Group Blogs

This post continues from that post.

Running a group blog is a tricky business, especially if you’re not running it as a business. What usually happens is someone has an idea for a blog about a subject and, in the interests of community and variety, thinks it’d be a better blog if more people were involved. So they gather their friends together and people they know who are interested in the subject and invite them to join this blog. At first everything runs swimmingly but eventually people lose interest, the originator becomes the sole contributor with maybe a couple of others popping in every so often when they remember and before long the blog starts to die.

The problem with blogs, real blogs in the traditional sense (and yes, I know any definition of real is very subjective but that kinda proves my point in a way), is that they’re very personal things and will mean different things to different people. They also require a level of commitment and not everyone will have the time or even inclination to contribute to them.

Let me explain using BugPowder as an example. After a year or so of running it myself I opened the BugPowder blog up a few years ago to anyone in the UK small press comics community who wanted to contribute. While it’s been reasonably active ever since and has a modicum of reputation in its field it never really attracted the big hitters in the scene to contribute on a regular basis. And why should they? By definition, anyone who is important in any area is important because they are already doing things which pretty much precludes them from getting involved in another project, especially when they don’t have any real control over how it operates. Looking back at my involvement in DIY culture I’ve never taken over someone else’s operation or joined a pre-existing project or collective. While I have been inspired by and worked with others I’ve always preferred to strike out on my own terms. Is it any wonder that when I then try to bring in others who I feel are on my wavelength they’re not interested? After all, I wouldn’t be.

(It’s interesting that BugPowder, while I was trying to get more people involved, became less of a “real blog” with a personality and more of a noticeboard. There’s nothing wrong with a noticeboard, especially in this context, but it doesn’t have the spark and vim you might expect from a blog.)

So, to run a group blog everyone involved has to have an investment in it. This doesn’t have to be financial (though that wouldn’t hurt given the time involved) but there has to be some reason why people should get involved and stay involved for the long haul.

There are many such reasons but I’m going to narrow it down to three key ones.

You’re getting paid.

This can be very motivating, especially if the blog starts to take over your evenings. More to the point it can keep you focussed. Actually getting paid for blogging is another matter. AdSense style ads can bring in some cash to cover costs but it would probably work out a pennies per post, unless you really got lucky on the keywords. And then there’s the complications of sharing the profits out amongst the contributors. Who get’s what? Probably more trouble than it’s worth.

There’s a higher purpose

If the contributors really believe that they’re doing something important, that the blog really matters, then they’ll keep writing. The thing is, does any blog really matter? And can such a belief really be sustained in the face of having to post something interesting all the time? I have my doubts, especially if you don’t have…

Feedback

If it’s not fun and you’re not getting paid and it doesn’t really matter then there’s no point doing it. What makes it worthwhile? Feedback can help. I know hearing from complete strangers that the stuff I’ve done, be it online or off, has been very important to them has certainly spurred me on. While there was a “higher purpose” to organising the Birmingham Flickrmeets this year what really made it worth doing was the positive feedback I got from people who went on them and the fact that people took what I’d started and developed it in ways I hadn’t considered. It’s intangible, you can’t put a value on it, but it’s probably the most important motivating factor.

I think feedback is the key thing here, either being part of a wider community or having a community built in through comments or (urgh) forums. I have a theory that weblog comments aren’t there for the readers. Sure, the readers write them but only a small percentage – the rest just ignore them on the whole. They’re there to reassure the blog writer that someone out there is reading their stuff and enjoying it. Whenever I write something or post a photo on Flickr I find myself constantly checking for comments even though I know it’s pathetic and shallow to do so. Regardless of their content and use comments are a form of closure, a confirmation that the job is done. In the absence of a pay cheque they give validation to the exercise. (And yes, I’m fully aware, painfully aware, that the preceding post to this has had no comments as yet. But I struggle on, safe in the knowledge that this is a series and comments will come by the end. They will come. And if if they utterly miss the point it won’t matter. But I digress.)

To summarise this rather messy chapter, group blogs on their own are failure prone, so much so that they might be an aberration in the blogging world, but they can be done if it’s worth the contributors while in doing them, and a sense of community, usually built by feedback, can facilitate that.

Building a community, however, is another matter altogether. To do that you’ve got to give the community something decent to build around, which is the subject of the next post.