We’re having a birthday!
Our blog, that is. We launched the Meeteor Blog one year ago in July 2015, knowing little of the journey that lay ahead but eager to get started.
Today we celebrate this milestone by sharing an inside look at the Meeteor Blog and our learning journey. We also list upcoming events that you can participate in (can’t wait to read about those? Click here!).
Thank you, dear readers, for your support and feedback during the past year. This blog post is dedicated to you!
Why Do We Write the Meeteor Blog?
Our software helps leverage meetings to drive productivity, build a healthy company culture, and achieve greater results. The Meeteor Blog is a complementary platform which shares best practices and actionable tips to facilitate learning and develop leadership skills. Yes, our blog is content marketing, but more importantly, it allows us to provide you ongoing support and knowledge, regardless of whether you use our software (of course, we love it when you do).
Quality Content Takes Effort
We take our content writing very seriously. We want it to be high quality content that provides consistent, practical value and is backed by data. We bring in our own insights and experiences, and also investigate and (in)validate these ideas by reading academic papers, books, articles, and research on every blog topic.
Initially we wrote about the classic foundations of meetings, such as planning, preparation, facilitation, follow-through, and ways to develop high-performing teams. In the blog survey we conducted at the end of 2015, you told us you enjoyed the how-to articles and also wanted to learn more about virtual teams and productivity practices. We took your feedback and added that kind of content into our blog.
This visual map shows the topics that we’ve covered up to now.
Of all the articles we’ve written, here are our five most popular posts:
One-on-One Meeting Series (Manager Guide and Employee Guide)
And here are some sweet words from our readers:
“I love the blogging you've been doing, really well done.” - David Beasley, Communications Director at The Participatory Budgeting Project “GREAT blog. Thank you!” - Shelby Zitelman, CEO of Soom Foods “This is great stuff! Sharing with my team....” Aharon Horowitz, CEO at 40Nuggets
Expertise from Guest Authors Provides More Content Diversity
Based on your feedback, we now make it a priority to collaborate with experts from different backgrounds. Our goal is to honor the distinct voice of each author while also maintaining the coherence and approachable style that our readers appreciate.
We conduct a mini kick-off meeting with each guest author to identify norms for our collaboration and to get aligned on each party’s desired outcomes for the process. The posts then go through brainstorming, several iterations, some healthy debates, and arrive in your inboxes on Thursdays.
At the end of the collaboration, we share post statistics with our guest bloggers, including the pageviews, reader engagement, and social media response. It’s important to us that our guest bloggers see the reach and impact of their work, and enjoy the process of working with us.
If you missed our guests blogs when they were first published, you can check them out now. They cover new ways of working, group dynamics, innovative communication practices such as improv, and conflict resolution. We’ll have guest posts on developing communication skills and virtual teams in the next few months.
(Think you’ve got a unique point of view about meetings, team culture, productivity, or leadership? Contact Tai at tai.tsao@meeteor.com to inquire about becoming a guest blogger.)
There’s No Progress Without Struggle
As we like to say, we drink our own champagne. We don’t just write about best practices - we apply them to our own work. With our weekly publication schedule and other competing priorities, we’ve encountered some challenges as a team, too. So earlier this year, our editing team conducted a team review meeting to reflect on the blog creation process. We used a practice called Stop/Start/Continue. Here are some of the results:
Since then, we’ve adopted and abandoned some of these practices and created new ones. The Stop/Start/Continue exercise provided a launching point for us to take our blog creation process to the next level.
So What’s Happening Now at Meeteor? A Lot!
We’ve been out in the community facilitating meeting best practice workshops at conferences like OpCon and running training programs for pilot teams who are using Meeteor. And there’s lots more coming up!
(Know of a speaking opportunity, guest blogging opportunity, or podcast that might be a good fit for us? Contact me at mamie.kanfer.stewart@meeteor.com.)
Final Thoughts: A Culture of Learning
We’ll always be learning and growing because that is the culture here at Meeteor. We’re honored you’ve chosen to join us on this path, and look forward to your continued feedback on our blog.
