Managing Tips for Managing Editors

What is a managing editor?

A managing editor is someone who manages content production, freelancers or employees writing the content and works on big projects. A managing editor works to put together different pieces and lead a team, they also work with other team leaders such as sales and marketing and come up with different new strategies to bring success to the company. Managing is a very tough job in all fields of work but being a managing editor is an even more difficult task. They have to run after different employees, check their work, make sure it is done on time and is of high quality. They have a lot in their plate; most managing editors do not follow any tips or tricks to help them and they end up being over burdened and confused. To help managing editors, our experts have put together a list of tips that can make your managing life a lot of easier.

1) Be organized. To manage other people you must be the first one to be organized. It gets very difficult to remember different things, you’re not a robot. You need to develop some sort of a system that helps you become organized. There are several things you can use to organize yourself. For example keep a bundle of post it on your work station and write all the emerging deadlines on it so that you can remember them easily and place that post it somewhere in your sight so that it stays in your mind. If you are not fond of post its then you can buy professional planners and plan all your leading projects and other managerial work in it. There are several types of planners available that will help you as they already have designed columns for different things including a calendar. You can also make great use of your smart phone and install organizing apps that will work the same as a planner and will also send you reminders as notifications if you want.

2) Have great interpersonal skills. To lead a team you must be a people’s person. You should know how to talk to people and coordinate with them in order to produce great content. If you are hard to approach or too reserved, your employees will not come to you if they have any query and will shy away. That can be a very dangerous thing for the company as because of all the miscommunication, they work done will be of no use or of substandard quality. Thus you must establish good social relationships, make it very comfortable so that the employees come to you with problems instead of struggling on their own. This will improve efficiency and the work place environment. The workers will be motivated to work harder and give their best.

3) Stay informed and keep learning. Do not be over confident and sour towards learning from juniors. Work with your team as a team, and ask them to come with different ideas. This will be a great way to make the employees learn from each other, you can also learn several things. As a managing editor it is your responsibility to keep yourself up to date and learn new things that concern your field. They world is progressing, there are new tools and techniques getting invented every day, it s foolish to keep using the same conventional methods when your competition is getting more tech savvy and venturing into new trainings and tools. 

4) Set goals that are reachable and not hyper realistic. It is important that you realize the strengths and weaknesses of your team and design projects in the same manner. Do not expect too little and do not expect too much. When you are setting goals make sure that they are not impossible and your team will be able to reach it. For example ask your team that by this month the organic traffic should be 15% higher or that the newsletter subscriptions should be doubled in the next month. This will keep your team working hard and when they achieve one goal, they will work even harder for the next one. If you are not given the authority to set goals then you need to correspond with the one who does. You need to tell them outwardly if a goal is impossible to reach. It will shatter the morale of your team if they work excessively hard on a goal and they fail to reach it. Thus, to keep the motivation level high try all your might to give them goals that are within reach.

5) Confusion is the killer of creativity and other work demands. You must be very clear in the instructions you give your worker. Otherwise if there is confusion the work produced will be useless and a big waste of team. Train your employees by providing them written instructions and guidelines that they can follow easily and get the work done perfectly. For example if you are providing Dissertation Editing Services then you must be clear on what kind of editing services you demand from them.

6) After you have organized yourself it is time to organize your team. Your team comprises of different people with different natures and different working styles. The biggest problem managing editors face is that the team members all submit their work in their own style that burdens managing editors a lot. To combat this issue you need to introduce a standard format that should be followed by all employees without exception. Here are some things that you can include :

• Set a time and place for all the work to arrive. Set up an email address and distribute it to all the employees and give them a deadline. This way you won’t have to struggle with finding looking for work that is sent to you, you’ll have it all in one place.
• If you are collecting written work then tell your employees the font size and font style so that the work you receive is uniform. You can also give additional instructions such as if you want them to bold out the headings or underline certain things. It will help you save time and effort.

7) Keep a regular follow up and over communicate with your employees, this will help you keep a keen eye on all the progress that is being made. Keep asking them to tell you their status and how much they have done along with how much is left to do.

8) Be a great writer yourself first. To be a managing editor you must have great writing skills. Polish your writing skills and learn new techniques. You should also brush up on things to avoid while writing so that you are successfully able to edit all the scripts that are sent to you and your employees can trust your editing skills blindly.

It takes a lot to be a great editing manager. You need to adopt different things, be open to new ideas and much more to be able to successfully lead a team of people. Work with your team from the roots to the way up and let them know that you are there to help them, train them and bring success to the whole company.