Multi-Author Blogging Tips
Wow. What a huge amount of information our three guest speakers shared tonight. I really was impressed by their candour. Particularly on the thorny topics of paying guest bloggers and ownership of IP.
My own opinion: if you are prepared to write a guest post for a blog, you should accept that you are passing ownership of your writing to the site owner. If you aren’t happy with that, don’t write the post. Certainly accept the only pay back is likely to be the link at the end. If that’s not enough don’t write the post.
I hope there will be many more write-ups of the content. A lot of people were taking copious notes – although surprisingly few laptops on show considering it is a bloggers meetup. Note pad and pens everywhere.
I wanted to share three of the points I found most valuable:
1.Be clear from day one what you expect from your writers.
I thought this was an excellent point. As your multi-author blog grows your management overhead will increase too. For example content will need careful editing, writers will need cajoling to produce content in tune with your audience and certainly on time. Make sure the editorial rules are set from the start to help reduce this overhead in the longer term.
Also bear in mind what you are liable for as a publisher i.e. slander and libel. Both of these are very real responsibilities for a blog owner, just as they are for a commercial publisher.
2. Images are important but also a potential banana skin.
Actually this is a point we’ve heard many times at the London Bloggers Meetup events. But get this wrong and you may be on the receiving end of a bill for royalties. Don’t be surprised to see such a bill stack up into the thousands of pounds / dollars (delete as appropriate) too.
Check out the cheap stock image sites like Big Stock or 123RF or, better still, create your own images.
3. Work with ‘up and coming’ talent.
This one, along with ‘just ask’, are simple but key pieces of advice. You need good writers to produce the type of content that will build your blog’s readership. Find people with an audience in your niche, build a relationship and ask if they will write a post for your blog. You’ll be surprised how many people say yes.
Established and headline bloggers are great too, but may not be so keen to share their audience with you.
Actually there was one other great piece of advice. Read the book . Michael built the Social Media Examiner blog and tells his story, warts and all, in the book. I’m certainly going to be buying a copy.
Thanks again to Julie, Jonathan and Sarah for being such good guest speakers. You can check out Sarah’s list of plugins for multi-author blogs here too.
Also thanks to those who asked a question this evening. The Q&A is a huge part of our meetups and offer great value to our community. For that bloggers, we salute you.
Let us know if you enjoyed the event by rating it on meetup and adding a comment below.
It was a really great and informative evening…got a lot of inspiration from it …thanks for organising it and bringing people together ;)
It’s such a pity I forgot about this – need to get a new diary phone I think.
I’m pleased you enjoyed it Sarupa. See you at the next on on 9th April – more details at www.meetup.com/londonbloggersmeetup
Cheers,
Andy
Thank you for inviting me Andy :)
I’ve been meaning to email you… instead I’ve commented :)
My pleasure Sarah. Great to have you on our panel of speakers.
And a comment is worth a thousand emails if you ask me…