Your company’s ability to create high quality content plays an integral role in boosting your brand’s online credibility and expertise. The perception that your content is well-crafted to specific standards helps readers know what to expect when they encounter your blog, website, frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, or other digital assets as they are seeking out educational or informational content.
Given that small business marketing experts are prioritizing an expanded role of content marketing relative to other tactics in the marketing strategies being deployed by SMBs and startups for the coming years, UpCity wanted to explore how small businesses have evolved or improved their editorial guidelines in 2022.
UpCity partnered with Pollfish to survey 500 U.S. small business owners on their editorial policies. We’ve broken down the survey findings into four primary sections:
- How important are editorial guidelines to SMB owners?
- What are SMB goals when establishing editorial guidelines?
- What content types are SMBs prioritizing in editorial guidelines?
- Challenges faced by SMBs in building editorial guidelines
How Important Are Editorial Guidelines to SMB Owners?
Editorial guidelines encompass a number of standards around content creation for marketing teams to follow. From establishing grammatical standards to formatting and visual requirements, editorial guidelines are essential to ensure consistency in messaging.
Because trends in marketing shift and evolve, editorial guidelines should never be a static component of your marketing team’s standards, but rather an evolving, living document. In the Pollfish survey, we explored how often brands are updating their guidelines and where they place their priorities.
48% of both B2B and B2C small businesses revisit and adjust their editorial guidelines on an annual basis
Your company’s ability to create high quality content plays an integral role in boosting your brand’s online credibility and expertise. The perception that your content is well-crafted to specific standards helps readers know what to expect when they encounter your blog, website, frequently asked questions (FAQ) page, or other digital assets as they are seeking out educational or informational content.
Given that small business marketing experts are prioritizing an expanded role of content marketing relative to other tactics in the marketing strategies being deployed by SMBs and startups for the coming years, UpCity wanted to explore how small businesses have evolved or improved their editorial guidelines in 2022.
UpCity partnered with Pollfish to survey 500 U.S. small business owners on their editorial policies. We’ve broken down the survey findings into four primary sections:
- How important are editorial guidelines to SMB owners?
- What are SMB goals when establishing editorial guidelines?
- What content types are SMBs prioritizing in editorial guidelines?
- Challenges faced by SMBs in building editorial guidelines
How Important Are Editorial Guidelines to SMB Owners?
Editorial guidelines encompass a number of standards around content creation for marketing teams to follow. From establishing grammatical standards to formatting and visual requirements, editorial guidelines are essential to ensure consistency in messaging.
Because trends in marketing shift and evolve, editorial guidelines should never be a static component of your marketing team’s standards, but rather an evolving, living document. In the Pollfish survey, we explored how often brands are updating their guidelines and where they place their priorities.
48% of both B2B and B2C small businesses revisit and adjust their editorial guidelines on an annual basis
30% – Semi-annually
48% – Annually
14% – Bi-yearly
7% – Unsure
1% – Other
Collectively, a majority of our respondents have policies in place to fine-tune their editorial guidelines on at least an annual or semi-annual basis. It’s important to keep guidelines up-to-date with current marketing goals in order to build brand awareness.
While grammar and style guides should remain as consistent as possible, the rules your team follows should be reviewed regularly to ensure your team is staying current with the recognized style guides that you might have used as a foundation for your style and grammar rules.
Other elements of your guidelines should be addressed with regularity. This includes your content goals, target audience, how to align content with your overall marketing strategy, and the types of content used to accomplish your overall strategy.
Addressing changes to editorial guidelines should also touch on the tone used by your writers, as well as enumerate any topics or terms that should be avoided when creating content and what kind of companies can be used for backlinks, which will evolve naturally with current events and social norms.
Keeping your editorial guidelines up-to-date in real-time helps your team to create timely content that will attract consumer attention when your associated calls to action will be most effective.
50% of B2B small businesses updated their editorial guidelines within the last 6 months. Meanwhile, 44% of B2C small businesses updated their guidelines 7-12 months ago
B2B
50% – Within the last 6 months
40% – 7-12 months ago
10% – 12+ months ago
B2C
40% – Within the last 6 months
44% – 7-12 months ago
16% – 12+ months ago
Digging deeper into the update strategies of our respondents, we found a trend in the survey data that shows different approaches to this process based on whether the company is focused on servicing other businesses or providing services or products to retail customers.
There seems to be more urgency in respondents who are focused on business-to-business services and products to keep editorial guidelines updated and inline with current digital marketing trends. The fact that 90% of B2B respondents updated their guidelines within the last 12 months makes sense given how much has changed in the economy and in consumer behaviors in the wake of the pandemic.
As businesses strive to keep up with changing customer needs and either adapt current services to demand or expand into new services and product lines, they themselves have adapted their content consumption. Because of these shifts, B2B service providers have taken steps over the last year to assess their target market, the scope of content demand, the purpose and intent of the content they create, and alignment with long-term and short-term strategic goals.
Respondents providing business-to-consumer retail services and products have adopted a slightly longer editorial guideline review cycle. While a large portion of B2C respondents have updated their guidelines in the last 6 months, a majority have addressed their guidelines more than six months out. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that many B2C service providers saw an increase in business in the wake of the pandemic without having to shift messaging or branding.
What Are SMB Goals When Establishing Editorial Guidelines?
Having established how SMBs are prioritizing updates to their editorial guidelines, we asked Pollfish to focus on what goals SMBs set out to accomplish when building their editorial guidelines.
15% of both B2B and B2C respondents are currently focusing on crafting editorial guidelines and content that help them generate demand for their products/services
B2B
12% – Collect leads and/or email subscribes
10% – Raise awareness for a cause
12% – Generate demand for my product/service
10% – Address the audience’s pain points and provide solutions
13% – Build reader trust
15% – Connect with prospective and existing customers consistently
11% – Showcase my company’s culture
8% – Create timely content that discussed real-world issues
9% – Generate quality backlinks
B2C
12% – Collect leads and/or email subscribes
8% – Raise awareness for a cause
16% – Generate demand for my product/service
9% – Address the audience’s pain points and provide solutions
13% – Build reader trust
14% – Connect with prospective and existing customers consistently
11% – Showcase my company’s culture
8% – Create timely content that discussed real-world issues
9% – Generate quality backlinks
The business goals companies establish when creating editorial guidelines are largely in-line when drilling down into respondent data for B2B services versus B2C retailers. The goals of both groups when updating or creating editorial guidelines are mostly synchronized down the line, with both contingents giving the most priority to connecting with and creating lasting relationships with new and existing customers.
Despite this alignment, B2B service providers and B2C retailers differ the most when it comes to prioritization of generating demand for products and services, with B2C providers placing more emphasis on this tactic than B2B. With the retail marketplace becoming increasingly complex and competitive due to more brands pivoting and expanding their services into new channels, this increased focus on the part of B2C makes sense in the post-COVID landscape.
What Content Types Are SMBs Prioritizing In Editorial Guidelines?
After exploring the goals and priorities of our SMB respondents, we wanted to further explore the types of content being focused on by marketing teams to get an idea of where our readers should focus their efforts.
20% of small businesses rated creating informative, how-to content as their most important content goal
20% – Informative, how-to content
12% – Comparison (vs.) articles
8% – Tip/Listicle-style content
15% – Buyer’s guides
13% – Definitional, what-is articles
14% – Interview, Q&A content
18% – Videos
Establishing a business plan focused on expanding social media presence establishes your content channels as a source of informative, how-to content. This sets your brand up to fulfill one of the primary business needs of web searchers when they turn to Google for answers on specific business challenges.
Because “informative” is now one of the most sought-after categories for content, it follows that these types of articles would top the list of goals for our respondents in establishing their content marketing strategies. When establishing marketing goals, following the trends around the demand for video content, which we dig into more below, pushes this type of content into the secondary slot of goals.
With customers in both B2B and B2C looking to better understand the products and services they are choosing to consume—whether for value or other information—it makes sense to prioritize creating buyer’s guides to address those inquiries.
A majority of small businesses respondents noted having 100% original content was an essential part of their content guidelines. Word count guidelines was one of the least important considerations.
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most important)
Having 100% original content
User-friendly visuals
Internal and external linking
Keyword usage
Properly optimized title, url and meta description
Language translation options
Usage of headers and subheaders
Call-to-action buttons
Word count
The focus of marketing experts shifted towards content creation in the last few years due to changes in search engine optimization standards affected by changes in the Google search engine algorithms. In order to get ahead of these changes and keep their businesses performing in search engine results pages (SERPs), creating original content has risen to the top of most marketing professionals’ lists of priorities, as original informative or educational material will deliver the best results.
There are several other interesting statistics of note that arose from our respondents. While creating original content is a must-have to help build out a successful marketing strategy, marketing experts know that it’s not enough on its own to drive results.
Our respondents gave equal weight to keyword usage; optimized title, URL, and meta descriptions; and internal and external linking. However, while still on the list, it’s become clear that word-count has become less important than it was in the past. Readers seem more open to both long-form and short-form content, as long as it’s informational and relevant to their search needs.
A majority of B2B small businesses rated having user-friendly visuals as their most vital editorial guideline. Most B2C respondents still rated having 100% original content as a crucial editorial guideline.
When we break down what businesses feel to be essential parts of their editorial guidelines by the market segments served by the respondents, we get a different set of priorities for each group.
For B2B focused service providers, creating more user-friendly visuals and creating 100% original content built around keyword usage top the list of priorities. When we look at the focus of B2C retailers, creating user-friendly visuals still top the list, but because of their increased reliance on search engines and local search to engage with new leads, they rely more on keyword optimization and ensuring websites are properly optimized for SEO.
Even external and internal linking to attract site traffic have priority over unique content, as consumers are looking to B2C more for specific services and products than they are for the content that educates and entices B2B customers.
B2B
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most important)
User-friendly visuals
Having 100% original content
Keyword usage
Call-to-action buttons
Properly optimized title, url and meta description
Internal and external linking
Language translation options
Usage of headers and subheaders
Word count
Other
B2C
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most important)
User-friendly visuals
Having 100% original content
Keyword usage
Call-to-action buttons
Properly optimized title, url and meta description
Internal and external linking
Language translation options
Usage of headers and subheaders
Word count
Other
18% of B2B SMBs are prioritizing video content in 2022, compared to 18% of B2C businesses that are still prioritizing informative, how-to content, along with videos
B2B
17% – Informative, how-to content
14% – Comparison (vs.) articles
10% – Tip/Listicle-style content
17% – Buyer’s guides
12% – Definitional, what-is articles
14% – Interview, Q&A content
18% – Videos
B2C
18% – Informative, how-to content
12% – Comparison (vs.) articles
9% – Tip/Listicle-style content
15% – Buyer’s guides
14% – Definitional, what-is articles
13% – Interview, Q&A content
18% – Videos
Before the pandemic, the demand for video content was already on the rise, with Cisco estimating that 82% of content would be enhanced by some form of video by the end of 2022. It’s not just companies recognizing the rising importance of video content, with 88% of consumers wanting to see more video from the brands they supported in 2022.
The same Hubspot data showed that video has created an increased number of conversions for 93% of brands leveraging the medium across social media channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
With these numbers in play, B2B brands would be remiss in not prioritizing video content generation in their overall marketing strategy moving into 2023. Following up on video with informational and how-to content and buyer’s guides is a strong strategy to address potential and existing customer pain-points and establish brand credibility.
For B2C services, our respondents are following the video marketing trend in their prioritization of video content, but have dedicated slightly more effort in creating how-to and informational content to draw in readership over buyer’s guides.
Challenges Faced By SMBs in Building Social Media Content Strategies and Editorial Guidelines
Like any other business process in the modern economy, executing effectively on marketing strategies has become an extremely complex process that can pose a myriad of challenges to teams without the necessary experience or expertise. Establishing editorial guidelines can be especially challenging because these guidelines touch on so many elements across your business’s marketing infrastructure.
Most SMBs said creating new types of content ideas was the most challenging aspect of establishing content guidelines when their business first launched
Regardless of the industry, creating unique and relevant pieces of content can be extremely challenging, especially when the goal is to create a content calendar that extends throughout the year. It becomes even more challenging to create unique and engaging types of content, as finding the right mix of text on the screen, video, and visual content that appeals to your ideal customer can be difficult.
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most challenging)
Hard to create new types of content ideas
Too much online competition
Lack of in-house content resources
Too many Google algorithm updates
Difficulty defining our target audience
Unclear overall content strategy
Difficulty keeping consistent guidelines among team
Challenging to set SEO guidelines
Not enough in-house technical resources
Other
Other challenges have emerged around content marketing in the last few years as the economy fluctuates between recovering from the pandemic and wavering on the cusp of a recession. Because content has become a proven marketing tactic, channels for content dissemination have become extremely crowded, and the need to keep up has put a strain on many businesses’ in-house content creation teams. Further complications arise out of the constant updates to the search algorithm coming out of Google and the need to keep up with evolving SEO guidelines.
A large portion of B2B respondents stated that their biggest editorial challenges are catering to evolving target audience needs and maintaining SEO guidelines. In contrast, most B2C respondents still noted creating new types of content ideas as their biggest challenge.
For our business-to-business respondents, the fact that their biggest challenge is keeping up with an evolving target audience absolutely seems justified when you take into consideration how time consuming it can be when many businesses have also had to enhance their services, expand into eCommerce, or adapt to new market conditions over the last two years.
Keeping up with evolving SEO guidelines, Google algorithm updates, and other best practices has proven to be just as difficult for many small businesses, as changes tend to require massive adjustments to existing content as well as the strategies being relied upon to dictate the creation of new content.
Changes to the algorithms and SEO standards also tend to put a strain on in-house content creation teams where there is either a lack of manpower or technical resources to keep up with the constant demand for content and updates.
(On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the most challenging)
B2B
Evolving target audience
Challenging to maintain SEO guidelines
Lack of in-house content resources
Too many Google algorithm updates
Hard to create new types of content ideas
Not enough in-house technical resources
Too much online competition
Difficulty keeping consistent guidelines among team
Unclear overall content strategy
Other
B2C
Evolving target audience
Challenging to maintain SEO guidelines
Lack of in-house content resources
Too many Google algorithm updates
Hard to create new types of content ideas
Not enough in-house technical resources
Too much online competition
Difficulty keeping consistent guidelines among team
Unclear overall content strategy
Other
For B2C service providers, the challenges are somewhat different, given the nature of B2C advertising and the focus on customer acquisition. For our respondents focused on retail services, the challenges lie more in creating unique types of content that capture customer attention and figuring out how to retain the attention of an audience with constantly changing content demands.
The same B2C respondents seem to have stronger resources to handle the challenges of keeping up with SEO and Google updates, but struggle more with in-house resources, both staffing and technical, than their B2B counterparts.
Are You Ready To Tackle Your Editorial Guideline Standards?
From the findings in our Pollfish survey of 500 U.S. small business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketing specialists, it’s fairly obvious that tackling the creation and ongoing management of editorial guidelines can be a difficult undertaking.
To educate and keep themselves up to date, your team could lean into resources across the web, such as those offered by known marketing expert Neil Patel or provided by Small Business Trends. You could search out specific publications in your industry and explore their posted publication standards and editorial requirements, often listed on their websites for freelancers and contributors or supplied upon request. For example, a business operating in the banking and finance industry might check out NerdWallet’s posted editorial guidelines.
Posting your editorial guidelines publicly provides your content team with a degree of legitimacy and shows that your team creates content with purpose and intent, guided by a certain set of ethics and principles in line with your corporate vision and mission.
If your team doesn’t have the expertise to put the necessary standards into practice as part of your ongoing social media strategy and content management strategy, the UpCity marketplace can connect you with consultants or agencies that can help craft your editorial guidelines and set the groundwork that will go a long way towards establishing your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness.
UpCity’s Survey Method
UpCity used Pollfish to survey 500 U.S. small business owners of all ages. Fifty-seven of the respondents are male and 42% of the respondents are female. A majority of our respondents are 25-34 years old (34%).