At a recent gathering of the project team there was a recognition that our project blog had not “taken off” quite as well as we had expected.
Why hadn’t it become a steady stream of chatter and reflection about our progress? Certainly there has been lots of activity and plenty to talk about.
Perhaps we assumed that once a blog was created and we had our accounts that the rest would just follow, especially since we are all active in online forums in one way or another, including other blogs and Twitter.
We agreed that early on we probably should have set some guidelines for blogging to help create a habit and get contributors comfortable in this particular space. At least initially, we might have been wise to have structured in:
• a minimum of when we would post, and how often
• a regular, agreed topic and a rough outline of the content
• allocated the task to a specific team member and then rotated the role
• one person as blog “driver”, reminding us to post, suggesting ideas for content and generally encouraging. I know that our library work team blog, in its early stages needed a driving blogger (even now it wanes and needs a return to that strategy)
• commenting on each others posts
These strategies might help overcome any personal apprehension that your post is not striking the right kind of “voice” for the group. How do I know that is a problem? Well even know I am considering checking with the team that this post is OK.
I won’t. But I will ask them to comment :)
I know what you mean about striking the "right voice". I think my hesitation about this has certainly been a factor in why I have not blogged as often as I could have. I've not really been clear about the parameters, i.e. what is important or interesting. Although my feeling about this now is that the nature of a blog is just to document whatever strikes you as something others might benefit from...it's a bit like when you are a pupil in a class and you hesitate to put up your hand because your question or comment might be "stupid".
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you are on the mark with your suggestion of having a blog driver, someone to act as coach/motivator to keep us on track with the blogging side of this project. In any case, better planning initially could have overcome these concerns I think.
Interesting comments. I think we need to reflect on the purpose of the blog. Was it to:
ReplyDelete1. Track our progress
2. Tell the world what we were doing
3. Communicate with each other
4. A forum for discussion
5. The public face of our project
Perhaps we should have had some discussion about this earlier and decided what type of things to include in the blog.
I agree that we should have integrated blogging into our schedule in some way and maybe appointing a blog driver would have kept the momentum going.