How To Have a Successful Blog Series part two-

Last week I wrote part one of How to have a Successful Blog series without having a nervous breakdown. If you missed it please click here. I began by sharing the basics. A blog series is a post on a topic that you think is interesting enough to warrant more than one post. Or that is a post on a topic that may be too complex, or too wordy to fit into one post. If you are a blogger, you will find this helpful and if you are a reader of blogs you will know how important you are in blog topic decisions.

Part two

Being a planner is important for any blogger . You really need to plan ahead when you have a blog series. Don’t create one on a whim. Make an outline. That’s right, “old school style”, topic, length of time, guest lists, if it pertains to your series, goals and overall confidence that your series will sustained itself. Write it all down. If you have excel spreadsheets available it is a great tool for planning a series and giveaways too. But, I start everything on a simple piece of paper in a ruled notebook.

Here’s an example I used for the Between the Lines blog series outline-
Topic- Bloggers of a certain age/50 plus-
Purpose- To shine the light on blogs written by bloggers that may have been overlooked with hopes of growing a community of bloggers over 50 and readers who are all ages-
Invite-Send an invitation via, email, Katherines Corner and on social media-Provide expectations to potential bloggers in the series -Create a deadline for invitation responses.
Create the blog series logo- make sure it is attractive enough to look nice on any blog layout.

Schedule your bloggers- get written confirmations and tell your participants that it is important to create a folder for the Between the Lines emails*
Blogger participation- Send me, three photos, one of the blogger and two that represent their blog. Have her write a post on their scheduled day introducing the series to her readers and ask them to share their experience as a blogger of a certain age. Promote on social networks. I will do all the rest

Looks pretty good right? When you have guests involved in your series, make sure you provide a nice invitation no less than three weeks prior to your first post for the series. Throw out a few teasers to your readers. It’s all about the bread crumbs, similar to a giveaway you want your readers to know something good is coming and they will be as excited as you are for the blog series.

Make a series posting schedule especially if you plan to have guests for your blog series. I cannot stress this enough, even if you have “solid confirmations” from your guests. You may still have no shows and last minute drop outs that cause you to scramble. But, as you already know, bloggers need to have thick skin. But I am here to tell you it can sting a little. For instance (I would never publish any of these lovely bloggers names) I had a participant say, “ I stopped reading your emails, there were too many of them.”. That is the perfect example of why you should encourage your participants to have a designated folder for series emails. I also had a blogger write… Don’t take this wrong but, your blog really isn’t that popular, I mean not enough for me to commit time to your series. To take the sting out she did write sorry at the end. Go figure? Thick skin…very important…..

Another thing to keep in mind is that very few of your guests will have any level of ownership/commitment to your series. There are even some who will participate and will receive new readers visitors, etc. but will not follow any of the bloggers participation requests. You may ask them to follow, to promote or provide something for their part of the blog series.
For example, I had originally hoped for 25 bloggers over age 50 to participate. The next thing I know I am saying “wow 50 over 50 that will be great.” Then boom shacka lacka I have 89! It was wonderful and stressful all at the same time. That is a lot of scheduling, meeting others needs and all out time consuming endeavor. At the end of the RSVP’s I had 93. Then when a few found out they needed to participate instead of just be featured. I had 89 bloggers commit to the blog series. But in the end we had 70 and that is a  very respectable number of lovely bloggers over 50.

To summarize-

Blog series are great, they shouldn’t be more than 10 weeks long or 10 posts long.

Plan, plan and dare I say it again, plan.

Make an outline

Send creative invitations ( if you are having guests) include what they need to do.

Create a logo/banner/etc. that represents the series,

Schedule

Promote before and during the series

Having a blog series can be a very serious undertaking. You have what it takes. You are a blogging series rock star!

Eat pink cookies with tea.

I hope to see you all back here for the Thursday Favorite Things link party.

I am always happy to answer questions, please contact me if you prefer not to leave your question in the comment area below.

In the interest of full disclosure, I went way over on my word count for this post. 

Did you find this tutorial How To Have a Successful Blog Series part two helpful?

Do you have more to add? Please share your blog series experience with me. Did I forget something?

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“May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He let His grace shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-6:26 NIV