Getting a Group Blog Going. Good Luck.

For anyone working social media inside a company, one of the hardest tasks (aside from justifying your existence , period) may be getting people to participate in a corporate group blog. A lively, dynamic company blog with a lot of participating voices is a great asset, showing a human side of the company as well as the creative thinking that goes into the work and products and services from all departments.

I have had the opportunity to participate in a couple such blogs (most recently, the now-resurgent Slice Blog at SHIFT communications, and have observed some of the things that work and don’t work in getting people to participate.

Here are some tips based on my observations and experience:

• Have an enthusiastic evangelist. Nothing gets people to blog– to do anything more than someone who shows infectious enthusiasm. Blogging is fun- show us what you got!
• Make it easy. People think blogging is work. It’s not, really, but have fun trying to convince people of that when they have plenty to do in their primary jobs. One great idea I heard from the folks at Kodak (I believe it was Kodak’s Chief Blogger, Jenny Cisney) is to create a blog template– something that is easy to fill in and decreases the time needed to actually create the post.
• Make excuses to blog. Do you make people report back when they go to networking events or sit in on seminars? Ask them to take that energy and turn it into a blog post. Is someone preparing a training presentation? Blog post. Is someone ranting about an industry issue to blow off steam in the office? Blog post. Usually there is not much difference between internal presentation and what you can show to the outside world. Repurpose all that productive energy.
• Create a Series. In the case of the SHIFT blog, the team came up with the “Slice of SHIFT” series profiling employees, as a way to add content momentum, complement the “ideas” posts that are rolling in, and guarantee there is a post every week (now you know why I do a “Social Media Top 5” on this blog every week).

Some things that don’t work:

• Forced scheduling: “Suzy posts on Monday, Johnny posts Tuesdays,” etc. It doesn’t work. Nobody enforces deadlines, and they will be missed. I was assigned blog posts for one blog and was probably one of the few who actually did them- and I didn’t even do it every week. I was busy!
• Enforced Deadlines: Forcing people to blog? Have fun being resented. Don’t even think about it. Forced blogging shows in the writing, too. Dull.
• Incentives: No one will blog for a cookie. Even promises of cross-posting to a more popular executive blog don’t necessarily get a result. Here’s a shocker; not everyone wants to be famous, or even “social media famous.” Go figure. Do, however, promote blog posts internally as they are published. OK, people do want to be popular in the office. Sometimes.

What did I leave out? How do you get a group blog going?