Tips for starting a team blog

Michele Martin asked Manish Mohan of eCube to describe his experience in starting a team blog. The tips are certainly some to keep in mind as some groups within my organization are beginning to consider team blogging.

Summary of his tips are:

• Identify the objectives and goals of the blog. 
  • What problem you are trying to solve and for whom?
  • Who will be the content creators and who will be readers?
  • What content is important for them?
• Blog for the audience. "The audience is the most important part of your team blog."
• Identify specific people who will contribute to the team blog.
• Suggest a list of topics to the authors to give them ideas to blog.
• Write a few posts to give authors examples to start their own contributions.
• Encourage authors to start by commenting on posts if they are not comfortable writing their own posts.
• Encourage authors to blog about their experiences.
• Give some thought about widgets, like feeds and blog rolls, to include on the blog page.
• Use labels or tags for the content on the blog.
• Promote the team blog by sending personal email updates and information on the blog.
• Use other pages to link to the blog (like Facebook, Flickr, etc.).

Read the entire post for more explanations.

Thanks to Manish and Michele for sharing. I hope Manish continues this conversation as the authors of eCube continue to blog.

By the way, eCube stands for encourage, engage, and explore as these verbs pertain to learning.

 

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