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I finally found a use for Blogs

Posted by Katie McKay on June 15, 2011 at 9:31am in
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Blogs have not been very popular on my site, usually a post there was confused with a forum post and vice versa. I looked through my forums and blogs to find a common topic to better define what the blogs should be. I am going to use mine for product reviews. First thing I did was visit the Language Editor. Nearly everywhere I found the word "Blog" I changed it to "Product Review". There's a lot, and some you shouldn't change so be careful. Now its very clear to anyone on the site. "Add a Product Review" "Read Product Reviews" "Featured Product Reviews" and so on.

I went a step further and added a page to start to pump up the submission of these blogs/reviews. I may add incentives at some point as well. I also added a tab and a banner for reviews.

Here's the page: http://girlriders.ning.com/page/product-reviews

I hope this give someone some ideas of their own for utilizing blogs in their network.

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This reply was deleted.
- Speed Racer June 15, 2011 at 12:19pm
  
  i did very similar as Katie, Eric, for the very same reasons. I changed mine to "Article" labels. I don't necessarily have everyone writing articles, but have stopped everyone from going to "blog" to post discussions that are better suited for the forums. I have a weekly contributor who writes Fantasy NASCAR articles for the site, and I write one here and there myself. For whatever reason, so many people do not know the difference between a blog and a forum discussion, so anyone who is having issues with discussions posted in your blogs, step back, think, and get creative, rename your blogs!
ceri shaw June 15, 2011 at 9:55am

Blogs are probably THE most used tool on my network. We use them for product ( almost exclusively book ) reviews and interviews with authors, artists etc. We also have a monthly competition, 'Top Blogger':-

http://americymru.net/leaderboards/blogposts/week

-: for which we use the Leaderboard rankings and some discretionary points. We also offer a prize for the winner each month. Separate blog categories....including a Review subsection, would be useful though imho.
NC for Hire

⚡JFarrow⌁ June 15, 2011 at 9:57am

i turned mine into an Article Submission...just be sure to turn the moderation on
- Katie McKay > ⚡JFarrow⌁ June 15, 2011 at 10:09am
  
  Aww yes, I was planning on doing that and forgot. Thanks for the reminder.
Lisa B June 15, 2011 at 10:08am

I have two networks...on Mommalicious its used for blogs..on Readers Paradise (my new networkz) I've turned the blog section into a Book Reviews Section..

I changed all the wording like you did :)
This reply was deleted.
- Speed Racer June 17, 2011 at 6:27pm
  
  yes, product reviews is a good idea in a niche that centers around retail product, I feel that would be VERY strong on your site, Kris, for bikes, helmets, clothing, tools, etc.
  - Katie McKay > Speed Racer June 17, 2011 at 6:59pm
    
    that's mine too :P
M.Tariq Malik June 17, 2011 at 9:01pm

Great :-)
Annette Albert June 17, 2011 at 10:58pm

HI, this sounds like a solution to the blog v forum - such a simple but great idea. You say that you changed all the blog wording on language editor and that you should not change some - how do you know which ones not to change. Annette
- Katie McKay > Annette Albert June 19, 2011 at 4:22am
  
  Annette,
  
  When you enter "blog" as the search term in Language editor you get pages of results. There were a couple that said something more or less about link to blogging services such as blah blah. Just read them and make sure it is actually talking about YOUR blogs. Also, I didn't change the address references. You'll see one place in the editor that has /yoursite/blog/... I didn't want anything to get misdirected, so I made sure I was only changing text that appeared on the site.
  
  Hope that makes sense. Good luck!