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The Stack Exchange Team has recently unveiled Blogoverflow, the new blogging platform for SE sites and users. The Super User Blog has been running for almost 8 months now, and we're starting to have some issues with writers "burning out", where writers seem to either get too busy, or no longer have an interest due to overwhelming in writing for the blog. I foresee that this issue will also arise for many of the other blogs that have already started, or may start soon.

I'm looking for suggestions/ideas of how to raise more attention and participation on the blogs. How do we get more writers to start blogging for us so that we don't have any writers burn out on us? How can we keep current writers involved and interested?

Here's what we've done thus far:

  • Created 'community ads' that are displayed on the site
  • Looked at great answers/questions and directly asked the OP/Answerer if they've wanted to blog about the topic
  • Created a public chat room to attract users to the blog
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    This should probably be asked on Meta Super User. Blogging is a largely a personal activity and asking "how do I keep writing?" is difficult enough. Asking how do I get other people to blog likely insurmountable. It's best to ask amongst the specific audience you are trying to rally.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 2:26
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    @Robert While I agree that I am trying to rally a few from this I feel that this is going to be an issue for ALL blogs. I'm thinking that there must be a few ideas out there that are some what universal.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 16:25
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    Official blogs have been discontinued, so closing this.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Aug 6, 2019 at 14:54

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You could find a question they're interested in and then ask them to write a blog post about it. Once this happens they may start lurking in the Super User Blog Editor Room and then express interest in continuing to help in a meta SO answer.

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  • Super user does this somewhat: We let's users pick a Question of the week that interested them, and then they can blog about it if they choose so.
    – Simon Sheehan
    Commented Jul 19, 2011 at 19:58
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Publish the blog links to the sites themselves so the blog links are more visible. If more users read the blog and then comment on it, the result will be that bloggers will want to contribute more because they are receiving feedback.

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  • We do already have some links within the community ads... are you talking about more than that? like linking to the posts in questions/answers on the site itself?
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jul 25, 2011 at 16:26
  • On the right hand side, there is the Related pane. Put the Top 5 most recent blog links on the right above "Related". Make it more visible.
    – Engineer2021
    Commented Jul 25, 2011 at 16:45
  • That sounds like a @Jeff request.
    – James Mertz
    Commented Jul 25, 2011 at 16:56
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I'd answer your question backwards: only recruit writers who have a proven track record of regularly contributing to a blog for a reasonably long period.

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