AdMix Social-Social Media Marketing

You’re a small business owner with a blog. Congrats on taking the first step! But now, you might be wondering how one person can handle all of the blogging legwork. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be left solely to one person. Here are a few great reasons why you should develop a multi-author blog:

• You can spread the labor across different departments of your small business
• You can ask and allow strategic partners to contribute blog posts
• You can recruit guest bloggers or thought leaders for better content mix
• You can have bloggers in different regions create more localized content

But if you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, how do you manage all of the authors and content? Here are five tips to help you manage a multi-author blog:

1. Assign an editor: Assign one person to be the editor/manager of your blog who will edit, manage, and/or publish all blog posts. This person should also be in charge of the calendar (see #3) and keeping all authors updated (see #5).
2. Create guidelines: Every author should know the blogging specifics prior to writing. Let them all know about the keywords you’re targeting, the word length, photo/video requirements and format of the blog. Provide examples, if possible.
3. Create a Calendar: Make sure all authors are on the same page by creating a calendar for each author so they know what post is due when. This will ensure they’re on the same page as you, and that you get your posts in a timely manner.
4. Appropriate Access: Allowing every single author complete administrative access (and control) of your company’s blog isn’t necessary. In WordPress, there are several different roles that you can set them up with to help prevent someone from accidentally messing up your blog. (See below for plugins that will help)
5. Provide Feedback: It’s important that you provide consistent feedback to your bloggers so they know how they’re doing or and/or they can seek ways to improve. Let them know what their page views are and suggest ways they can up the numbers.

Helpful Tools

If you’re using WordPress, there are a number of helpful plugins that will help you effectively manage your blog. Give these a look:

• WP Biographia adds extra fields to the user-profile screen where you can enter bio information, social links, and if you add the User Photo plugin to it, writers will be able to add an image.
• Editorial Calendar and DivvyHQ help create a monthly calendar.
• Adminimize lets you hide unnecessary items from the WordPress administration menu, submenu and even the Dashboard, so your contributors only see what they need to see. (And don’t accidentally mess anything up in the process).
• Blog Metrics let’s you see your average number of posts per month, average number of words per post, average number of comments per post without your own comments and average number of words used in comments to posts. Great analytics tool!

Multi-author blogging is a great way to add multiple, fresh voices to your blog. Drop AdMix Social a line to find out how we can help you manage your users and get the most out of your blog!