We don’t often discuss here on our blog about how we actually manage our blog, so we thought we’d – of course! – write a blog post about it to help other organizations that would like to start or enhancing their blogging practices.
At Volunteer Victoria we have five staff members that regularly write posts for this blog. On top of the posts that Lisa, Lori, Leanna, Lornna and I create (I’m lucky they let me help since my name doesn’t begin with ‘L’!), we also bring in volunteers from our programs as much as we can to help out and present a different voice and perspective. For example, I often ask at our professional development workshops if a participant wants to write a blog post on the workshop’s topic, and someone invariably takes me up on this offer. Leanna’s youth volunteers contribute posts from time to time based on their volunteering experiences and Lori’s communications volunteers do as well, doing things like going out and interviewing agencies about their great work and then writing about it. Overall, it takes a small village to keep up a good blog presence, and many hands do indeed make light work.
However, sometimes many hands makes work a bit complicated. We recently realized that with so many people contributing to the blog now that it made sense to create a document that could guide both staff and volunteers in how to craft great blog posts. We knew we couldn’t rely on people to “just get it”, especially people who have never blogged before and perhaps might not understand how this medium is different from say, academic essay writing or crafting PR documents.
I ended up creating a fun, visual representation of the best, most simple advice we could muster between ourselves about what great “Blogging at Volunteer Victoria” should look like. It’s included here at the top of this post – click on it and you’ll get a larger-sized version.
We’ll consider this the first draft of an image that is sure to change as fast as technology and blogging practices do!
We’d love to hear what you think about our guidelines based on your own experiences. Have we missed anything crucial? What have you found works for your organizations in managing blogs with multiple authors?