Open Forum had a great article about happiness and the workplace the other day.

The article inspired me to write about how to keep bloggers happy.

As your business becomes more involved in blogging it will be important to keep your bloggers happy. It’s a good bet your current employees are happy and it’s really no different when it comes to keeping bloggers happy. These are just some thoughts on how you can do a little extra with this new type of employee at your company.

7 Tips for Happy Bloggers

The tips for happiness with employees mirror the ones here for bloggers. I tried to use the article as inspiration while using some of my own thoughts on blogging happiness.

1. Offer Acknowledgement and Criticism

Bloggers are typically an interesting bunch. They like to receive acknowledgement of their good work. It doesn’t take much time or effort to say thanks for writing a great post.

Even more than that it’s important to actually acknowledge that you read the post. Write your blogging a note discussing a certain detail about the post that was interesting. This goes a long way to helping them feel appreciated. But don’t be afraid to criticize. Bloggers typically like a challenge and if you have the right kind of person as your blogger they will want to improve and show you how good they are in the face of criticism.

2. Communicate The Importance of Blogging

This is more about the rest of the employees at your business than it is about the bloggers. Blogging is new and people don’t like new things especially when they don’t understand them.

It’s important that you communicate to your other employees the importance of blogging or at least experimenting with blogging. If you ignore this then you might find that your employees will disregard the efforts and voice their disagreement with blogging either behind the backs of your blogger or to their face. Even if it’s just in joking nature it can still be disastrous for your blogger to feel like they aren’t appreciated or that their efforts are less worthy than those of others.

3. Offer to Contribute

Sometimes bloggers look for participation from you, their boss. They might not mention it so it would be seen as really great if you offer to contribute an idea or even some content for a post.

Ask for a couple of topic ideas the blogger is working on and see if they would be interested in including your thoughts in the post. You could offer to write something or even to record a video.

4. Have Companywide, Fun Blogging Events

The more people are involved with the blog the better the chances are of success. See if there are ways for more than just the blogger to be involved in the blog efforts.

You could write a post where you use quotes from employees. This gives everyone a chance to be part of the blog and they’ll also be invested in making sure the blog is a success. The more support the blog has the better the blogger will feel.

5. Encourage Experimentation

Experimenting is important with blogging. It’s always necessary to try to say new things or try different formats. It’s the only way to get people’s attention.

Give your blogger the freedom to experiment. It’s important to understand that failure will probably happen and it could have a short-term negative impact on your business and its perception with the public.

Understand the risks and make sure the blogger is comfortable knowing they can make mistakes…within reason of course.

6. Carefully Manage Work Time

This one is tricky. It’s important to have a blogger that’s dedicated to your business. You want someone that is willing to work at midnight on Friday to get a post ready for Saturday if necessary.

But you don’t want to make this the norm. Understand that your blogger has their own time that is important to their lives. If there are changes in the needs of the blogging job be sure to express those to the blogger. They can have the option to leave if the job becomes more demanding.

7. Let Go

Back on the thought of experimenting, be sure to give up some control over the blog. You want the blogger to have the freedom to write without barriers. This makes for the best blogging.

It comes down to trust. If you believe strongly that your blogger is good at what they do you can offer support without being in total control.

Let go to gain more.