Social media is flooded with posts from freelance or contract editors looking for clients. To serious writers, this looks either like an embarrassment of riches or a hopeless quagmire. Is there any hope of finding a great editor?

Yes.

Their social media posts can help you narrow your search to a few exceptional editors.

Does One Post Matter That Much?

Prevailing thought is that more posts are better, and to gain clients you need to flood your socials with content. “Keep your brand in front of potential clients so they remember you.” Pushing to increase content leads to posts devoid of valuable content, posts without much thought behind them, and posts that don’t represent you or your brand well. Branding expert Charisse Louis of Charene Creative says, “Every post is a message. You’re either building brand equity or giving it away.”

For freelance editors, if your brand is your reputation as a great editor, your posts are proving either your competence or incompetence. No, a single post may not derail your reputation as a great editor, but misspelled words, poor grammar, weak sentences, and noisy content that shows up in post after post defines a pattern. And patterns matter.

It disturbs me to find poor grammar, spelling, and word choices in social media posts or online news sources, but finding no better standards in posts and articles by someone calling themselves an editor is maddening. Everything we write and share reflects how well we practice our craft. An editor who cannot produce excellent content themselves cannot help you improve your content. An editor without grammar skills cannot repair your grammar. An editor who cannot spell cannot fix your spelling.

Does Their Own Writing Show Consistency and Care?

Your Google search has turned up a list of potential editors. What now?

1. Dive deep into their website content. Don’t just scan their list of services or look at their photo to see if they “look” like a professional but take time to read the content and blog posts. Do you find content that is useful to you as a writer? Are the articles informative? Have you found misspelled words, missing punctuation, or sentence fragments?
2. Check out their social media posts. Read several posts going back at least a month. How often do they post? Is the content significant and informative or light and fluffy? Does their content keep you reading or make you want to stop wasting your time? And those misspelled words, sentence fragments, and MIA punctuation?
3. Reach out to them through a post comment, website contact page, or email. Ask a series of questions that are important to you. Then consider the timeliness of their response, the value of their response, and the excellence of their word choices, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

No editor is perfect, and the best editors admit this. Social media posts can indeed show editorial competence. A pattern of careless errors and poor writing across their website, social media posts, and emails signposts what you’ll get if you hire them to work on your project.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash