Starting a Group Blog series:
- Introduction
- Preparation – Strategy
- Pre-Launch – Expectations
- Launch – Execution
- Post-Launch – Growth / Conclusion
Once you’ve chosen your strategy and found your bloggers, you’ll need to
set expectations with them. Each blogger’s actions will affect the
reputation of the sponsoring organization, of the other bloggers, and of
the blog itself, so all parties will need to be comfortable with these
standards.
First come analogs of journalistic standards. Controversial statements
are fine (and will probably increase traffic), but libel (false and
damaging statements) is illegal in the US. Be sure bloggers understand
the difference. While no law requires the retraction and correction of
an error, it’s good practice for bloggers to strike through that text
and add a correction, either at that point or at the bottom of the post.
Let your bloggers know that you require them to do this. For a
particularly important error, they may want to also write a new post
explaining and correcting it. Writing a new post without altering the
original one shouldn’t be permitted, since visitors may come only to the
original post from a search engine and not see the correction.
Next, set up your posting/commenting standards. One common method is to
assign a person to each day you plan to post (for instance, one blogger
is responsible for posting every other Tuesday). Bloggers should be
expected to monitor and comment in the comment threads of their own
posts, and you’ll jumpstart commenting and increase the community feel
of your blog by also expecting them to comment on your other bloggers’
posts on a regular schedule. If your posting schedule has each blogger
posting every two weeks, it’s reasonable to expect them to also make a
comment on another post every two weeks.
Determine how you’ll allow content reuse. Can your bloggers cross-post
their writing on their own sites/blogs or elsewhere? Must they wait
before republishing? This is related to the copyright decision in the
preparation stage above.
Set expectations as well for leaving the blog. You should require
bloggers to give you some notice when they quit – for someone who writes
every two weeks, maybe they need to give you a month’s warning. On the
other hand, if a blogger isn’t meeting the expectations set above, have
a process for ending their participation. They might be removed if they
miss a certain number of posts, a certain number in a row, if they miss
without warning you a certain number of days in advance, etc. You
should also determine what will happen if you decide to stop sponsoring
the blog: will you take down the site, will you leave it up but static,
or will you sell it to the bloggers or another organization? That plan
might change over time, but you need an initial idea.
You’ll want a written agreement laying out the above expectations, and
your lawyer may want it to include a clause in which bloggers indemnify
you for any libel they might commit. It’s unclear whether this will
actually protect you (depends on how much you dictate the content,
whether the blogger has the resources to pay any judgement, etc.), but
do have your lawyer work with you on the agreement.
Finally, set expectations for readers: draft a privacy policy, a comment
policy, and needed disclaimers. The sponsoring organization will create
the privacy policy, which should mention how commenters’ information
will be used – for instance, if they will be subscribed to the
newsletter of the sponsoring organization. The sponsoring organization
will create and have final say over the comment policy, though the
bloggers must be comfortable with it. In particular, bloggers will need
to agree on how rude, insulting, or irrelevant comments should be dealt
with (look up disemvoweling for one option). You may be able to have
one overarching disclaimer, or you may need to have each blogger create
a personal disclaimer to be inserted at the bottom of her posts,
depending on her own legal counsel’s advice.
