Pros And Cons Of A Multi-Author Blog

Since the emergence of weblogs in last decade, we have observed them undergoing drastic changes. In recent years, we can see the trend of multi-author blogs, where writers from different domains contribute to a single blog. Maintaining a multi-author blog is in itself a challenging task and has its own pros and cons. Let's try to understand different dimensions of a multi-author blog.

Pros of a Multi-Author Blog

Regular Content For Readers

Undoubtedly, it is one of the biggest advantages of a multi-author blog. When a team writes for a blog, readers are assured of regular content on their tables. On a single author blog, sometimes the blog may not be updated due to some commitments of the owner. If this period stretches long, it can significantly affect the readership and following. On the other hand, multi-author blogs are assured of regular feed of posts from all contributors. Even if one of them takes a leave for few days, fellow contributors ensure that readers get new posts on regular basis.

Diversified Topics

Often it is observed that multi-author blogs broaden their niche to accommodate content created by all authors, who are expert in their domains. This helps in capturing a larger audience base and thus get more exposure and thrust.

Collective Promotion

Each author has a stake in multi-author blog, resulting in collective promotional efforts. Every team member uses all possible channels for promoting the blog. If some of the contributors are already big guns in their domain, the blog gets immediate exposure through their strong channels, be it social media channels or personal contacts.

Rapid Growth

A sizable team on a multi-author blog can pile up massive amount of quality content in no time, resulting in a long tail helping in getting good presence in SERP's. Large archive is created much faster as more hands are creating content for a single blog, resulting in consistent growth in traffic from organic search.

Cons of a Multi-Author Blog

Compromise On Quality

This is one of the major factors that may affect the growth and performance of any multi-author blog. Every member of the team has different skills and persona. Their writing skills may differ and may not gel well with the blog. If a new team is formed after many years of going ahead with a single author, things can become more complicated because the readers become habitual of the writing style of current author. It may happen that a new author writes in a style that may annoy the core readership.

Branding Issues

A single author blog can brand itself more authoritatively than its counterpart. It is often observed that sometimes reader fail to connect with the authors on a multi-author blog. Branding issues may creep up if one of the authors tries to override others in issues related to branding.

Co-ordination Glitches

Creating a well-planned schedule of posting, comment moderation and handling readers queries is another important issue that need to be dealt with care. Creating a well planned chart can resolve this issue if all the members strictly comply with it. Meeting submission deadlines and editing posts are the most challenging tasks on a multi-author blog. In the beginning these issues may creep up, but gradually everything gets smooth.

Payment Issues

And last but not the least is the payment system. Formulating an effective revenue sharing system that gives fair share to everybody is the foundation of success for any multi-author blog. Creating a clear cut and transparent policy that enumerates how revenue will be shared and how it will be distributed, flushes out all doubts and grievances from the minds of team members.

A common strategy of ad placement on multi-author blogs is to display author's own ads on their respective posts. It can be easily implemented on both Wordpress and blogger platform. For Wordpress, Author Advertising Plugin can be used to effectively display ads and banners on a multi-author blog. For blogger blogs we can make some changes in the template for displaying custom code on the basis of author name or author id.

Over To You

What are your thoughts on a multi-author blog? Are you a part of any multi-author blog? If yes, what other challenges you face while contributing to such blog.

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