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Editors Allison Cooper, Jeanette Kendall, Mindy Carls and Wendy Ledbetter joined us as guest presenters for our community blogging success stories webinar, sharing their tips and best practices for recruiting and maintaining community bloggers.
Download the Powerpoint presentation here.
Each of the editors shared their stories in a Q&A. Click on the links below to download each one.
Here are five takeaways from the editors:
1. Recruiting bloggers through your website, paper and Facebook can work, but reaching out personally to people in your community works best. You can approach people directly, or host a get together in your newsroom for potential bloggers.
2. You may have to "seed" your blogging community with one or two local bloggers to encourage others to join in.
3. Recruit more than the minimum number of bloggers you'll need, because not all of them will work out.
4. Maintain an active relationship with your bloggers, reading and responding to their posts, providing them with feedback and analytics information.
5. Consider hosting a "blogger appreciation/recruitment" event on a regular basis, with coffee and doughnuts or cookies and soda in your newsroom. That will make your current bloggers feel more connected to you and each other, and will allow potential bloggers to meet current bloggers, ask them questions and possibly alleviate any concerns they might have about blogging for you.
