Guest blogger, Wendy Thomas of Live To Write – Write To Live
Photo by Basheertime
When a few of us local New Hampshire women writers decided to start a blog we weren’t quite sure how it would work out. Some of us had been blogging for a bit and knew the ins and outs of internet publishing while others had only heard of that thing called blogging. They knew they wanted to (had to) get involved in blogging but didn’t have a clue about how to get started.
Here are a few of the more important lessons we learned as a group while starting and continuing our blog.
Invite people with whom you’d like to work and spend time with
A blog should be creative and fun. Don’t invite people to join who are energy drags (you know—the people who just seem to suck the life out of a room). Also don’t invite people who always want to take control. Trust me, it will result in bruised feelings all around. Our blog is a relaxed and creative outlet. All of us admit that we are still learning and for that very reason we tend to check our egos in at the door before we all meet. Our group meetings are actually a lot of fun (and are often centered around a meal). We were writing acquaintances before we started blogging together, and we are now all friends.
Also, when you are blogging as a group, decide on a number for the core team. We started our blog with 4 members. Along the way we’ve picked up some writers and lost a few writers. We now have 6 on the team and that feels good and manageable to us.
Talk about money up front
Most blogs can be done for free (wordpress, blogspot) but some are set up privately and sometimes, there might be additional costs (group business cards for example). If money is going to be an issue, make sure that people understand the costs up front. Don’t speak for anyone else when it comes down to spending money. Take votes, let everyone have their say. No one wants to feel like they’ve been surprised by unexpected costs.
Decide on a mission statement
This is key. Writing about life as you see it is not a mission statement. That’s an online diary. During our initial planning SKYPE call we threw out a few ideas for why we were creating our group blog. Although the reason we were going to do it was because we wanted to get our names out in the writing community, after some discussion we decided that the purpose of our blog was going to be to help other writers write. We didn’t want to focus on something too small (say, grammar lessons) and we also didn’t want to make the purpose so large that our audience would get lost in trying to find information.
Acting as mentors to other writers where we could share our experiences and expertise seemed to sit well with all of us. It even worked that we are all different writers, some of us write for newspapers and magazines, others write books, and still others concentrate in blogsphere writing.
That’s not to say that we haven’t had additional clarification discussions along the way—“Is it alright if I put up a poem?” “A short story?” “Can I repost something from my personal blog?”. When we do have a question like this, we send it out to the entire group for discussion. To date, there has been no objection to anyone’s post requests; I think that is in part due to the fact that we all wholeheartedly agreed on our mission statement since the get-go. Everything is asked with that in mind.
Set up a schedule
We have an online calendar where blog members can sign up on the days for which they’d like to submit posts. We try to have a new post up every day of the week, Monday through Friday. With 7 members this meant that we contributed a post roughly every week and one half. But guess what? We’re writers and sometimes we can get very busy. Very busy.
To offload the post schedule we decided to institute a “Fun Friday” post where a group question (writing related) is answered by all members who wish to contribute. I can go into the blog and in a short amount of time, I can have a full month’s worth of “Fun Friday’s” completed and ready to go.
As the summer approaches and many of us will be tied up with kids at home from school, and there is currently discussion about replacing another weekly post with an inspirational quote related to writing. It would lessen the work load while keeping the blog current and active.
Lastly, we’ve also learned to reach out to guest bloggers (making sure they understand the mission of our blog—see? another reason why that is key to decide up front) and have had great success with allowing others to share their writing knowledge with our audience. After all, having a place where we write and where we invite others to share about their writing experience is really what it’s all been about since the very beginning
Wendy Thomas is an award winning journalist, columnist, and blogger who believes that taking challenges in life will always lead to goodness. She is the mother of 6 funny and creative kids and it is her goal to teach them through stories and lessons.
Wendy’s current project involves writing about her family’s experiences with chickens (yes, chickens).
Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at thewriterslife@hercircleezine.com
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This is a great article! I never considered a group blog, but that might be a great idea for finding a topic, sticking with it and not feeling pressured about producing. I began my own blog that covers a variety of topics. I actually went back and deleted some posts that were just too far out of reach of the scope. Reading this, I realize my scope is a bit broad to actually attract people since I, too, like a blog with a focus, so I kind of know what to expect. This article gives me lots of food for thought about my personal blog, and about possibly coordinating with others. You offer a recipe for success at blogging, which is great!