Ever thought about collaborative blogging? Sometimes it is tough blogging on your own, waiting for comments, chasing traffic,sending your posts to Twitter, manually adding to Facebook so you get better Edge. Sometimes you just want a break from writing. In fact it’s quite lonely writing and posting at times. Have you thought about how blogging together, as a team can lift everyone involved? That a multi author blog may work for you?
Do you think it’s a nice idea in theory and that it will never work?
The 7 laws to making your multi author blog a success
1. Set a blog post deadline and stick to it.
2. Schedule the blogs in advance
3. Get some policies
4. Promote each other
5. Comment on each others blog posts
6. Talk to each other
7. Tear up the rules occasionally
Setting a blog post deadline
This is vital to collaborative blogging. When your bloggers know and understand the deadline your life becomes a lot easier and there is less chasing to do. Structure is essential and putting in place early will mean you have less complications later.
When I started one of our collaborative blogs I didn’t have a deadline, I used to wait and wait and wait for bloggers to send the posts in. Some blog posts I am still waiting for. I swiftly learned you need to give a deadline so your bloggers can plan. Wednesday is our cut off day on Birds on the Blog, and my time more efficiently managed. By knowing the structure your bloggers can work with you.
Schedule the blog posts in advance
As soon your bloggers send in their posts (or upload them directly) add them to your schedule. If you don’t add them right away, you will lose them. The magically evaporate from your inbox and the blogger will not be best pleased with you. The Editorial Calendar plugin (it’s number 15 on this list that blasts your excuses out of the water) is the lynch-pin to making your collaborative blog work. With this tool you have a visual representation of what blog posts are live, what ones are drafts and what days are empty. You will know at a glance who you are having to chase and what days you have to fill. You can schedule the topical / trending posts sooner to make the most of search engine traffic with ease – it’s drag and drop.
Get some policies
Decide in advance if you are going to have a revenue share policy or affiliate policy. Editing policies should always be clarified in advance – what you will correct, what you will cut out and what you will leave. I am a light editor, I like to let the blogger portray themselves accurately others may not be as light and want to send back articles for revision. You will also need to decide the policy on recruiting new bloggers and the policy for bloggers who are not performing, and how you replace the bloggers that leave.
Remember as the creator of the collaborative blog, you are in change of implementing the groups decision. It becomes easy to do if everyone knows the rules from the outset. You will need policies for original content, reminders that plagiarising other people’s work or stealing images is not acceptable.
What about policies for commenting? Which comments will you publish? Which comments will you exclude? Will you use a blog commenting system such as Disqus or Livefyre? Rewarding your commenters and thanking them are all parts of the policy, please remember them. Secret weapon to make your life easier – Thank me later plugin, it will email your commenters to thank them for commenting it helps build your blog’s community. Planning your policies will make your collaborative blog run smoother.
When group blogging it’s to your advantage to remember each blogger has different levels of blogging experience
Promote each other
The purpose to collaborative blogging is to support each other. In supporting each other you can reach further, reach more readers. Not only does that mean blogging together, it also means sharing each others content. Make it easy to share content, add the Tweetmeme/Twitter buttons, social bookmarking buttons. Make it easy to share on Facebook too, and it helps to ‘like’ each others blog posts as well.
Our collaborative blog has a much bigger voice than our personal blogs. Some people are reluctant to promote a newbie blogger, or a post which is very personal decision . I don’t push people too hard but I do remind them that once upon a time, they were starting out and needed a helping hand.
Comment on each others blog posts
As well as your readers becoming part of your multi author blog community, your bloggers are part of it too. From experience the better bloggers support each other by sharing and by commenting on each others posts. It’s good manners to respond. One blogger regularly submitted her posts, then failed to respond to the comments. The community stopped sharing her posts, they stopped thanking her for the useful advice and slowly they turned their back. Nobody likes being ignored. Your bloggers are also part of your multi author blog community.
As the organiser you have to guide the bloggers and steer them towards working together. Sometimes someone just isn’t a team blogger, this is where your policies will support you and help you make things right. Try to help them integrate into the team before you show them the door.
Talk to each other
It sounds silly, but many people are just too busy to talk to each other. We deal with that by having a huge message thread on Facebook, that migrated to a Facebook group. Here people drop in daily adding to the conversation – what they are planning on writing about, anyone got any inspiration? Any advice on xxxx? The group ‘bonds’ over the conversation and the bloggers become stronger as a team. You can use other ‘chat’ tools instead of Facebook. Skype text chat works very well and so does MSN and now of course Google Plus.
Tear up the rules occasionally
Your collaborative blog works because you have a structure, some policies, your bloggers supporting each other and producing great content. Every now and then throw the rule book out of the window and do something different.
- Have a guest post,
- Have a very personal post,
- Have a more business-like post.
- Shoot a video
- Go nuts and add some audio…
Doing something different revitalises your community and keeps things fresh. Your bloggers and readers will thank you for it and you blog will be stronger because of it.
What have I missed? What laws do you have on your multi author blogs?
image: Tie Guy II
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About Sarah Arrow
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[...] If you’re coming back from vacation to blog editor duties, you’ll appreciate the advice in this post from Sarah Arrow at For Bloggers by Bloggers, especially if your blog relies on several contributors: 7 Laws That Make Your Multi Author Blog a Success. [...]