The Wardman Wire

There’s an excellent short interview with a “Blog Producer” from Weblogs Inc. by Darren Rowse over at Problogger. It points up a few of the issues that arise and skills that are needed to take a blog from being the “voice of one person” to being a slightly larger enterprise - with a range of voices, or covering a range of niches.

Blog Support Staff?

In Weblogs Inc. I’d define the role of Blog Producer like this:

“The back room bod responsible for ensuring that everything is in place to make sure that those writing for one or more blogs can do their jobs as easily and as well as possible”.

or - to put it another way - the person who lets the other people do their jobs.

I’ll quote one question and answer here, but you’ll have to follow the link below to read the whole interview:

Darren: Do you have any advice or tips for smaller to medium sized blogs that want to step up in terms of professionalism and growth?

Victor: Building a team is crucial, always. Once you grow beyond just yourself, it is important to have a talent pool who can bring a variety of skills to the table. This usually means a level of tech-savvy (people shouldn’t be afraid of wikis or simple HTML) plus a certain level of management ability. There also gets a point where you need someone focusing on sales!

A Process of Growth

In a way, it’s the classic process of any small business or organisation growing from 1 to perhaps 5 people (or more if a smaller segment of an individual’s time is involved). There needs to be specialisation in the team, and a co-ordinating/editorial role taken on by someone (who may or may not be the founder).

As I see it, there are two basic ways it can go:

The founder will not build a team and one of these will happen:

1. They will spread themselves too thinly and the quality will fall.
2. They will get into a “hunting between tasks” mode where each area will get attention for a bit then get neglected - specific quality will be maintained, but only by neglecting some of the things that need to get done at each time.
3. They will burn out or have a breakdown.
4. They will become demotivated and give up.

And then the blog will either be abandoned or find a mode that can be maintained by the one person.

Or they will build a team and…

1. They will specialise and focus on a segment of the site - whether a topic-based segment, a form-based segment (e.g., longer feature articles).
2. They will draw back from the front line and take on a more manager / editor / co-ordinator type role.
3. They will find some other way of working that allows a practical division and co-ordination of labour.

In this case the blog will continue to move forward - by some means.

It seems to me In the first case the blogger has limited the potential of their own blog. In the second case they have found a way to keep the growth going.

And me?

In my case, my “natural” position would probably be in a more editorial/co-ordinating/promotional role, as I have substantial internet experience, and a broad skillset across a number of areas. However, I am enjoying writing, so it is a bit of a wrench.

There are other bloggers out there who come from a professional writing or journalism background for whom it would probably make more sense to bring someone with more editorial/managerial skills onto their team as an editor cum “chief operating officer” , and for them then to retain a lead writer and “public face” role for their site.

It all depends on what you are good at and in which direction you wish to move yourself and your site.

Conclusions

Reflecting on the interview, I have this comment on how the Wardman Wire has developed to this point:

I’ve taken the route (in a political blog) of bringing a number of excellent writers on board who contribute regularly and reliably, but not so often that it interferes with their normal blogging. Usually I target to invite people to contribute who have knowledge that i don’t have, and who have a different audience, or who write in a different style (e.g., rapid fire commentary vs a weekly analytical piece) - so it becomes a win-win in the areas of skills, cross-promotion, and adding value.

This has happened over the last 6 months or so; the previous 6 months (from when I started 12 months ago) were spent basically working my socks off getting going and building the blog.

It looks organised from here, but it was perhaps half and half strategy and tactical response to events - such as unique niches that opened up or closed down at different times.

By comparison it seems that you maintained yourself as effectively sole author for Problogger for much longer.

Having got to a point where there are about 10 of us writing for the blog, I find myself putting a lot of time into editing and training/mentoring in our “house style” - plus I’m now moving towards spending some significant time on promotion/monetisation. I expect the latter to be the toughest thing so far.

At the moment I find myself spending as much editing and working out where we may or may not be going next, and starting to focus on the areas that may or may not make it possible to develop the blog further:

1. How to maintain a quality of writing that can compete with the main stream media where that is necessary.
2. How to develop a resource base (which means partly an income from the blog) that can maintain that quality of writing and comment.
3. How to organise the whole thing so that these are both maintainable.

Wrapping Up

That’s where I find myself. Where are you?

You can read the whole interview here.

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