Is anyone interested in starting, managing and/or writing for an Ask Different blog?

Question

IMHO Ask Different needs a blog seeing as other SE sites have one. If you are interested in helping out post an answer addressing these points provided by Rebecca Chernoff here: How are blogs created?

1. Raise the idea on the child meta. A community blog needs the involvement of community members.  These blogs don’t exist to be the personal blog of a community member.  They are both for and run by the community.  It needs to be something the community collectively wants and will cultivate.

2. Define the scope and purpose of the blog. Is the blog about the site? Is it about the site’s topic? Is it about the industry around the topic? Keep in mind the audience of your community and their interests. Another generic blog about may not be all that interesting.  A community blog should be interesting to both current members and potential new members.

3. Recruit contributors. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including research/prep time.  The more contributors there are, the less frequently each contributor needs to post.  One post a month is a much easier to stomach than a couple posts every week.

4. Plan a schedule. Given the results of steps #2 and #3, think about a rough idea of a schedule for the blog. Will there be one post a week, posted Mondays? Will there be posts on Tuesdays and posts on Fridays? You don’t need to be pushing out posts daily, but you should post at least once a week.

Answer 1

I have reconsidered my position and I am now in favor of starting an Ask Different blog. Realistically speaking, in addition to the bi-weekly podcast I can contribute an article or something bi-weekly as well. So at a minimum, there will be something new on the blog once a week. I would also like to serve as editor in chief so I can schedule contributions from other authors approve submissions before they're published.

Answer 2

Raise the idea on the child meta. Done, though it would be good to bring it up in the chat room too.

Define the scope and purpose of the blog. I think anything related to Apple besides day to day news and rumors would be on topic. Starting off we could put the podcast notes and rss feed on the blog. Other than that there is also QotW, tips and tricks and maybe switcher guide posts though I think the purpose of the blog should generally be geared towards experienced users.

Recruit contributors. I can of no better place to recruit contributors than here. I would be interested in writing QotW posts maybe once a month and I would be willing to edit others posts.

Plan a schedule. I think a weekly post besides podcast notes would be a good start.

Answer 3

I think I could contribute one or two specific blog posts about my experience here and my ideas about helping users and answering questions. I think of myself as an "outsider" and might have an "outside the box" point of view that some people might appreciate.

In addition to being a technical support guy, I'm a grant writer, technical writer, copywriter, and I used to be a professional music journalist. Rest assured that I write well and wouldn't require much editing. In fact, while I'm at it, I would be willing to act as editor for other peoples' blog posts.

Although I post something on Ask Different almost daily, I do not read Ask Different Meta very often and I don't go into the chat page very often either. So if anybody would like to discuss with me what I might contribute, how, and when, please write to me directly at [email protected].

Answer 4

I'd have enough spare time to contribute once a month at least. I'd like to be able to pick up article ideas from a pool and research / write about them, and leave the editing / steering to others.

Answer 5

I would be interested in writing. I don't know how much time I will have. I also am not very good at coming up with topics, so if people would give me topics to write about, I will hopefully be able to write. Don't count on me writing a lot of posts. If I could have a list of topics to write on, I will slowly work on writing articles for them. My idea would be to write several posts at one time, then queue them, so they don't all go out at the same time. Hopefully.