A friend of mine recently mentioned that he was experiencing a number of long-standing difficulties administering the group blog he started.   

Naturally, I said, “tell me more,” figuring I could help, or maybe, at least learn something.  So the following conversation ensued:

My friend:  ”I wanted to do a group blogging site because I wanted to do something with a better chance of getting read by large numbers of people.”

Me:  “Ok, sounds good, but what’s the correlation between a group blog and “getting read by large numbers of people?”

My friend:  ”Well, post number is apparently quite important. I read that the more you update your blog with new posts, the higher it would tend to place in the search rankings, all else being equal.

Obviously, a group of bloggers would be able to share the burden of updating a single blog, whereas a single blogger would have to shoulder the entire effort herself. It seemed reasonable to suppose that, in the long run, a group blog would do better in search rankings than a solo blog – the solo blogger unable to update a single blog with the same frequency as a group of bloggers.”

Me:  ”Right, so what’s the problem?  Your group blog is probably outperforming most  solo blogs in terms of readers and search rankings, right?”

My friend:  “Yeah, you could probably say that.  And, I mean since August, 2009 the bloggers in my group have published a total of 315 posts.

315 posts divided by roughly 23 months rounds to about 14 posts a month or about 3.5 posts a week.   So that’s pretty good – I know that it’s a rate many multiples higher than I or my fellow bloggers in the group have probably  ever achieved with their solo blogs.”

Me:  “Pretty good?  You should have said, “pretty great” or “pretty awesome,” man!  Your group blog has been in existence for almost 2 years and has averaged 3.5 new posts a week!!

I mean, dude, how many solo blogs out there have produced 3.5 new posts a week for the last two years or any two year period?  Probably few to none in the world.

And if they have, the posts their writers have done have probably been “micro-blog” 140 character style posts, right?  Look, the posts the bloggers in your group write, those posts are full-on, page-long, well-focused pieces typically, man.   They (and you) should be proud of that!”

My friend:  ”I agree, yes.  However, the thing I am not so proud of is my own naiveté.  See, I figured the greater post-publishing-rate afforded by a group of bloggers writing on the same topic would be key to winning my group blog a large number of readers through the search engines.

In the close to two years I have administered my group blog, however, I have learned the hard-way that a high post-publishing-rate is apparently just one of several things that one has to account for if one wishes to gain a large number of readers from search engines.”

Me:  ”So how did you let all that get past you?  Why didn’t you have a complete, well-researched plan to optimize your site for the search engines before you ever formed your group blog in the first place?”

(Will be continued in upcoming post, “My friend with the group blog (Part 2)”)

We recently received this message from Katie Shoreland at CollegeScholarships.org:

“We just announced the 4th Blogging Scholarship, and thought you might
be interested in it, as it offers student bloggers a chance to be
awarded a $10,000 scholarship.   We’ve been awarding student blogging scholarships since 2006 and I am

hoping your readers will take advantage of the opportunity. The application and additional information are located here: http://www.collegescholarships.org/our-scholarships/blogging.htm

The application due date is October 21. The winner will be announced
on November 2nd.”

So if somebody you know might be a candidate for this scholarship, consider passing this information along!