Blogging for Profit. Is Team Blogging The Way Forward ?
Chris Garret dropped a post on Performancing. He talks about all the hats a pro blogger has to wear and asks the question “Time for Team Blogging?“
Chris mentions the following:
Entrepreneur - the ideas, the vision, motivation and drive
Salesperson - brings in the advertising, sponsorships, does the deals
Bookkeeper - keeps the numbers in check
Editor - controls the output, checks and amends for quality, final decision on topics
Researcher - investigates stories and information for articles, gathers facts
Writer - does the actual writing, possibly based on the researchers gathered materials
Designer - keeps the blog looking great, formats posts so they look their best
Organiser - admin, project management, to-do lists, calendars, diaries …
Tech Support - backups, fixes things when they go wrong, hosting, software upgrades, modules, ad serving …
Mentor - impartial wisdom and advice, been there got the t-shirt
Network Manager - for when the enterprise grows from one blog to many, someone needs to run the farm
He then goes on to say:
I think it would be fair to say that it is a rarity that one person encompasses all the qualities required to an excellent degree. I can get by in most areas but my designs will never win awards, I can sell but find it daunting and bookkeeping? Well maths has never been my strongest point …
In the “Beermat Entrepreneur“, Mike Southon and Chris West proposed that any business, as well as the Entrepreneur requires four “cornerstones”. These cornerstones have backgrounds in technical, delivery, finance and sales. If you see your blog(s) as a business (and you should if you want to be “pro”) then these roles do directly relate to hats a blogger needs to wear.
I could not agree more with Chris here, especially as someone who is building a network myself. So what options are open for a pro blogger? If team blogging is the way forward, what about joining a blog network?
I think it could be argued that one of the advantages for a blogger in joining a network is that most of these things are taken care of for the blogger, so if your talent is creating content, you are free to do so - the network should be working on creating the revenue side of things. Of course for any pro, you still need to have an eye on finances, but not to the same extent as running everything.
If you look at the guys who are Search Engine Optimizers, that’s all they do, they simply sign up with a company like Commission Junction who give them the products to promote and then get on with creating sites to drive sales to their partner companies, the only focus they have is on S.E.O.
For a blogger it should be the same. To my mind the blogger and the network are in a partnership: The network has a responsibilty to maximise the content the blogger provides, if he does so, then all parties should be happy with the deal. I think the only problem for blog networks at the moment (including my own) is they are all relatively new.
As I have said previously, upon creating a network, it was important for me to have this team together from the outset, though admittedly, at this point some people are wearing more than one hat from the list above.
But the 4 cornerstones that Chris mentions have been there from the start.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment