The Bloggers Circle has now been going for two months. There are many really good things about it. It’s a supportive environment for debate, people have discovered new blogs, bloggers have written about new issues and lower profile bloggers have increased their profile.It’s been particularly exciting to see some members start debating amongst themselves.
In September 67 posts were submitted, almost exactly the same number as in August. Of these 31 were debated on at least one other blog, although none were debated on more than two other blogs. That’s an increase in debate on last month – and I’d like to think this was partly down to the new format I’ve tried with the daily digest to give more prominent to blog responses. We have also added more than five members during the month.
I’ve also tried to improve the administration of the circle by introducing new members and getting under the skin of some of our most loyal members so that we can swap notes on how to blog.
There are a number of ways that we can improve the bloggers circle. We can better profile the posts which have been submitted to the circle, in order to help drive traffic to the sites of our members. We could do a weekly digest of the best posts, as voted for by members of the circle.
I have also surveyed those who have joined but not taken part. The key messages that came out of this were:
- people are still reading the daily email digest or the RSS feed
- those who aren’t submitting posts are hesitant because there aren’t enough relevant blogs
- there’s still enthusiasm for the concept
So there are some really positive elements of the Bloggers Circle. But I worry that it isn’t moving forward dynamically and isn’t sufficiently useful to any individual member that it’s a compelling thing in which to participate.
How should we take it forward? We are looking at improving our website – though things are inevitably slow when trying to do IT upgrades on the cheap and favours. I think there are three options:
- Admitting that it was a nice idea, but not sufficiently compelling to make a significant difference to its members
- Expanding the circle significantly, and creating lots of sub-groups based on specialisms
- Trying a completely different approach (such as members voting on the best posts) for a couple of weeks and see what impact that has
What do you think?
Related posts:
- bloggers circle: month 1 assessment
- Bloggers Circle: week one assessment
- Launching the Bloggers Circle
- 3 changes to the Bloggers Circle
- Bloggers circle expands
Tags: bloggers circle
I like idea No3 Matthew.
We certainly should not give up.
2 or 3 sound good to me.
I’ve been finding it difficult to contribute because I’m lazy and disorganised and because most posts from the group don’t fit my areas of interest; maybe some specialist sub-groups wld help address that.
[...] Where next for the Bloggers Circle? The Bloggers Circle has been going for two months. It’s a supportive environment for debate but it’s not making big waves. So how should we move it forward? http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/bloggers-circle-2-months-on/ [...]
2 and 3 sound good to me.
Another good way to provoke a bit more debate might be to try to set up some challenges for people to write about.
Pick a subject and request posts on it, who ever provokes the most debate, or gets the most votes wins some sort of prize; maybe being cross posted somewhere fairly popular like LibCon or ConHome or elsewhere?
Oh, another idea. Perhaps if you could code up a button/image/widget people could place on their blog to subscribe to the Blogger’s Circle RRS feed it might produce some more interest.
Something you can place on your blog would improve coverage, get more people reading and encourage other bloggers to join in.
The thing that Leftoutside suggested about submitting a topic is a really good idea. We trialled that out, and got both of our posts linked to on libcon, sending a lot of traffic our way, and we sparked off a debate with the Fairtrade thing.
Something we can place on the blog is a good idea as well, just to get more people involved. Political blogs are very badly read even from the ‘best’ bloggers sadly though.
It’s important to understand that very, very few bloggers gain a large audience quickly. Some of the most successful bloggers have taken years (really) to generate an audience. I’m also very keen to dispel the Technorati myth about numbers of hits being a meaningful measure of value. I saw a terrific presentation by the British Museum’s web team some months ago where they talked about the idea of “user value” in a much more sophisticated way.
To demonstrate my point, this is the 10th most popular education website in the UK according to Cision. Read it and judge for yourself whether it merits that spot and how it got there. http://uk-education-blog.blogspot.com/
My idea would be to run a face-to-face event. All the research shows that where people in online communities get to actually meet each other, their level of communication online subsequently grows exponentially.
Hi, I’ve only just joined, and haven’t contributed yet because I’ve been juggling being at a 3 day conference, battling a cold, and doing some paid work! However, the bit about the conference is relevant, because it generated several blog posts and loads of comments on Twitter. Mind you, of an attendance of 1500 people, only around 5 people, as far as I can tell, have actually blogged about it.
For me, what comes out of this is the following:
1. The 1% rule operates, or something like it, ie only a small proporttion of people are active, as a rule
2. Perhaps bloggers could be asked to write something that also ties in with RSA events. EG, on 19th October the Cambridge Review will be launched. Perhaps a few of us could write a post about that, some from an educational perspective and some from a political perspective, say. That way it may be less random.
I like the voting idea too.
Thanks for your responses so far. I want to give it some more thought, but am also exploring how we make option 3 work for a quick trial.
I am so sorry that I have been so lazy as to not contribute to the bloggers circle as yet- I do read daily the updates but, as someone else mentioned few of them seem relivent to me- though they are interesting.
I am pretty new to blogging also so I have much still to learn- feeling more confident would make me far more likely to use the circle in a productive way.
Don’t give up- I promise I’ll try harder!!
Corby
The twin objectives of the Bloggers’ Circle were to enable members to develop a wider audience for their blog posts and to be a source of inspiration for our own writing. I think we need to look at them both before passing judgement.
To take the last one first, the Bloggers’ Circle is absolutely inspiring for me. It has become like a second news paper for me, and a valuable source of content, comment and opinion. The digest is the most helpful bit of the Bloggers’ Circle as it enables me to scan the headlines to see whether there is anything I want to read and debate. There are usually two or three things that interest me and that’s pretty good given I don’t bother reading about 80% of the newspaper. So, I do feel like the blog posts are informative, educational and interesting. I regret I don’t always have the time to debate them as I would like to as many are a source of inspiration for my own writing. 10/10 for the inspiration bit.
To take the first one last, I know the Bloggers’ Circle has not expanded the number of people who follow my blog. Having said that, my blog posts have been debated a couple of times by members of the circle and that is nice. If I flip that over, I have debated a number of blog posts and I know that people who follow me (via my blog, twitter, or facebook) have followed up on those links from time to time, have read the original bloggers’ posts, and have commented back to me. I do not know if any of “my” followers are now following the other bloggers but I do know that I have not become a follower of any of the Bloggers’ Circle members. The digest makes it so easy to stay informed that I don’t need to follow anyone directly: I can follow everyone through the digest. 5/10 for the wider audience bit.
What to do?
I love the Bloggers’ Circle, truly I do, for the above reasons. It mostly meets my aims and, although I admit I wish more people followed me, I rationalise that the reason more people don’t follow me is that I don’t have enough interesting stuff to say. Certainly the circle has given me a wider readership from time to time, even if it has not given me a wider followership. I am ok with that. However, Matthew, if the Bloggers’ Circle is not meeting your aims, it must become disheartening to manage the digest and the admin of the circle. Please at least let me now say thank you – I appreciate what you are doing.
As for taking it “to the next level” I wonder if more active networking in addition to or as an alternative to debating is an idea? What I mean is that if I read a blog that interests me maybe I should suggest to the writer someone (person or organisation) they could send the post to directly – so it comes from them (with a recommendation) and not from me? Maybe we should be more proactive in enabling posts to be sent newspaper or journal editors, think tanks or politicians directly. Are members looking for work? Are they looking to get published? Are they looking to commericalise their creativity in some way?
Maybe we could introduce a component of action among all the talking? Just a thought.
@Jane Mason:
Thanks Jane – a really useful contribution. I was uncertain whether ditching the daily digest would be a positive step and from your feedback – and the surveys completed by those who don’t take part – the daily digest remains popular. Therefore, it should remain (but people who don’t like it should be free to opt out).
The second point – about widening the network – is an important one. I’d like to think some more about that. There certainly is something, though, in encouraging people to send posts they like to a wider network.
@Tanya Leary:
Thanks Tanya. Don’t hesitate to come forward. The worst that can happen is that people don’t read what you write and I think most people have found it to be a pretty supportive atmosphere.
@Left Outside:
We should have this and will be able to offer it to members shortly.
[...] been lots of debate about how to develop the Bloggers Circle. We’d like to make three changes to the way we work [...]