Starting a Group Blog: Pre-Launch - Expectations

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.

Starting a Group Blog: Preparation - Strategy

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.

Starting a Group Blog: Introduction

Why start a group blog instead of an individual blog?  Clearly the first reason is to cover your topic more thoroughly.  One person has only so much time to blog and, more importantly, can only know so many sides of a topic.  Recruiting multiple bloggers means more perspectives, more options, more ideas (and for the bloggers, it means built-in discussion partners and commenters).

More prosaically, while starting an individual blog definitely requires less coordination than sponsoring a group blog, a group blog can multiply your efforts since others will be helping with writing and promotion.  You'll be able to spend more time on making the blog successful, rather than on creating all the content yourself.

There are four stages in starting a group blog.  The first is preparation, in which you set your strategy by determining your topic, your audience, and your bloggers. The second is pre-launch, in which you get down to the nitty-gritty of expectations for bloggers, for the sponsoring organization, and for the public.  The third is launch, in which you create and publicize the blog.  Finally, the fourth is post-launch growth, in which you monitor the continuing effort of writing and promoting the blog.

This post starts a weekly series on what you need to do and the decisions you need to make to start an effective group blog.  It's written from our experience (lots of thought about legalities, for instance) so we're hoping others will chime in with more advice!  Why should (or shouldn't) someone consider starting a group blog?

Starting a Group Blog series:

• Introduction
• Preparation - Strategy
• Pre-Launch - Expectations
• Launch - Execution
• Post-Launch - Growth / Conclusion