What are the keys to effective team blogs, those blogs with multiple contributors? The most popular blog tools have the functionality for it: 1 blog with multiple authors. 
Some of the most popular blogs are team blogs, like Gizmodo [14], TechCrunch [7], Boing Boing [8], engadget, Lifehacker [6], ReadWriteWeb [10], Huffington Post [52], Gawker [11], twitip.com. [brackets denote number of contributors at time of this post]
Why aren’t there more team blogs as more normative for good blogging? The idea seems easy enough: get a team of bloggers to share the load of content generation, e.g. get 5 people to blog once a week, instead of 1 person blogging every weekday.
Launching a multi-author blog doesn’t magically beget popularity and large readership (if you’re into that; by the way, a large audience makes it easier to monetize and turn a blog into a profit-making venture, a la an advertising revenue model)
Here’s 3 things I’ve noticed about effective / successful team blogs:
- hot topic: team blogs with lots of readers (and comments) are on popular topics that lots of people are interested in. Call it market-driven if you will. Hot topics = tech, celebrities, politics.
- quality: gotta have great writing, great content, which comes from skill and passion and staying on topic
- coordination: this isn’t a laissez-faire hands-off deal, someone has to actively coordinate and contributors ought to develop some system of communication with one another; content scheduling is one part of doing this; conductor-less orchestra is a rare exception
What would you add? Some other thoughts + insights about team-blogging ::
- Team Blogging: Tips From Southwest Airlines (@ podtech.net cf. Nuts about Southwest blog)
- Zen and art of team blogging via creativity-portal.com
- Top Ten Tips for Successful Team Blogs @ Library Garden
- Communication Is Essential For A Successful Blogging Team @ techmiso.com
- Team blogging @ bloggingtips.com [w 13 authors]
- Team Blogging and Multi-Author Blog Etiquette @ Fort Hard Knox
- A Team Blogging Environment for Multi-Author Blogs @ raproject.com
[mood: writing this blog on a Sunday afternoon in one of the larger Starbucks around, here in West Village of Uptown Dallas; lots of buzz and people all around.. with a lil reggae music in the background]
hot tips for great team blogging http://bit.ly/bWvnwe
hot tips for great team blogging http://bit.ly/bWvnwe
new [djchuang.com]:: hot tips for great team blogging – What are the keys to successful team blogs http://ow.ly/1xte0
I think of the big obstacles is setting up the actual multi-author blog. Perhaps not a technical limitation, but rather inexperience with the format.
Another big issue I believe is that if you look at most bloggers out there, they are not on a disciplined schedule for publishing content. Creating team blogging sites requires commitment which most people just aren’t ready to handle, even if it is 1x a week, or 1x every 2 weeks. And then add the fact that you’ll have to find commitment friendly content producers around a nice topic / industry / passion / etc — that ups the challenge.
I’ve actually been thinking about pursuing a multi-author blog site which would be set-up for a FINITE amount of time – get people to produce content in an intensive way around a super focused niche topic, produce hundreds of pages over 3 months of summer (12 weeks, 2 short posts per week, 1 video question post per week, XX people). If you are careful in setting guidelines for the content, you can create a high-ranking authority site on almost any given topic quickly and easily.
The thinking is that people would be more willing to engage in a limited time period project than open ended one. And if you built in advertising/adsense revenue opportunities that can be shared, it would definitely be worth the effort aside from the pure Google juice love that would be doled out to each author’s other sites/profile pages.
What do you think?
Great idea! Worth a try and see what happens. I think the idea of super-focused niche topic is what Squidoo and HubPages kinda provides in its particular way.
There are many blogs that are unintentionally time-limited, of course. One example would be those launched for lead-up and during an event. Some of those die on the vine when the event ends.