Group blogs

 

Group blogging is another good way to develop your professional and academic profile.  Many schools, colleges, departments and research units run their own domain specific group blogs, which enable multiple authors to publish blog posts on related topics.

Moderated group blogs

Some group blogs are unmoderated, and allow members to post any content they choose at any time, however most group blogs are moderated and have a dedicated editor who manages and oversees the content that is posted to the blog.  A good example of an edited group blog from the University of Edinburgh is Teaching Matters.   Group blogs are a great way to encourage colleagues to try their hand at blogging and to get used to the practice of writing for the web.

© University of Edinburgh, Teaching Matters, http://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/

If you are setting up a group blog it’s a good idea to have clear editorial guidelines that set out what topics the blog covers, how long blog posts should be, writing style, posting schedule and other relevant information.  Here are some examples of style and content guides:

Examples of moderated group blogs:

Syndicated group blogs

An alternative way to manage a group blog is to syndicate content from other blogs.  Syndication involves pulling content in from other blogs to create an aggregated series of posts.  We’ll be covering syndication briefly later on. The Open.Ed blog is an example of a syndicated blog, all the posts that appear here were originally posted on other blogs. By tagging these posts #OpenEdFeed they are automatically pulled into the Open.Ed blog.  There’s no moderation or editorial involved.

Open.Ed blog, http://open.ed.ac.uk/blog/

Examples of syndicated blogs:

Some group blogs will adopt a combination of both approaches; an editor oversees the blog as a whole and manages what content appears, some posts are written by members of the group, and some posts are syndicated from elsewhere.

(Playfair Architectural Drawings, CC BY, University of Edinburgh, https://edin.ac/39TbxKw)