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Top Ten Tips for Successful Team Blogs

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 7 months ago

Top Ten Tips for a Successful Team Blog 

compiled by the Bloggers of Library Garden


Over the last 18 months we have learned many things about how to blog as a team. We thought we would share our lessons learned with you!

 

1.  Establish clear "Ground Rules" for participation from the very start, especially in terms of expected frequency of posting, general guidelines for topics to becovered. Make sure all members of the team agree with the rules and be prepared to change the rules as time goes on (or bend them for special circumstances).

 

 

2.  Set up a way of communicating as a group off the blog. Some good methods are to have a Google Group or your own group on Facebook -- or even a traditional email list.

 

 

3.  Have a variety of perspectives whenever possible. Remember: Variety is the spice of life! Think broadly about diversity (age, gender, yes, but also experience - life and professional)

 

 

4.  Have a guiding vision for the blog-- and the flexibility to deviate from it. Constantly evaluate if your blog is meeting a need and what you need to do to improve.

 

 

5.  Have every member of the team actively read, comment on, and trackback to other blogs. This will help build your readership, and bring you into the (very supportive) community of bloggers. Also boost readership through postings to related listservs.

 

 

6.  Encourage all members to write about what really interests them. Realize that you need to be the “real you”--you can be engaging, truthful, and respectful at the same time.

 

 

7. Keep the number of bloggers in the group relatively small and avoid the urge to grow the group beyond a manageable size. Be prepared to replace bloggers as life circumstances change and also consider allowing guest posts on occasion.

 

 

 8. Set standards and stick to them. Provide links to the sources you cite, whether it is another blog post, a government document, or a New York Times story—plagiarism doesn’t belong in your blog and links to original material provides valuable additional information and opinions.

 

 

9. When managing a team blog, a benevolent monarchy is better than a democracy.  In other words, one (or two or in our case sometime three) people should "run" the blog (i.e. have admin rights over the blog; final say over who joins as blogger, guest editor, etc.).  In our case, Peter is the blogmaster and has full admin rights over the look/feel of the blog and the adding (or deleting) of authors. Having said that, the blog was co-created by Peter, Janie and Robert, and one, two or all of them have made decisions on blog standards, participants, blogroll contents, etc.  Input is sought from the whole blogging team, but decisions, while collaborative, are not always made by consensus.

 

 

10. Encourage everyone to feel ownership and help promote the blog. Shameless self (& blog) promotion by all involved is part and parcel of the commitment.

 


 

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