Network and Channel Promotions: Who Do They Benefit?
Many networks have channel or network wide promotions geared towards bringing in more traffic. I’ve always maintained it’s in a network bloggers best interest to take part in these types of promotions, but one reader begs to differ. This excerpt is reprinted with permission:
Perhaps I’m not a team player but I hate channel promotions. All they do is get one or two other bloggers in my channel to visit my blog. I’d much rather take part in a promotion where we bring in the outside world. This is my biggest problem with network blogging. None of the promotions attract outsiders.
I find most channel promotions boring. Recently we had to do a promotion where we wrote up a glowing review about four other blogs in our channel. We had to choose blogs a certain amount of rungs up the alphabetical ladder. The problem was, none of these blogs had anything to do with my blog. My readers could care less and I had my lowest traffic ever. After reviewing these four blogs not one person reviewed mine. So what good is it for me if no one else participates?
I want to blog. I don’t want to promote everyone else’s blogs because this doesn’t benefit me. Channel wide promotions don’t send me any extra traffic and my blog always seems to be the one to get the shaft throughout it all anyway.
I can understand this blogger’s frustration. I’ve participated in many channel wide promotions that didn’t do anything for my blogs either. I do like the idea of helping out others though, so it didn’t bother me too much. Still, he has a good point. Why bother if it doesn’t benefit the blogger?
You’re under no obligation to take part in channel promotions. I would suggest talking about it at your next channel chat or if your channel has a mailing list, bring it up there. Tell your editor why you don’t wish to participate and maybe you can work out a solution together. Maybe if you discuss it with others in your channel you might learn others feel the same way and can work on promotions that benefit everyone.
5 Tips for Letting Go of Your Network Blogs
Blogs are so personal. They truly become a part of you. Many of us pour everything we are into our blogs. We give them personality and our voice. It’s not easy to let go and watch someone else take over our network blogs. I never had problems moving on from more traditional writing jobs or turning down one client in favor of a better gig. It’s different with blogs. I’m too territorial - these are MY blogs.
I find myself in a position where I have to let go and it’s not an easy decision. If you find yourself in the same situation, here are a few ways you can make the break easier to bear:
- Give advanced notice - Let your editor know a few weeks in advance. This will allow her to find someone to replace you, and it will also enable you to tidy up any unfinished blogging business. For example, you may have some product reviews to complete or a series you’d like to end.
- Find your own replacement - For my favorite network blog, I recommended my replacement. I’m hoping she gets the green light because we both see eye to eye on our vision for this blog and I know she’ll do it justice. I also know she’d let me come back and guest blog once in a while. Which brings me to tip number 3:
- Offer to guest blog once in a while - Even though it won’t be “your” blog anymore. You can still come back from time to time as a guest blogger.
- Remain a part of the community - Don’t make a clean break, remain part of the community. Visit and share comments. Don’t take over - it’s not YOUR blog anymore - but do visit and share your own thoughts.
- Don’t burn your bridges - I’m hoping one day I can have a network blog again. I have nothing but nice things to say about my experiences as a network blogger. I love the sense of community among the network and my editors and managers are top notch bloggers and people. Even if I didn’t want to come back one day, I’m happy to call my blogging associates “friend” and will continue to support them.
It’s tough letting go. I’m not going to gloss it over. I almost didn’t apply for a much better opportunity because I didn’t want to give up my network blogs. My decision is the best for all concerned, however and I have no regrets. It’s going to be tough to see my blogs fall into someone else’s hands, but I’m not going to be a stranger. I’m not going to be posting to these blogs, but that doesn’t mean I can’t participate.
Take Advantage of Network Wide Promotions
At the network I blog for, we have channel wide and network wide promotions. Most involve a specific day where everyone in the channel participates in blogging around a particular topic or theme. Here’s why it’s in your best interests to participate in the events:
- It shows you’re a team player - Being an active member of your network or team is important for network bloggers. While you may be very territorial about your blog or careful about the kind of information you put out there, to not take advantage is to let down the people in your channel. If for you it’s not about being a team player, you probably shouldn’t be blogging for a network.
- It’s good for traffic - When you participate in a channel or network wide promotion, you can generate tons of extra traffic and page views. Everyone who participates writes about the promotion and links all participating blog. New visitors can become regular visitors.
- It puts you in the good graces of your editors. When you don’t want to be bothered it’s noticed. That’s not usually a bad thing, but I prefer to stay on the good side of the people who sign my check.
- You’re helping out your fellow bloggers - And they may wish to help you out in return.
Participation in most events isn’t mandatory, but it’s good blogging juju. When you blog, you need all the good karma you can get.
Hear it from Jennifer’s Co-blogger
Jennifer did a great job covering the pros and cons of having a co-blogger, so I won’t add much in that area, but how does it feel to join an established blog as a co-blogger?
Arriving at an established blog with an overall theme you didn’t pick can be a strange experience, maybe a bit like moving into an already-decorated apartment. Plus, I was very aware that Tree Hugging Family was Jennifer’s creation from the beginning. I didn’t want to stomp on that, but I had to find a way to add my stamp as well.
No worries though. It became apparent pretty quickly that Jennifer didn’t really care if I added new categories or new weekly features and discussed topics she didn’t cover before. Besides getting the post count and traffic up, that’s exactly why she asked me to join. She wanted a new perspective, just not one that was crazy different from the existing theme and tone of the blog. And since she’d been reading my other blog, she knew my writing meshed with her own.
If you join an existing blog, you may not know at first exactly what different qualities you’ll bring, but this is something that will naturally develop as you post. And, as Jennifer mentioned, the different perspective for your readers is one of the pros of having a co-blogger. Jennifer and I think a lot alike. Sometimes it’s scary. But we’re actually very different. I live in on the other side of the US with a cat in an apartment. So, while Jennifer can write about her home gardening adventures with her son, I can write about greening my cat and apartment I share with Michael, my husband.
There are many questions that will gradually surface when you have a co-blogger.
At first, I never moderated comments on Jennifer’s posts. I assumed she didn’t want me to do that. Turns out she didn’t care as long as I didn’t let any angry “you’re crazy for believing in global warming” comments go up. Plus, we don’t want 10,000 pings on a contest post. Once a few basic guidelines were established, we could moderate each other’s comments as they came up. If there’s ever anything I think she needs to see, I’ll e-mail her about it.
At first I thought that maybe we should discuss ahead of time what topics we were going to blog on so we didn’t have duplicates. But I decided to wait and see how it would work. Coordinating each post would be kind of a pain since I sometimes come up with a topic at 1 am and have the post written within the hour. As it turns out, our topic is broad enough that Jennifer and I very rarely plan posts on the same topic for the same day. I think we wrote on the exact same topic one time since February, and the posts weren’t so similar that one had to be deleted.
But don’t we coordinate some things? Sure, and maybe that’s one of the small cons of having a co-blogger since it takes some of your time to coordinate. If there’s a channel-wide post that needs to go up, we’ll discuss who does it. We also try to look at the times that the upcoming posts are scheduled so we can spread them throughout the day. And we take turns changing up the poll. We discuss sponsors for contests and overall goals for the blog. Sometimes I clean out the spam folder and sometimes Jennifer does it, but this isn’t something we discuss. The relationship reminds me a lot of having a roommate.
If you’ve ever had a roommate you’d know that there are times when maybe one of you does more of the cleaning or shopping, etc. And that’s fine. Co-blogging isn’t a competition any more than having a roommate is. There will be times when one of you posts more on a given day or week than the other one. If the co-blogging relationship is good, there shouldn’t be any guilt or hard feelings. It’s teamwork.
And since I’m comparing co-blogging to having a roommate, I might as well go on and say that being able to choose your co-blogger probably works best. The roommates I had in college that weren’t my choices are the ones that didn’t last long. To me, it’s important that you actually like your co-blogger. Otherwise, you may end up resenting sharing your space. So, while it’s possible that a network editor may choose a co-blogger for you, I’d say you might be better off if you had a say as well.
There’s no way to know if a co-blogging relationship will work until you try it. But what I thought was cool is that Jennifer was really upfront about what she wanted in a co-blogger. And that’s good since goals must mesh. If one of you is working overtime to build traffic and the other is humdrum about the blog, it’s not going to work. Goals should be discussed and agreed upon before setting out on the co-blogging adventure.
Another pro I should probably mention is that it can be easier to get your foot in the door at a network by first coming on board as a co-blogger. Starting a new blog can be a big investment for a network, but adding a co-blogger to an existing blog isn’t much of a risk for them. Plus, since joining in February as a co-blogger on Tree Hugging Family, I’ve also gained a new blog of my own at b5media, Junk Creation. Someone was leaving and I was able to take over.
So, what was I most nervous about? Maybe it was wondering if traffic would increase enough to justify the co-blogging relationship. It’s not really something I worry about, but at the same time I was happy when traffic did increase. If it didn’t, would it make sense to share the pay on a network blog? You do share the work, so it could make sense, but most likely not. However, traffic usually increases quite a bit with co-blogging, and that’s been the case at Tree Hugging Family.
In case you can’t tell, I’ve been really happy with my co-blogging adventure.
Are you thinking about becoming a co-blogger?
You can visit Peggy at Tree Hugging Family, Junk Creation and Light Green Stairs.
My Blog’s Stats After Adding A Co-Blogger
My previous two posts about co-bloggers covered the potential positives and negatives of having a co-blogger. Today I’ll share some results.
Background:
The blog I’ve been discussing in the last two posts is Tree Hugging Family. It launched in August 2007, so it’s somewhat new. Being a green family blog, it’s in a smaller niche, then say, pop stars or tech. Being in a smaller niche was one reason I was worried about getting a co-blogger; I wasn’t sure a co-blogger would reap large enough traffic benefits to make a difference.
I blogged at THF solo for about 5.5 months and then decided to find a co-blogger. Peggy has been co-blogging with me since February.
Stats:
THF is a network blog, so I won’t be giving away exact stats, since it doesn’t belong to me. That said, I figured the best way to illustrate the difference between me blogging solo vs. the co-blogger addition was to create a graph. I only included unique visitors and page views to keep it tidy.
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Positives of Having A Co-Blogger
Yesterday we looked at cons of co-bloggers. Today; the potential positives of having a really good co-blogger. In case you missed it, I’d read yesterday’s post first, or you may start wondering who Peggy is.
You finally… FINALLY can take a sick day: Since Peggy came on it’s not like I’ve taken days off - maybe one or two. What I like, is that the option is there now. The same goes for posting amount though. If I can only write one post a day for a couple of days because my son is sick, traffic won’t slow, because I know Peggy posted at least once as well. It’s really nice to have an extra blogger on bad days.
Chores are split: Tasks like blogroll upkeep, moderating comments, contests, and other blah tasks you need to do to keep a blog rolling, are split up. My most favorite thing to do is send Peggy sponsor emails! Now I’m not alone in dealing with them. It’s a huge relief.
You can sign off topics: At Tree Hugging Family, it would be nice to have a post about animals once in a while. Animals are actually a big green issue - one that bores me to write about. Animals are so not my thing. They are however Peggy’s thing. If you have a co-blogger there’s a good chance their knowledge base is different than your knowledge base and it can really round out your blog.
You don’t get stuck anymore: I love green issues. It’s rare I get suck on what or how to write about a topic. However, we all have an off day. When I do, I can email Peggy for advice. Since I know she knows the topics, I trust her judgment.
You know more people: When you start a blog, and you’re already an established blogger, one big perk is many of your readers will follow you to your new blog. Get two bloggers you’ve got 2 sets of readers. It’s not just old school readers either. There may have been people reading Tree Hugging Family who just plain didn’t like me - but, they might like Peggy. Sponsors and other bloggers also relate to each of you differently. You could end up with a wider range of pals, readers, and sponsors.
Your post amount, traffic, and pay can soar upwards: I’ll leave my actual examples for my post tomorrow, but I will say that two bloggers make for much better traffic than one blogger alone. It’s insane the difference Tree Hugging Family has seen.
It’s fun: This was not a perk I expected. However, having the right co-blogger is a lot of fun. We can laugh about the anti tree-hugger emails and chat about green issues and other stuff. For me talking to any blogger is fun - but having another green blogger to talk to is super keen.
It’s supportive: It’s really cool to have someone around who gets the blog like you get the blog. You can discuss ways to pump traffic, rant about mean emails from the loony folks who love global warming, and vent when no one comments on your (assumed) brilliant post.
What are some pros you’ve seen related to co-bloggers?
Co-Bloggers - One Cure for the Lazy Blogger
Deb’s last post was a good one. Did you miss it? Well, here it is - Why I’m a Lazy Blogger - And How I Can Improve.
Deb noted issues with the blogroll, minimum post schedule, and time to visit other blogs. I’m big time into blogrolls so no issues there. However, I totally get her deal with scheduling to increase posting quotas and finding the time to visit other blogs. Most network or client bloggers I know do have time issues; as in there’s never enough time, not ever. There’s always something you can do to improve your blog, and often it comes down to you vs. the clock. Sadly, the clock tends to win, especially when life gets fun and tosses you a sick kid, your network shuts down due to technical issues, or a storm kicks off your power.
One thing that can help is a co-blogger. Co-bloggers don’t relieve you of all your duties, but having an extra set of typing hands can help. A co-blogger is an especially efficient way to pump up post quotas.
Recently I took on a co-blogger myself at a network blog, Tree Hugging Family. My new co-blogger was, well is, Peggy. Based on this experience, I can give you some actual examples of how this has improved my blog, along with some pros and cons you may encounter. This is a longish topic. So, first in this post I’ll cover co-blogger cons. Then in my next few posts we’ll look at pros of co-bloggers, how to find a good co-blogger, and example results of having one.
Hopefully this co-blogger series as a whole will help you decide if a co-blogger is right for you.
Negatives of taking on a co-blogger:
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Bloggers I Appreciate
Since Darren declared this blogger appreciation day (a nice plan by the way), I thought I’d note some bloggers I appreciate. I adore so many bloggers that honestly this list could be endless, but since this is a blog about blogging networks I thought I’d shout out to people who rock at one of my networks - b5media. (If I did all my networks I’d be here all day).
Thankfully Deb works at b5, so I can include her. We’ve actually worked at three or four of the same networks altogether I believe, and she’s always been nothing but cool. I could say more, but I think if you like someone enough to start a blog with them that’s enough said.
My co-blogger at Tree Hugging Family - Peggy. I was so nervous about getting a co-blogger there but it became obvious pretty quickly that she makes the blog a much better place to be, and she’s great fun to work with. Plus she’s up at 3am like me. Actually that might be a bad thing since I can’t get work done when I’m emailing her for the ninth time… Hmm.
Marye - because well, if you knew her you’d appreciate her too. I could write an entire blog about the good Marye’s done, she constantly amazes me.
Gayla my editor at b5media of course. I’ve said it before but you won’t find a better editor than her.
Some bloggers you appreciate even when their blogs are puzzling. For me that blogger is Jeanne who really only blogs about topics I can’t handle but I adore her anyhow. If I lived closer, I’m sure we’d go see the new X-Files together when it comes out.
Linette; totally sweet, a great blogger, and always generous with links.
Kori has actually done lots of little things for me that I really appreciate. She’s endlessly helpful and always nice. We tend to talk late at night so maybe I forget to say thanks… here it is though. You’re noted and appreciated.
Sandy because she always sends me little clips to blog about, even though I never get her back 
Seriously, I know nothing about holidays. I’ll have to find something obscure for her one day.
Hilary who can call me Jen if she wants.
Susan and Mary Jo who I grouped together because at they both managed to draw me out of my little niche area at b5. Before I knew them or their blogs I never visited the business or travel blogs. But both their blogs are swell enough to make you want more. Plus they’re both really nice bloggers to boot.
Shai and Christina - Every single time I’ve interacted with one of these two they’ve been helpful and upbeat. Who is helpful and upbeat all the time? Seriously though, they are, and it’s appreciated.
Last but never, ever least - Liberty who is maybe one of my best online pals around. But she knows that, so instead of talking a lot, I’ll just leave her a little note - “I swear as soon as I hit publish I’ll email :)”
And beyond that there are seriously at least 30 other b5 bloggers who improve my world often - I feel really bad to stop now, but I have work to do, and I just can’t fit them all here. But that’s one of the perks of network blogging, there’s always someone fun, helpful, or inspiring around to hang with.
Now, before the day is over, why not celebrate Darren’s idea and blog about some bloggers you appreciate. Or tell me who you appreciate and why in the comments.
Being A Team Player at A Blog Network
As a blogger at a blog network, what’s typical is to be split into sections (or niches or channels). It could be by blog topic (such as all the pregnancy and parenting blogs are grouped together), it could be that your blog is simply one of many assigned to a particular managing editor, or it might be that the network is small enough that everyone falls under one main managing editor, or whatever the boss likes to be called.
What’s true of all networks is that within your section, the bloggers and editors can work as a team or not as a team. Having blogged on teams that actually are a team, and teams where you don’t even know each other’s names, I can tell you that the, “Let’s work as a team situation” is absolutely better.
When the editors and bloggers in a channel or niche are on board with teamwork, it’s great. If not, well, it can be frustrating.
It’s frustrating because perks of working as a team can be really nice. Perks of teamwork can include higher page views for your blog, the channel, and the network as a whole, better communication when something goes wrong, or even better when something goes right, overall happiness with your job, more friends, and a more flowing feeling.
Honestly, what’s the point of being part of a specific channel, if you’re really not part of that channel? Many bloggers come to a network after having blogged on their own, so maybe the switch to team player is tough. But that’s a network. If you sign on, you’re signing onto a team, not simply your own blog.
Team components:
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