5<5: Blogs

This post is one in a series of 5<5 posts that document pilot/prototype projects with the format 5 things that I wish someone had told me before I started in <5% of the time spent on the project.   

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"I love beginnings; beginnings are full of possibility." 
- Elie Wiesel at World Forum on Facing Violence, 2008

Over the past few years, I started many blogs.  Each had an unique focus, different purpose and varying communities. 

Key learnings: 

• Blogs are like gardens; they require tending if you want them to flourish.
• Generate short posts.  
• Post at consistent time intervals so that readers/visitors know what to expect.  Here is a rough guide: daily or at least one post every 4-6 days (build following), 2 weeks (create community), once a month (stay connected) or once in awhile (personal). 
• Be on the channel of your desired audience.  Share your blog post on Twitter/FB/G+ with an interest/location hashtags to reach new people. Requiring people to get out of their regular routine to engage decreases likelihood of engagement.  
• Engage others and build a community to coproduce a blog is ideal to keep content fresh, dynamic, diverse, frequent.
• If you want people to see your blog, you need to help them find you.  Include links to others blogs/people on your blog, share your posts on other channels (G+, FB, LinkedIn, etc) and make it easy for other people to share your posts.
• Invite guest bloggers.
• Link a post to G+ for comments can be an effective way  to enable comments on your post while concurrently extending its reach. (HT @ZenMoments)
• Blog writing is different. See post: Rapid Fire for details.
• Keep the interface clean and simple. Turn off the noise, let the reader focus.
• There are color schemes that make reading easier, use them. 
• Don't plan too much up front.  Let it emerge.  See how the traction goes with readers/public.
• Discussion of sensitive topics may be challenging given the text nature of the blogosphere, where nuance can be lost. 

Blog Technical Assessments:

• Blogger was easy when there were no alternatives.
• Squarespace features/tools were fantastic, but it is expensive per site.  Provided sophisticated entry for novice.  Not sure that tools/widgets are keeping up with the times and their customer service/support was dodgy considering how expensive it was/is. 
• Posterous is a simple, clean interface. 
• Tumblr makes blogging/posting fun, though navigating setting up themes/adding comment capability via disqus takes extra time/expertise.
• WordPress, tried three times to use this platform and find it a fail for my own sites.  However, I have participated on multiple projects that use WordPress effectively, and as a writer on those efforts, I have found it easy to use.  Getting over the set up, design/plugin process and maintenance is key barrier to entry.
• Weebly, use it to host both sites and blog and find it useful.  I fear the day that I ever try to leave, since it is all drag/drop widgets, I am not sure how portable it is, but for now, it'll work.
• Ning could have been great, but required people to be on it and if it's not already part of their work flow, it's not likely to gain traction and traffic.
• Google Sites is OK for projects, not flexible for website portal and not 'sticky' for community engagement.