I’ve been working with the Photo Art team in the last two weeks on their new team blog called Photographic Art World. It’s been an interesting exercise and a reminder about the personality of a blogger.
Basically, I grabbed the domain, added WordPress, grabbed a theme, added a few plugins and customised it. A few hours work.
Then I added in a few blog posts to get the ball rolling and set up categories, etc.
Now it was time for some training. Both users, one in Melbourne, one in the Sydney office, were reasonable experienced web users but certainly not geeky and had never run a blog. However they were both used to working in basic content management systems and forums, including on Photo Art, so they conceptually knew what it meant to ‘publish’. A key term.
Most importantly though, they were both confident communicators. Anyone can do the training. Anyone can work out WordPress (or 50 other blogging platforms). But not everyone can stand on a public soap box, even if they are passionate about their subject, and get a word out. Remember, fear of public speaking is up their with fear of death, so it takes some guts.
The end result was that whilst I asked them to do a trial blog post each, they grabbed it by the horns and added a few useful posts in exactly the right style and substance that we aimed for. Very early days, of course, but a very promising start.
With other clients and projects, despite the best planning, training and tools and regularly prodding, it just never took off. The people behind it either weren’t committed or didn’t have the base personality to be a blogger.
As just implied, even if you’re not ‘born to be a blogger’ you can get good at it through diligence and persistence (like most things, I think, including leadership).
You get used to thinking like a blogger.
You recognise good blog fodder when you see it.
You carve aside time to do it.
You get faster at it, so it feels less like a burden.
You start to get positive feedback, so it feels like a joy.
Of course if you combine the personality with the persistence then you’ve potentially got a great blog in the making.
Are you a natural blogger?
Have you seen people crash and burn as bloggers?
How long does it take to get your ‘blog legs’?