Advocacy Avenue

Starting a Group Blog series:

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

Just as you planned and agreed with your bloggers how leaving the blog
would work, you now need a plan for how adding bloggers will work.
Maybe adding a blogger is entirely the decision of the sponsoring
organization, or maybe it requires the approval of some percentage of
the current bloggers. Think about whether adding bloggers means each
person posts less often or whether it means your posting frequency
grows.

Whether or not you add regular bloggers, you should consider having
guest bloggers. In fact, one of the best ways to recruit additional
regular bloggers is to have them guest post a couple of times first and
see how they fit into your blog’s community. Guest bloggers can be
recruited from regular commenters, bloggers on related blogs, and experts
on your topics.

You should inform all the bloggers regularly (probably monthly) about
how the blog is doing – how many hits, links, comments, etc. Make sure
the bloggers can see how the blog affects their own careers, not just
the benefits for the sponsoring organization – for instance, mention any
blogger’s media hits or speaking opportunities to the whole group.

Conclusion

Managing a group blog can be a great opportunity for an organization to
be seen as a leader in its field and for that organization to promote
like-minded voices in the blogosphere. If you invest the time to start
up your group blog with clear focus and expectations, it will be easier
to manage and more likely to take off. Your bloggers will enjoy writing
for you, and you’ll enjoy working with them. And you’ll have a great
blog.

Good luck, and have fun blogging!

After last week’s launch of our new group blog, Disruptive Women in Health Care, we’re back.

Starting a Group Blog series:

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

Designing and building your group blog will be almost exactly like
creating an individual blog, so there’s no reason to discuss it at
length here. The only obvious addition (other than more user accounts)
is that you’ll need to set up a reminder system, so bloggers know when
they’re supposed to post.

The sponsoring organization will probably be responsible for the launch
strategy: contacting all those bloggers you found in the preparation
stage and recruiting them to link to you, as well as more traditional
public relations. You should be at least copied on any media requests
to the bloggers, and if one of your bloggers receives a request they
should make sure you hear about it immediately.

The sponsoring organization will probably have primary responsibility
for monitoring comments and responding as detailed in the comment
policy. Plan staffing for the blog accordingly, and realize that as
your audience grows comment management will take more time.

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.

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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.

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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

In 2002, Heather Armstrong wrote about her job on her blog, dooce.com, and was fired for it. Since then, being "dooced" has been slang for being fired (or otherwise getting into trouble) for your blog. Last week, possibly for the first time, being dooced spread to microcontent.

A week ago, John McCain’s campaign suspended staffer Soren Dayton for posting a link to an inflammatory video about Obama on his Twitter microblog. I first saw the story mentioned on Twitter itself and started paying attention when someone mentioned the name of the staffer in question, since I’ve met Soren but didn’t know he was working for the campaign. Then I read the Politico story and the NPR news blog story and started thinking about "private" spaces on the Internet and how closely organizations are associated with their employees or their members.

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