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The folks at The Bulletin in Norwich, Conn., gave a shout out to one of their community bloggers on Facebook. You should, too.
WHAT THEY DID: As part of their best practices posting to Facebook (manual posts with chatty status updates, paced throughout the day), they posted a link to a recent post from one of their community bloggers, Marge Ellison. She blogs at the Urban Chick in the Country blog. Her most recent post is about starting vegetables from seed for the first time. Ellison does a good job as a blogger. Her tone is conversational, and her bright personality comes through in her writing. Her posts are short and to the point as well.
Here's how The Bulletin recruited their bloggers, from Executive Editor Jim Konrad: "As part of the Inner Circle 2012, we did a callout in paper and online for potential bloggers. We probably received closed to 40 responses. We looked for ones that either weren’t offered by GateHouse or completely local. The Urban Chick and the Foragers (they eat what they find!) come under that category.
"We invited 10 potential bloggers in for a visit, to talk about expectations, legal stuff, etc. We got six up quickly and are working our way with the others (one is held up by the freelance contract, which legal is working on). And, we just got confirmation of another blogger. She’s a mom who works at the local college. She will talk about her issues, problems, etc., and then be critiqued by one of the professors at the college who specialized in family issues. That will start soon."
THE TAKEAWAY: For your community blogger to reap the rewards of their hard work (page views), you need to make sure folks know about them. Posting a link to a recent post to Facebook is a great way to spread the word. Don't forget Twitter, too. You can also put an excerpt from a blog post in print, and refer readers to the blog online. Posting a link to your carousel, with art, will also get your community blogger some love.
GateHouse Media news organizations are finding ways to work corporate strategies for best practices into their websites and newspapers every day. National content development managers Jean Hodges and Sarah Corbitt are on the lookout for your best work, and we'll share it here.
