Running a Team Blog: How to Overcome Communication Problems

Communication is necessary for success. And when it comes to team blogging, it is one of the most vital components for success! You need to be in touch with other members to make sure than everything goes fine and any problems are properly solved.

Communicate With Your Team

As a team, we have experienced problems with communication. Sometimes the ideas are not conveyed properly and sometimes, we just forget to reply to urgent mails. However, there are ways to simplify the communication process.

Over the last 6 months we used three different solutions to communication the ‘right way’ :

1. E-Mails
2. Google Groups
3. A private Forum

I will discuss these solutions and their pros and cons one by one but before that, take a look at this quick comparison!

Comparison of Different Communication Methods

	E-Mail	Google Group	Private Forum
Replying	Depends on Timezone	Best, replies can be made just by replying to notification mails	Good, but users need to go to forum to reply
Speed	Fast	Fast	Mediocre, need to visit forum to reply
Record Keeping	Depends upon size of your Inbox	Good but not so organized	Best, very organized
Privacy	Good	Best, you can make whole group private with one click	Best

E-Mail

E-Mail is most widely used communication medium over the internet. This was the first communication medium we used to stay in touch with each other.

Pros:

1. Privacy: E-Mail is very secure for discussions. E-mail providers have strong security and it is very difficult for anyone to gain access to your account.
2. Speed: E-Mail is speedy and message reaches within seconds.

Cons:

1. Replies May Take Time: This applies especially if members are in different time zones. It may take a long time to get replies on important topics.
2. Archiving: Keeping record of discussions is a big pain with emails. We have faced it for a long time. Many times, the topic of discussion changes in between replies but the subjects remain unchanged and its too hard to remember the actual topic!

We have used email for pretty long time and the archiving problem has really annoyed me. Even with filters, keeping proper record is too time consuming!

Google Groups

Google Groups is free offering by Google that lets you create a private/public discussion area.

Pros:

1. Replying: This is one thing I like most about Google Groups. You can reply there or by replying to notification emails. New discussions can be created just by emailing to the group email address.
2. Archiving: Only thing that makes it better than email is that it will have only the discussions related to topic and no other messages like inbox.
3. Privacy: Any group can be made private easily and you can restrict access to group for unregistered users.
4. File Sharing: Files can be uploaded to Group easily and others can easily download at will. However, this is not of much use if you have a hosted blog.

Cons:

1. Broswer Compatability: This is a standard Google problem which is also present in Groups! Unless you use Internet Explorer and Firefox or browsers based on them, you can not access some administration features.
2. Archiving: I am including this in cons again because the structure is not as feature rich as forums and is messy just like inbox!

Private Forum

We have recently started using a private forum based on SMF and experience has been good.

Pros:

1. Archiving: This is the biggest advantage of using a forum. You can create sub-forums and discussions are structured. You can easily find an old discussion later.
2. Privacy: Forums can easily be made private but you need to set it with care. A wrong click may expose your discussions to outsiders. For example, we would never want anyone to know that we have another free report for our newsletter subscribers! 
3. Browser Compatability: Forum scripts are cross-browser compatable and display well in most of the browsers.

Cons:

1. Replying: While Google Groups allow to reply via e-mail, this is not possible via forum. You get a notification and that’s all! You must visit the forum to reply.

What’s the Best Solution?

Well, it depends on size of team and your preferences. If there are only 2 people, I would recommend using E-Mail.

However, if there are more people, you should use either Google Groups or Forum.

If your blog is hosted on a free service like Blogger or WordPress, Google Groups is the best solution.

If you have got a paid hosted blog, I recommend a private forum. My recommendations for this are SMF and bbPress.

bbPress is WordPress based forum script. It lacks many advanced features but is easy to install.

SMF, on the other hand, is very feature rich and comes with almost all the features a discussion board will need. Mods can be installed like WordPress plugins with one click and upgrading them and forum itself is also very easy. We use it for our private discussion area and you should give it a try if you have a team blog.

Have you any recommendations? Do tell us through comments!