Starting a Group Blog series:
- Introduction
- Preparation – Strategy
- Pre-Launch – Expectations
- Launch – Execution
- Post-Launch – Growth / Conclusion
The first part of your strategy is the same as for starting an
individual blog: choose your focus/niche, determine your expected
audience, and choose the blog name / domain name (and trademark them if
you choose). Once you have those, start compiling a list of related
blogs, both as a resource for your writers (who can react to related
posts) and to use in your promotion efforts.
Then start recruiting your bloggers, and determine (probably with their
help) how you’re going to structure ownership and copyrights for this
blog. Most likely the bloggers will want to retain copyright on the
posts they write, while the sponsoring organization will have the right
to publish those posts indefinitely. If you’re interested in rights to
republish the content in other forms (ebooks, podcasts, white papers,
books), make sure to discuss that early! See the content reuse and
leaving the blog sections (in later posts in this series) for additional considerations. The
sponsoring organization will probably own the blog name, domain name,
and design.
You’ll want a variety of bloggers with different expertise and
viewpoints, so don’t rely on one person’s network to find them.
Consider teaming up with established bloggers, and consider recruiting
excellent writers who’ve never read a blog. Note that in a group blog
you probably don’t want ghostwriting, because that additional layer of
coordination will be frustrating over time.
All your bloggers should have a full understanding of the focus/niche of
this group blog. Unless it’s intended to be a blog about your
organization, don’t force bloggers to write only about the sponsoring
organization and its work: the blog will have far more credibility if
its authors provide interesting, wide-ranging voices on a topic rather
than sticking to the company line. It’s actually good to be criticized
occasionally on the blog (but do offer your point of view politely in
the comments). Controversy attracts readers and starts discussions!
Plan your categories early. You’ll want a way to see all posts by one
author, but that shouldn’t be your only category scheme. One of the
best things about group blogs is the way different bloggers’ posts play
off each other, so plan to categorize posts by subject area as well. If
you’re planning way ahead, a nonobvious piece of advice is to think
about categories as forming the basis of book chapters, so it will be
easier to repurpose your content in the future.
