Most blogs start out as a solo project. Blogging is a hobby for some people, and a way to make money for others. Most of the time, it’s both. It takes time for most blogs to be successful. However, once your blog is a success, you must find ways to retain and increase the traffic to your blog. As you know, content is the king. If you have a lot of unique, gripping posts on your blog, your viewership will increase. Unfortunately, one person alone can only do so much. So, when your blog starts getting a substantial amount of traffic, it is a good idea to hire some people and build a team.
Why Do I Need A Team For My Blog
As stated above, one person cannot do everything. If you try to run a successful blog on your own, you might mess up because of work overload. If you are getting a lot of traffic on your blog, you must try to keep it that way. In fact, you should aim higher. You can’t do this without having great content on your blog. Not only should your content be unique and interesting, there should be a lot of it. Your website needs to have something new for readers every day. You don’t want a visitor to come to your blog to find nothing new. If you try to churn out fresh content every day, you might feel overburdened. Having a team would ensure that work is divided equally amongst people. Your blog will not rely on one person alone. Moreover, more people would mean more ideas. Having a team of content creators will spice up your blog. If you have a successful blog right now, you can think about starting another one. But you cannot do this if all your time is taken up by your current blog. You need to delegate responsibilities so you can diversify and look into new ventures. From another point of view, by hiring content creators, you will be creating jobs. You will also get a chance to pass on the knowledge you have. In fact, it is a two-way street. You will learn a lot from your team too.
Building A Blogging Team
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Write Down A Job Description
When looking for a writer, you are looking to hire someone. Naturally, you should list down the tasks you want to get done. Mention these tasks clearly in your advertisement. The potential content writers should know in advance what is expected from them. This will prevent any misunderstanding/conflicts in the future. When I was hired for a writing job, I was clearly told what was expected of me including the number of words I have to write every day, the number of hours I have to work every day, and the additional tasks that I may have to do sometimes.
2. Test Your Writers
Before hiring anyone, test them. Give them the topics that could appear on your blog and ask them to write on those topics. This will give you an idea about the writing capabilities of the candidates. It will also familiarize the candidates with the workload. During my hiring process, I had a trial day. It made me understand what it is really like to write 3-4 blog posts a day.
3. Train Your Team
The owner of the blogs I worked for was very helpful. He provided me helpful resources. He gave me reading and video links. Obviously, the information was too much to be understood in a day or two. I took my time to get the hang of things. All throughout, my employer was really patient and helpful. As a professional blogger, you must understand that not everybody is on the same page as you. You need to train your team well so that people work according to your expectations.
4. Ask Yor Team To Maintain A Work Log
For people who have just started blogging, it might not be easy to meet the word limit every day. To keep your team on track, ask your writers to maintain a work log. They can prepare excel file to record the number of words they have written every day. This will not only make it easy for you to keep track of their work, it will also help them see where they stand. During the first few days, ask your team members about their work at the day end. This will create a sense of accountability.
5. Be Accessible
Your team should know where to reach you. A good idea is to have a team group on Facebook or Whatsapp so that all team members can remain in touch. This will improve relations between team members. Lack of communication can demotivate team members and keep them isolated.
6. Give Feedback
You should let your team members know how they are doing. If there is something lacking in their work, let them know and provide help so that they can improve on it. If they are doing well, praise them. This will motivate your team members and drive them to do better. You should also tell your team members about the blog performance. Tell your team members how the blog was performing before them and how it is performing now. Tell them how they can improve their content to get more traffic. Tell them about the keywords you think they should write on. Educate them about ways to get more traffic such as guest posting, low competition keywords, blog commenting, etc. Since they are new to the blogging world, they probably do not know as much as you do. Share your knowledge with them so that your team can work harder to achieve the goals you have set for your blog.
A strong team can be a valuable asset for your blog. Training your team well is as important as hiring the right people. But you should keep in mind that people take some time to learn. Be patient and encouraging during the first few months. Give regular feedback to your team to help them improve. Hopefully, over time, your team will learn and make your blog more successful.
Bio: Anam Faruqui is a CS student who has stumbled into the world of blogging and reently and is try to learn new things every day.
