In May 2011, disheartened with meager ad revenue and tired of writing for only a few thousand visitors a month, I ended up joining a blog whose monetization was well-oiled, which had people other than me for tweaking the theme and features and which had over 15-times as many visitors from almost every major country!
I originally intended to write as a guest blogger, getting more readers for my articles and a few backlinks, and a stroke of luck had me applying on DragonBlogger.com for writing blog posts about Technology, more specifically computer software reviews and tweaks, internet usage tips, online writing tips and DIY SEO tips. Justin liked my previously written articles enough to give me a shot at joining his writing staff instead!
Other than receiving a generous compensation for my work, I got an amazing team of bloggers, movie and game reviewers, technology enthusiasts and most importantly a cohesive, constantly evolving and highly productive group of people dedicated to sharing their views and experiences with millions of internet users across continents, not to mention the overwhelming and much-appreciated support of thousands of regular readers of the blog.
Having written over 100 articles on Dragonblogger.com in a span of 12 months, I can definitely say that team blogging is way better than being a solitary blogger. Let’s take a deep look at the various advantages of team blogging over solitary blogging:
Reduced pressure for regular content generation
When you are the only one writing articles on a blog and want to regularly churn out articles without fail, say on a daily basis, you need to either schedule several posts for the future or abandon the thought altogether. Not scheduling posts may lead to breaks since you might be busy elsewhere, just not feel motivated enough to write on certain days or even get ill once in a while! When you have a team, hardly anything will disrupt a daily outflow of blog posts, especially when the members of your writing team are of different age groups, occupations and nationalities.
Shared experience, topic suggestions and guidance
It is highly unlikely than any two persons will have the exact same experiences in life or the same opinion on multiple topics. Moreover having identical experiences doesn’t mean both will perceive and respond to those experiences in an identical manner! Thus, having a team to discuss topics for your blog posts will lead to expansion of your knowledge and thoughts and provide your readers with more useful and reliable information than otherwise. Group discussions often lead to discovery of new topics to write about, especially when the others try to solve a problem faced by one member. The more experienced team members can guide the new bloggers while the new members bring in innovative ideas.
Divided responsibilities for better focus on strong points
Are you afraid of messing up the blog theme while tweaking? Confused about which plugin to go for? Do you face difficulty coming up with inspiring images for your blog posts? The simplest way to solve all similar issues is to join a team of bloggers who bring to the mix expertise and talent in different areas of maintaining a blog. This will enable you to focus on what you can do best, be it writing, graphic designing, code tweaking or SEO!
More promotion and cross-promotion through different articles on unrelated topics
Have you reached the saturation point in reaching all the internet users interested in the topic you blog about? How about introducing your topic to people who might learn to like it? It’s much easier to have new people introduced to your blog posts when they are already visiting the blog where you publish your articles! So join a team of bloggers who bring diversity to the blog in terms of content and visitors. It would also help you promote each other’s posts on social networks and the blog itself by internal linking of posts.
Better rectification of writing and editing mistakes
Do you make spelling mistakes often when writing blog posts quickly? Does your grammatical accuracy and content clarity leave much to be desired? Do you forget to add the header tags and alt text for images? How about focusing on writing the essential parts of the blog post and letting someone else edit it? This way you can save time and effort and increase your productivity. Trusting someone else to not run away with your post ideas would be much easier when you are part of a team of bloggers, wouldn’t it?
Improvement based on honest, detailed and qualified feedback
Is asking your parents or friends really the best way to improve your blogging skills? Do they know enough about blogging and the topic of your blog to provide you a qualified and honest opinion? Having a team of bloggers sharing your interests and having rich experience in the field will help you improve much faster. Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone could tell you what points you can improve on to take your blog’s popularity to the next level? Who better than someone who has invested in the blog as much time and effort as you?
Collaboration on articles
Do you want to write an article which provides your blog’s readers with multiple perspectives about the topic? Would it be better to try to offer two contrasting perspectives about the subject yourself or having someone else do it? Someone who feels strongly about the opposite perspective and can defend it as well as you can support your own. Collaboration on articles is much easier when you are part of a cohesive blogging team in which members retain their independent opinions and can work together productively.
Greater variety of topics, opinions, broader traffic sources and visitor base
Unless you have a highly specialized blog, say about PHP coding or trekking, having a wide range of sub-topics will ensure that your blog readership gets variety of content and a broader perspective of the topic, say Technology or Gaming. If you like learning and sharing information about gaming hardware, wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to team up with someone who regularly reviews the latest games? If you like blogging about Web Safety Tips, how about teaming up with someone who blogs about the latest feature updates in web browsers? Suppose you are writing a lot about a specific smartphone which goes out of favor within a year. Wouldn’t it send your blog stats crashing down? If a vast majority of your blog’s readers are from search engines, and a few tweaks cause the search engine traffic to drop suddenly, how would affect your blog income? Clearly, having variety in content, visitor base and traffic sources is much more desirable in the long run.
Close group of people sharing interests and achievements
Blogging is not just about writing what you think or feel. It’s about sharing your ideas and experiences with the rest of the world, while learning new things yourself and more importantly enjoying what you do. It’s also about building a rapport with your blog’s readers and engaging with them at a social level. In the course of developing and maintaining a blog, there are several milestones and achievements like reaching a specific point in blog traffic or a specific monthly income range, winning popularity awards among bloggers etc. Having a team to celebrate such occasions with you multiplies the joy and provides much more motivation to keep up the good work.
Responding to comments when the author of the blog post is not available
Especially when you have an active blog readership, and write DIY articles about how to troubleshoot computer software or blogging tips, selecting a PC configuration or antivirus program etc. you need to be able to respond to comments in a quick and efficient manner, thus letting the readers know that you actually care about whether their problems get solved! At times you might be busy with exams or on a vacation or unavailable for some other reason. Wouldn’t it be great if another team member could take over the responsibility of responding to the readers’ comments?
Are you part of a team blog? Please share your experiences with us. It’s never too late to join one either!