Steps to Create and Manage a Successful Team Blog
A team blog is a blog written by a team of writers.
That means multiple people contribute to the blog content by writing
posts. Team blogs can be very successful for standalone blogs or blogs
written for businesses. However, you can't just set a group of people
loose and expect your team blog to be successful. It takes planning,
organization, and ongoing management to create a great team blog. Follow
the tips below to develop a team blog that has a chance for success.
1. Communicate the Goals and Focus of the Team Blog
Don't
expect team blog contributors to know what your goals are for the blog.
You need to explain what you want to get from the blog and give them a
specific topic to focus on in their writing. Otherwise, your team blog
will be a mashup of inconsistent and possibly inappropriate content that
no one wants to read. Find your
blog niche and educate your team blog writers about it, so they understand and support it.
2. Develop a Team Blog Style Guide and Author Guidelines
It's
essential that you create a sense of consistency in your team blog, and
that comes through the writing style, voice, and formatting used in the
blog posts written by contributors. Therefore, you need to develop a
style guide
and author guidelines that cover the way contributors should write,
grammar requirements, formatting requirements, linking requirements, and
so on. The style guide and author guidelines should also address the
things contributors should not do. For example, if there are specific
competitors you don't want them to mention or link to, identify those
names and sites in your guidelines.
3. Choose an Appropriate Team Blog Tool
Not all blogging applications are appropriate for team blogs. It's imperative that you select a
team blog tool that offers tiered access, author pages, author bios, and so on. WordPress.org, MovableType, and Drupal are excellent
content management systems for team blogs.
4. Hire a Team Blog Editor
You
need a single person who has experience managing people and an
editorial calendar (see #5 below) for your team blog to be the best that
it can be. This person will review posts for style, voice, and so on.
He or she will also create and manage the editorial calendar and
communications with bloggers.
5. Create an Editorial Calendar
Team
blogs are better when the content is organized, focused, and
consistent. Therefore, an editorial calendar helps to keep all bloggers
on track and ensure the blog content is interesting, useful, and not
confusing to readers. Editorial calendars also help to make sure content
is published at the best times. It's not a good idea to publish 10
posts at the same time. Use an editorial calendar to create a consistent
publishing schedule, too.
6. Offer Communication and Collaboration Tools to Contributors
Don't hire contributors and then ignore them. The strongest team blogs have
communication and collaboration tools
in place, so contributors can discuss ideas and problems and even work
together on posts. Tools like Google Groups, Basecamp, and Backpack are
great for integrating virtual teams. You can even
create a forum for team communication and collaboration.
7. Provide Feedback to Contributors
Communicate directly with contributors through email, phone calls, or
Skype
to provide feedback, praise, direction, and suggestions. If your
contributors don't feel like they're an important member of the team and
don't feel like they're given the information they need to be
successful, then you'll limit the potential success of your team blog,
too.
