The transition to a multi author blog

Posted on August 13th, 2008 in Advantages of blogs, Aim of your blog, Hazards, Marketing your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

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In June 2008 I decided that in order to take the Europe a la Carte blog to the next level, it would need to become a multi author blog with more variety and volume of content than I could personally write. It was hard to let go off my baby and lose control of the content and the personality of the blog that I’d built up over 20 months. I’d looked at several multi author travel blogs and to be quite honest some of were seriously lacking in coherence.

It was crucial that the relationship between me and the blogging team would be mutually beneficial. I knew that from my own perspective writing for Wandalust, which I do to increase my personal exposure as well as that of Europe a la Carte and to gain experience writing about travel outside Europe. not primarily for the $140 a month. As Europe a la Carte is an established travel blog with a Google Page Rank of 4, it is an ideal showcase for travel bloggers/writers.

I advertised on Perfomancing.com for bloggers and was overwhelmed by the response. I initially wanted to recruit 5 bloggers, so each could write one post a week. I did spend a bit of time in the recruitment process to find bloggers whose style would fit with Europe a la Carte. I don’t mean that they had to write in a uniform manner but that there would still be coherence in the blog. I don’t consider myself a travel writer as such and was well aware that some of the new content could be of a superior standard to my own writing.

I thought that I’d better moderate posts from the new bloggers before they were uploaded, so gave the bloggers contributor status on the blog, however that meant that they couldn’t upload their photos so after a week, I changed this to author status. where the bloggers can publish their own posts.

There were one or two teething problems but it all seems to be going really well now with a big increase in page views.   Each of the 5 bloggers has their own style but their posts still fit well within the remit of “authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget”, whether that be reviews of travel sites, information about travel deals, events or destinations. Just as well I was prepared to be outshone as a writer, as it is happening but I’m all too aware of my own limitations.

In conclusion if you’re thinking of changing your blog to multi author:

1 Your blog will need to have a good reputation and established in its field to attract good writers who are looking for exposure.

2 Recruit carefully to find bloggers who’ll be a good fit for your blog and give them ground rules without being dictatorial. Be approachable and willing to take on board bloggers concerns and/or suggestions. Remember this relationship has to be win/win for you and the blogger.

3 You have to be prepared to let go and trust your blogging team and feel secure enough to recognise and praise good writing from your team.

Can you take criticism on the chin?

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 in Hazards by Karen Bryan

At some point you’ll have to decide whether you are going to approve unflattering or negative comments on your blog. You have to be prepared to take some negativity once you start airing your views in your blog.

I wrote a post entitled “No place for good advice on the web” in response to having an article turned down. I’s not that I can’t take rejection, hey I’m really thick skinned after working for more than 20 years as a market research interviewer. I felt I had a valid point that some readers may be looking for some boring good advice when there’s so much emphasis on writing for search engines and attracting attention in social media sites. I received a comment describing me “as pouting on the sidelines” after my rejection. You can judge for yourself from reading the post.

How are going to react? Ignore any criticism or take it on the chin, approve the comment and respond to it?

I think it’s a good thing if there is some lively discussion and disagreement on blogs, as long as it doesn’t become too vindictive or personal. Bloggers, just like anyone else have differing opinions. However if you have a business blog you should keep your posts and comments related to your business and maintain some professionalism. The blog isn’t a sounding board for you personally. Hard to achieve, as in some ways, a lot of the identity of the business may be intertwined with that of the owner.

I believe that readers will have more respect for you if they see that you do publish negative comments and that you respond to them in a logical, calm manner.

What are your personal guidelines for dealing with criticism/negativity on your blog?

I bit off more than I could chew

Posted on February 8th, 2008 in Additional revenue, Hazards, Marketing your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

I have to admit that I’ve overstretched myself. My Google Pagerank for my travel site has nosedived from 5 to 3. I assume due to the fact I’d written some sponsored posts for my travel blog had some TextLinkAds and some paid links in the main site. I’ve added the “nofollow” to the paid links and resubmitted the site and blog to Google accompanied by a grovelling note listing how I’ve amended my bad ways. I vaguely read about the new Google policy but didn’t pay enough attention to it. I found it devastating to lose my Pagerank which took me five years of hard graft to attain. So far there’s no discernible drop in visitors to the site or blog and my revenue from affiliate links is steadily increasing, so let’s hope Google reinstate me soon.

My Technorati ranking for my travel blog has dropped to around 140,000 although I’ve 54 links and a few months ago I was in the top 100,000. I think the drop is a combination of more blogs competing for top rankings and the number of people favouriting the blog also dropped as the faves are only valid for one year.

I was rather bogged down at the beginning of this year with the implementation of the Content Management system to my site. My son did all the technical site but there was still a lot of work for my to do transferring the content. The destination guides all came out of alignment and I wanted to try inserting my own ads in the margins.

I’ve also had a lot of work in my “day job” as a freelance social research interviewer. There was a lot of work on offer at the end of last year to meet the annual interview targets and this year there is a big survey in my locality. It’a an ongoing dilemma for me as to whether or not I should ditch the day job and just concentrate on the business.

I haven’t written regular posts for Business Blog Boost, partly due to lack of time and partly due to the feeling that I could hardly give advice to aspiring business bloggers with a pagerank of zero.

I’m feeling more optimistic now as my travel blog was highly rated by Bloggedout and I’m been invited to attend a Travel Bloggers Summit in Berlin next month. I’ve started to get more links through my participation in blog carnivals.

Can small business owners be successful “Jack of all trades”?

Posted on October 15th, 2007 in Hazards, Marketing your blog by Karen Bryan

The phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none” sprang to mind yesterday as I was writing a sponsored post about a internet marketing company and the potential value of using an expert to drive traffic to your site. It made me think if you really can succeed in being an all rounder in a online small business.

As the owner of an online travel business I feel that my big weakness is in the field of IT. I’m fortunate in that one of our sons is a 3rd year computing student and he set up my website and blogs for me. However during term time between his studies, part time job with a search engine advertising firm and his leisure interests he doesn’t have much time left to be my IT consultant.

I could write the most wonderful articles and destination guides for my website but if they are not found and read by potential customers so what? However you could write mediocre content, stuff it with keywords, be really good at search engine optimisation and have a flood of visitors to your site, who then think what rubbish content and quickly click away.

So ideally you need to have excellent content and a constant flow of targeted traffic. Sounds simple but…? Perhaps be an investor, identify a profitable niche market, hire the best writers and the best IT people and sit back and wait for the money to roll in? I’ve often thought that blogs which are part of a network such as b5media are of to such a good start as each of the blogs has links to all the other blogs in the network which gives them are a reasonable ranking immediately. It would take me ages to build up the same number of links.

As a small business owner what’s the best solution for you, assuming you aren’t a master of all trades? Maybe a partnership where writers and IT experts collaborate? Or if you see yourself as a writer you hire an top notch IT consultant or vice versa? How are you going to pay the expert before you you start to amass your fortune?

My approach to building up my travel business has been to continue with part time freelance employment as a social research interviewer. This is not just for the income but to get out and about, away from sitting at the computer for hours every day. Plus I’ve had the services of our son at a pretty low rate of pay. I try very hard to master as much of the IT as I can even attempting horrors such as the basics of html.

Do you think there is a place for the small business owner is the current competitive online environment? What is your strategy as an online entrepreneur?

Check the links in your category cloud

Posted on September 24th, 2007 in Hazards, Useful resources by Karen Bryan

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that when I clicked on a category the Ryboe Category Cloud Widget I was using on my travel blog that I was just being taken to the home page of the blog which wasn’t very useful to readers of my blog, when what they wanted was a list of posts in their chosen category. Instead of sorting this out there and then, I put it on a to-do list.

Now there may have been a simple way to rectify this problem with the Ryboe Category Cloud but I went for the easy option and this morning I finally got around to installing the Lee Kelleher Category Cloud plugin.  Within minutes I had a working clickable category cloud. I was able to do some basic customisation e.g. the font size and the minimum number of posts required for the category to appear in the cloud.

It’s really important to rectify problems like this as soon as possible.  It’s hard enough to attract readers to your business blog without annoying them by simple things not working as the readers first reaction may be to click away from your blog if the information they request doesn’t appear right away.

Climbing the greasy pole of Technorati rankings

Posted on September 11th, 2007 in Hazards, Marketing your blog, Useful resources by Karen Bryan

I’m wondering if an additional layer of grease is added as you approach the 100,00 mark on the Technorati rankings pole? My travel blog has been sitting just outside the 100,ooo Technorati blog rankings for some time. Today I’ve reached the highest ever Technorati ranking of 101,381. It seems that the higher that you climb in the rankings, the harder it is to move up. In early May my travel blog was siting at around 257,00 with 19 links, another one link took me up 10,000 to a ranking of 247,000. Now when I get another link it only counts for an increase of around 2,000.

Now I don’t think that one should be obsessive about rankings. I try to concentrate on keeping writing quality content for my travel blog. It’s just that every time you log in to a Wordpress blog, the Technorati links come up in the right hand margin, so you do end up seeing them a lot.

I have to say I think I’ve done well to achieve this ranking in under a year. I started my travel blog in late October in 2006. Hopefully the blog will be in the top 100,000 by it’s first birthday. However no room for complacency, I must keep up with the blog slog.

What’s been your experience of climbing the rankings?

Update 14/9/07

Made it into the top 100,000 with 60 links now sitting around 95,000.

My travel website hacked

Posted on July 20th, 2007 in Hazards by Karen Bryan

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days. My travel site, Europe a la Carte was hacked. I was able to get the main site up and running again fairly fast but the blog took a bit longer. I was amazed that my site was hacked, it’s not as though there is anything of value such as credit card details. The hacked site had a photo of a Goth and large letters saying “Hacked Pit10 OwnZ Yo”.


Hacked by Christos_m2001

I found my host oneandone to be extremely helpful and efficient.  I phoned them as soon as I discovered that the site had been hacked and they were able to get the main site up and running again within minutes.  It took a bit longer, around 20 hours, for the blog to be put right as oneandone had to retrieve the files from their back up.  I know small businesses are always looking for value for money and I don’t think that oneandone are the very cheapest. I did do some research and choose them because they received high ratings for reliability and customer service.

It was really annoying and frustrating. It damages your reputation because if a visitor to the site/blog sees a message like this they will immediately leave and never return. Some blog subscribers may unsubscribe too. Has you site/blog been hacked? Do you believe that it had any serious effect on your business in the long term?

[tags[hackers[/tags]