage split testing and other content performance tests.
• Manage subscriptions, syndication, and email newsletters.
• Manage guest posting requests.