Liz Fuller and Laura Spencer, who took over from me the responsibility for the b5 media blog Business and Blogging, are moving on. It is apparently not known generally who is taking over from them.
There was also a hiatus when I moved on. Not that b5 media did not try to find a replacement, just that the process took a while longer than any of us had anticipated.
Maybe it’s in the nature of blogging that finding a replacement blogger in good time is a non-trivial task. A number of things have to come together, such as:
- capacity of the blogger to post about – and on – the required topic
- capacity of the blogger to keep doing that, several days a week, and week in, week out
- negotiating the financial and other terms of any agreement – whether the blogger is an employee or contractor
And if as the chosen blogger you have your own blog on the same or a related topic as the one you are contracted to write for, there is a particular challenge – as I experienced when posting to Business and Blogging – namely whether a specific post will be used for the company/network blog or saved for your own!
In all of this I’m pretty sure there is are lessons for any company which has a blog or blogs. Lessons about business continuity, or more precisely about business blogging continuity.
Liz Fuller has used her farewell post from Business and Blogging to shared some thoughts on the topic, with some excellent suggestions on how to provide for the effects of vacations, illness, and employee turnover.
- One approach is to have multiple bloggers so that they can cover for each other
- Another is to have posts written in advance to allow for disruption in schedules
- And a third is to build a network so that you can find a new blogger to transition quickly and smoothly
In my experience, each of these suggestions has its own challenges built in, but some version of them should not be beyond the capacity of any business.
How would you or do you provide for business blogging continuity?
