I didn’t think this was anything remarkable until Chris in our Texas office sent around a note calling out how quick and easy she found today’s blog post.
- 9:00 a.m.: I saw a clever comment from Mark on an internal EDF list about a ‘Marketplace’ report missing the story. I dropped a note to him about turning it into a blog post.
- 1:28 p.m.: Post is live on Climate 411, our national climate blog.
That might seem like a lot of hours between idea and post, but here’s everything that happened in between:
- Mark was incommunicado for a few hours, between a conference call and a frozen Blackberry.
- Two communications people reviewed Mark’s post, and both suggested changes that Mark had to okay.
- I copy-edited and produced it, including digging up links.
Lesson: A solid blog post can take a surprisingly small amount of work. This wasn’t a panic or a sprint for any of us. We just fit it in around our other items today. For people who are thinking about getting blogs off the ground, but are hesitant because of all of the work it seems to entail — this is what it can be like once you get yourselves sorted out. Hang in there.
Update: I was just talking about this with another EDF staffer who’s struggling to find time to blog, and realized that one of the keys to doing a quick post is having something to react to. If I had asked Mark this morning how he felt about writing up five paragraphs on the coal industry, we would have ended up with nothing. But with a piece right in front of him that needed correcting, the post was a lot easier to write.
(Note to anyone waiting on the results of the Social Media Challenge…sorry! I am recovering from an unidentified-but-probably-not-H1N1-retreat-related illness, and will post the wrap-up very very soon.)