Solo vs. Collective
I would expect the majority of readers to be interested in creating (or resuming) a single-author blog. This is the most common type of blog and it makes for a sensible default. There is a chance, though, that a collective blog might be a better option for you. To help you figure out which of the two is best suited to your circumstances and goals, let’s briefly consider the advantages and disadvantages of solo and collective blogs.
Solo blogs are relatively easy to start. They allow you to be the boss, and you don’t need to collaborate with other people. Being the only author for your blog also lowers the expectations in terms of how much content you produce. With a solo blog, you’re just a person expressing his or her thoughts on the web.
The Joys and Perils of Collective Blogs
Collective blogs are a team effort. Not only do you have to worry about getting this whole blogging thing going, but you have to factor in the overhead and typical issues that arise when trying to collaborate with multiple people on the same project.
You’ll have to figure out who’s going to cover what topics—and on what days—as well as the time commitment each blogger is willing to put in, the acceptable styles and conventions, and who’s going to handle the editing, comment moderation, and article promotion. Furthermore, if the authors are not blogging on behalf of a company, the issue of fairly splitting the financial rewards will have to be sorted out.
But the biggest challenge, in my experience, is to keep everyone motivated enough to continue writing and meeting the agreed-upon deadlines. Sound familiar? Right, it’s not that different from coordinating a team of developers working on a software project.
Just as with a software team, you’ll probably want to have someone in charge (i.e., an editor-in-chief) who can oversee the project management and coordination as well as ensure that the writing meets the standards you set for your group blog (or online magazine).
| Recipe 1 | Collective blogs can benefit greatly from an editor-in-chief. |
That’s the hard part. On the plus side, you can crank out content very quickly thanks to the sheer number of authors, rapidly accelerating the blog’s growth. You’ll also offer a greater variety of topics and viewpoints. At the very end of that spectrum are blogs with multiple paid authors that post as much as news sites. Such sites can hardly be seen as blogs anymore. They are full-blown online tech news outlets. Among this group, you’ll find well-known sites such as TechCrunch, Ars Technica,[4] and InfoQ.[5]
Several years ago I started a collective Italian blog called Stacktrace with more than a dozen unpaid authors.[6] We were able to quickly publish more than a hundred articles and grow our list of feed subscribers to well over ten thousand members.
Our articles were rather technical (e.g., Linux kernel hacking, JavaScript closures) and written in Italian, so these figures are far more respectable than they may seem at first glance. In fact, in a matter of months, this collective blog became, arguably, one of the most respected aperiodic technical publications in Italy.
It would’ve been impossible for me to achieve the same results if I’d launched Stacktrace on my own. Unfortunately, as my interest in publishing in Italian waned, so did the interest of the group of volunteers who had been contributing to it.
Due to the challenges associated with running a collective blog, I would discourage you from attempting this type of site if you’re a novice blogger. This is particularly true when the group of bloggers you are trying to coordinate with is larger than two or three friends.
The Team Blog
The one notable exception to this recommendation is this: if you have a group of colleagues all working for the same company, it may make sense to set up a team blog. In fact, if you aren’t a seasoned blogger, this is the only type of collective blog I’d ever consider recommending. When writing for such a team blog is part of your work duties and you’re held accountable to some extent for its success, you’re far less likely to abandon the site (and so are your colleagues).
The perfect example of a collective blog that’s run by a team from the same company is the previously mentioned Signal v. Noise by Basecamp as shown in as shown in Figure 2, One of the most successful team blogs in the world. This is a company that literally owes its fame and fortune to the constant blogging activities of a handful of founders and employees (along with its remarkable product, open source contributions, and recent best-selling books).
If you end up being the editor-in-chief for your team blog, expect to nag people to deliver articles. Professionals are busy and might not give any priority to the marketing efforts you’re championing. You might also want to be prescriptive and assign specific articles around their expertise, as opposed to hoping that your colleagues will come up with their own.
In my experience, asking that your colleagues commit to one article every couple of months leads to a manageable workload for them. Depending on the number of participants and how much editing you’ll do, it may not be so for you. Take all these factors into consideration before setting deadlines for your team blog.
Figure 2. One of the most successful team blogs in the world
Abandoned Blogs
Sadly, the most common type of blog is the abandoned one. It’s not unusual for new bloggers to start a blog and post for a while, only to discover that they don’t have the time or patience required to keep it alive. The incentives to continue blogging will also be relatively few at first. The average blog fails to attract a wide readership and consequently, the rewards can also be scarce.
If you follow the blueprint outlined in this book, you should have no problem avoiding most pitfalls and the common fate of abandoning your blog. If you already have an abandoned blog, this is the perfect opportunity to reboot it.