About Gretchen Louise

One of the most beautiful thing about contributor blogs is the community found therein. But sometimes, especially if you’ve been managing the blog awhile, the community can begin to feel stymied and in need of being revived.  Here are a few ways I’ve used to help foster (and revive!) the community on a contributor blog.

1. Make community the central goal.

It’s easy to think that once we’ve scheduled great quality posts, we’ve done our job.  And if we were only publishing a magazine, maybe we would be done.  But blogging has unlimited potential for building community in and around those posts, if only we can tap into it!

“The community surrounding your blog is what gives it life.”
-Christin Slade in Blog at Home Mom

In the comments.

I don’t expect any blogger to respond to every comment on every post, but it is nice — especially on a contributor blog — when the post author is interacting within the comment section on their post. Work with your contributors on the post scheduling date if necessary, to make sure they are around to promote their post and reply to the comments to it.  Then use plugins like Comment Reply Notification, Subscribe to Comments Reloaded, Jetpack, or the Disqus comment system to keep the conversation going.

Asking questions on social media.

Ann Voskamp’s Facebook page is a great example of people responding to simple questions on social media.  Ann will give a simple “Joy Dare” for the day and the comments pour in as people count and celebrate their “1000 Gifts”.

With link-ups.

Link-ups are a great way to generate community among your readers, but only if a large percentage of your readers are bloggers!  The Better Mom Mondays and Women Living Well Wednesdays are great examples of community link-ups.  SheLoves Magazine calls their link-ups “synchroblogs” — I love the descriptiveness of that term!

During Twitter parties.

The #FMFParty is a great example of a community developing around a blog and link-up through a Twitter party!  Each Thursday night Lisa-Jo Baker hangs out with people on Twitter for the hour before the Five-Minute Friday post topic is announced.

Through Twitter and Instagram hashtags.

The #Allume hashtag is one of my favorite places to hang out on Twitter.  I love the community that’s available within a six-letter hashtag named for my favorite conference!  On Instagram, #Togetherin10 brings together the busy moms in search of quick fashion ideas who read the Together in 10 blog.

2. Bring the contributors’ community into yours.

From their blog.
I’ve begun asking my contributors to publish a post on their own blog on the same day their post goes live, using a different title (for best SEO) and only a brief quote from their post, directing readers to the contributor blog to find the rest.  Not only does that bring fresh readers to our blog, but it brings their own regular readers into the comment section.

From their social media.

When Ruth Schwenk mentioned in her Allume session on “Building a Successful Contributor Blog” that she asks her authors to mention their posts on social media two to three times the day their post is published, I realized that was something I’d never asked my writers to do.  Sure, they did often share their posts, but it was okay for me to actually ask them to make sure to do so!  Only about half of my team is on Twitter, so I’ve just begun asking them to promote their posts on their own favorite forms of social media.  And it’s fun to watch the momentum build as their friends share the posts in turn as well.

3. Expand your horizons.

The contributor blog I manage is represented everywhere from Goodreads to Tumblr.  When a contributor asks about Kindred Grace being on some new form of social media, I’ll usually answer: of course, if you’ll do it! I don’t know the first thing about Tumblr, but our resident Tumblr fan does a beautiful job with our Tumblr account and shares our posts within a community we might not otherwise have reached.  And while I find Pinterest too time-consuming to hang out on, and too much to pay a VA for at this point, we’ve invited a few team members to contribute to our Pinterest boards to keep them active (after giving them clear guidelines, of course!).

Making the community a team effort has allowed us to expand our horizons without spreading ourselves too thin. Not only does delegating and crowdsourcing take the load off of the people in charge, but it frees them up to do the tasks that only they can do, while allowing each person on the team to focus on the areas that are truly their strengths.

4. Provide a method for contributor collaboration and brainstorming.

There’s nothing better than a unified contributor blog that feels like they are working together as a team.  Their unity spills out into the entire readership, creating a firm sense of community.  A private Facebook group or Google Plus community provides a great way for your contributors to collaborate and brainstorm — participation is not required, but there when they need it.

Private Facebook Groups

Everyone is on Facebook, even when they are supposed to be writing!  When we started a private Facebook group for our writing team, it harnessed all that Facebook time and turned it into productive brainstorming sessions.  The community within our team has really blossomed through the Facebook group.  It has also allowed new members to be welcomed with open arms and get to know the rest of the contributors on a more personal basis.

Google Plus Hangouts

Google Plus Communities offer a lot more organization of discussion threads if you’d rather do your brainstorming somewhere quieter than Facebook.  So far, I’ve only used Google Plus Communities for the purpose of organizing a Hangout.  When you don’t live close enough to meet face to face over coffee, Google Plus is a great alternative (and you can each bring the coffee!).

Conference Calls

There are many free conference call options that allow you to hear each other’s voice, without any need for webcams or fast internet.  As soon as we can figure out a time when most of our worldwide team will be awake, we’re going to have one.  The key will be for everyone not to talk at once!

E-mail

Don’t let group collaboration replace clear communication. Private social media groups might streamline communication with your writers, but they won’t replace regular email communication.  Make sure you don’t leave your contributors out of the loop just because they don’t spend all their time on Facebook: send out an email at least once a month in plenty of time to remind them of the upcoming deadline and mention future month’s topics.

I’ve met many of my closest friends through the community that has grown within the contributor blog I manage.  And my prayer is that our readers would experience that same friendly embrace each time they visit our contributor blog or one of our social media outlets.

What are your favorite ways to participate in a contributor blog community?

Thanks for sharing,
Gretchen Louise

It’s one thing to set up and manage a contributor blog, but when it comes maintaining the excitement and the quality, a blog with multiple contributors can hard to keep going for the long haul.  Especially when your contributors are busy bloggers themselves!  But here are a few methods I’ve used to help maintain the momentum on the contributor blog I’ve managed for over 6 years.

1. Give clear direction for post topics.

“What should I write about?” is the most common question I get from guest authors and contributors.  A lack of specific topic ideas seems to be one of the primary things that keeps my contributors from writing consistently.

Set loose weekly or monthly themes.

Setting loose themes for each month generates lots of ideas and brainstorming within my team at Kindred Grace.  We talk about books all month long every March, and have an annual link-up topic for readers to join in every October.  In between, we come up with monthly themes that vary from year to year (though we always try to love on our singles during February!).

Maybe you’ll have one day per week where a specific topic is discussed (like the Smaller Bloggers series on Thursday here at Allume) or a clearly defined theme for each month like SheLoves Magazine.  Just make sure your contributors know whether or not it’s okay if they write a post that is off-topic for the month (I failed to make that clear in the beginning and had one contributor who often didn’t write because she couldn’t fit her writing inspiration into that “box”!).

Respond to specific readers.

Most contributor blogs receive a lot of emails with questions from readers.  Few of us have time to answer each email individually, but often, an email or more personal comment will spark a post idea.  When I receive an email on a topic that is particularly close to the hearts of specific team members, I’ll forward it to them and ask if any of them feel led to answer personally or with a post.  Whether the post is written as a Q&A, or just responds to the general idea of the reader’s question, it’s answering a specific need within our readership and is usually very well received.  And when a writer is floundering in the sea of ideas, writing with a specific person on their mind and heart is often the making of a very powerful, personal post.

2. Have more contributors than posts per month.

“But how often do you want me to write?” is the second most frequently asked question among my contributors and potential contributors.  For the busy women who make up the majority of blogs I read, writing has to be fit in around life, work, and motherhood.  Few women who are not writers by trade feel comfortable making a firm commitment to writing one post per month: even the most dedicated contributors have emergencies or months when the well of words has run dry.

Allow freedom.

My team has appreciated the freedom to write as the Lord gives them words.  Combining a firm monthly submission deadline with the grace in the knowledge they do not have to write a post each month has worked well for us.  But in order to give them that freedom, I’ve found it works best to have more people on the contributor team than there are post slots per month.

Ask for easier commitments.

Maybe your contributors would be willing to commit to one post every other month — that simply means you need to double your contributor list!  Some months, one contributor will write more than one post.  Others, everyone is brimming with ideas and we have an overflowing post calendar.

And when one contributor is extra inspired on a topic that doesn’t fit the month’s theme?  I keep those posts ready for the months we’re lean on time and inspiration — they are ready-made filler that I don’t have to go looking for.

3. Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

It’s easier for me to say yes to a poorly written guest post because I need a post and don’t want to say no than it is to go out and find a quality contributor. But if I don’t take responsibility for the quality of the content on our contributor blog, then it reflects badly on everyone who writes there — including me.

“God has given you a [platform] to be able to speak to so many others. It is so important that you are discerning in what you put out there, because you will be held accountable for those words. We want to point people to Jesus…  I don’t take that lightly.”
–Ruth Schwenk in “Building a Successful Contributor Blog” at Allume

Get good at saying no.

It’s a hard balance between encouraging budding writers and lowering the quality of your blog by accepting guest posts that don’t fit or are poorly written.  The first screening of guest posts requires the ability to say no.  Maybe you can hire an editor or VA who will be better suited to the decision of which posts are worth keeping.  But it’s a post by post decision that has to be bathed with a lot of prayer.  When I’ve had that nagging feeling that I shouldn’t publish a post — at least without some edits — and have done it anyway, I’ve always regretted it.  However, other times when I haven’t been able to find a good reason to say no — even though I really didn’t like the post — it’s been used powerfully in the lives of the readers (much to my humbled surprise).

Ask for a guest post before ask them to contribute full time.

I’m too quick to ask someone on as a full time contributor the moment they are recommended to me.  I’ve found that it’s always safer to ask someone to guest post a few times before you express interest in a long-term commitment.  Not only does it give me an opportunity to see their unedited posts, how capable they are of following our guidelines, and how we work together, but it gives an opportunity to see how they interact and resonate with our readers as well.

Be willing to edit.

I raised my hand in Ruth Schwenk’s session on “Building a Successful Contributor Blog” at Allume because I wanted to know: “Do you have to edit some contributor’s posts much more than others?”  Her simple answer was that yes, some people required a lot more editing than others, but it was okay, because she had asked them to contribute their unique message.  I’ve learned that my choice is simple: I can do some hard editing work (often times exercising more editing freedom than my editor would) or I can let a piece with a lot of passion and potential remain unpublished.  Some months I don’t have the time to invest; others I can tear the post apart and put it back together and send the author the edits so she can see and learn from the difference. But whenever we edit beyond simple grammar and punctuation, I always run it by the author before final publishing!

Remember that less is more.

I don’t read many blogs that publish something every single day — I don’t have the time, and neither do most of my readers.  Whenever I start getting stressed out about a leaner month, I remember what a friend told me once: her husband’s favorite blog only published one or two posts per year.  Some weeks, we publish on Tuesday and Thursday, others Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  And some months — usually the ones I was worried and started really praying about — the Lord fills up five days per week with posts for His glory!  But whenever I start feeling like we’re publishing more posts than I myself can get read, I try to step back the publishing schedule.  Because in the noise of social media and blogging, less is often more.

“As new media make the Internet more crowded, quality will be the easiest way to get through the noise.”
-John Mark Reynolds in The New Media Frontier

The beautiful thing about contributor blogs is that there is power in numbers — you can make up for each other’s ebb and flow.  With a whole team of people who are passionate and excited about its potential, a contributor blog can actually be easier than a personal blog to maintain for the long haul. It’s all in the way you maintain it and the One giving you the momentum.

What helps your contributor blog keep going for the long haul?

Thanks for sharing,
Gretchen Louise