Very few of us live to blog. It takes a special kind of effort to put yourself out there and express yourself on a regular basis. By way of example, here are a few responses I heard more than once while recruiting bloggers at Lithium:
"I'd like to blog, but I'm not sure I'd be any good at it."
"The last thing I want is to be boring."
"I'm not sure anyone would read it."
Bear in mind that at least one of these comments was from the same expert I've witnessed passionately and eloquently espousing the esoteric points of rating systems and their virtues in front of rooms filled with people, so I admit to being a little surprised.
I've often heard that a prime characteristic of a successful blogger is passion. We have very passionate people here at Lithium, and I expect you have your share of passionate folks in your organization too. But I've found that a person needs more than just passion to blog: you also need validation. You need to believe that your words matter, that someone else is interested in what you have to say.
So how do you foster that sense of worth in your future bloggers? Here's a couple of ideas we have to get over this hurdle:
- Ask your expert a question and let them know that you think they are the best person to address this topic. It is easier to respond to a question than to think one up on your own. And by letting them know you consider them THE expert on the issue, you've give them that validation to start writing. As new questions come in on this topic, it will become more and more natural for that expert to respond.
- Find an instance where they have previously expressed an opinion and ask them to clarify it in more detail. You have interesting conversations with each other all the time; after all, that's why you want these folks to be bloggers! Next time, continue the conversation via email and then ask the expert to use their excellent response as a blog article. The heavy lifting is mostly done at that point, and they already know at least one person (you) is interested and thinks others would be interested too.
- Start building a pool of topics that your bloggers can use for new ideas. Support and Sales teams are especially useful here, as they are constantly getting new questions from customers and prospects. Get those questions into a common area (maybe even an internal board on your forum) and ask the internal community who they would like to hear answer it.
It's not easy to blog with any frequency, but first you have to make it easier to begin. If you have a blog, what prompted you to start? What encouragement would you give to new bloggers?
Message Edited by ScottD on 09-29-2008 06:05 PM
