The Downside of Using Multiple Bloggers

Ugh. One of my favorite blogs is in a quandary. Apparently, one or more of its bloggers has left, curtailing this site’s ability to provide useful and relevant information on a regular basis.

I am not going to mention the blog by name, but it does deal with the automotive industry. Usually, ten articles per day are posted, pithy pieces that are packed with interesting news.

Wanted: Fresh Talent

I knew that something was amiss a few weeks back when I read on this blog that they were openly looking for fresh automotive writing talent. This blog doesn’t use bylines, so I never know who writes what article and whether that person  is new, what their experience is, etc.

However, there have been a few signs of change, which underscores my alarm when a blog that uses multiple bloggers begins to unravel.  Rather than pick apart this one site, the following are my suggestions for all blogs that use multiple authors:

Use bylines. I want to know who wrote the article and what their experience is with that particular subject matter. Include a byline and a link to your About page which offers blogger biographies. Keep the “bios” short, but do offer a link to that blogger’s personal blog.

Don’t fill space. When one or more bloggers leave, please don’t keep things “business as usual” unless you have the talent in place to fill the gap. In this blog’s case, the ten article per day threshold was maintained. Unfortunately, the quality of the articles noticeably diminished. I would prefer to read 3-5 quality articles instead of an additional 3-5 puff pieces.

Someone must take the reigns. One blogger should be the “lead blogger” and be responsible for the content on the site. Not only has the content gone downhill, but typos are on the rise. Worse, one glaring error has remained in an article’s title even though your readers have pointed the mistake out when commenting.

Getting Group Blogging Right 

TechCrunch, Boing Boing, and EnGadget are a handful of blogs using multiple bloggers and are doing this quite well. In my humble opinion any blog employing multiple bloggers needs to consistently provide well written, accurate, and interesting news or risk losing their readership.

We expect newspapers to provide solid, factual information in a timely manner, so why not blogs, particularly those blogs with multiple bloggers?

I Don’t Want To Be Your Friend

Good. I got your attention.

Seriously, I’ve been going through somewhat of a social media crisis these past few weeks, a crisis not entirely of my own making.

Ever since I became very active with social media about two years ago when I joined MySpace, the pressure to join additional networks, add new friends, and really “work” the system has intensified. I still have a presence on MySpace but I largely ignore this medium even when a twenty-something hottie thinks that this near 50 year old writer is da bomb. I know that she was deeply disappointed to learn that I am faithfully married and simply not looking for the type of friendship she has to offer.

What I am regularly finding in my email box these days are invites to new networks I have never heard of. I won’t name them here, but when I looked at the various networks I already belong to (and hardly register a presence there), I thought: do I need to stretch myself any thinner? I think not.

True, I am very active with StumbleUpon and to a lesser extent with MyBlogLog, with little interest elsewhere other than the occasional LinkedIn add. I’ve avoided Facebook, which is probably good as I have learned that Facebook invades users’ privacy. I know that it is virtually impossible to extricate oneself from MySpace, so why bother with Facebook? I’ll let the other 64 million users get to know each other real well, as well anyone can in a crowded environment.

Speaking of StumbleUpon, I am removing “friends” who are no longer active with SU, but I noticed that even as I remove people, SU won’t allow me to add new friends. Apparently, there is a bug in their system that says I have reached the 200 friends limit, but I know that this number is now down to 188. Once SU fixes their bug, I’ll make some changes, but I’m not going to notify them either as it just isn’t all that important to me.

Ultimately, I find this whole “friending” thing to be a bit silly as it diminishes what being a true friend is all about. Certainly, some of my readers would probably be my friends in “real life” but the vast majority of people I come into contact with online are people I probably will never meet.

I don’t know about you, but friends in the flesh carry a lot more weight then online acquaintances, people I can see face-to-face, hang out with, offer mutual encouragement, etc.

No, I’m not giving up my social media involvement, but I must tell you that friending isn’t a priority for me. I’ll gladly trade quality stumbles with you and work on beneficial projects, but I’m not looking to expand an impossible to maintain social media network.

Crisis over.