What If Your Writers Wont Work In WordPress

What If Your Writers Wont Work In WordPress Your blogging team has writers who dont want to work in WordPress. And this is not good. It really shouldnt matter where people get their writing done, so long as they write. Except that it does matter, at least for the person who has to finalize the posts. When writing in something outside of WordPress, content gets wrapped in rather messy formatting. Writers send you posts in the body of an email, or in  Microsoft Word, for example. Getting rid of the extra formatting so it doesnt blow up your WordPress blog  involves manual copy-paste solutions with an extra step to strip out formatting. Even worse? You cant really create a complete blog post outside of WordPress; someone is going to have to upload the images, make sure the headline tags are correct, and add code for things like . Writing Outside Of WordPress Here, each of our writers has their own preference. Some of us work in WordPress because of the preference of frequent previews. At other times, we prefer Google Drive,  Evernote,  Editorially, or  Draft. Thats our preferences. One of the  most common place where blog posts get written is in  Microsoft Word. Why would anyone write outside of the blogging platform that is ultimately going to do the actual publishing of their work? 1. WordPress can be confusing. Some writers are used to, and most comfortable, writing in the software theyve always used. Dragging them into WordPress and asking them to write as good as ever while learning an entirely new system is counterproductive. Even us longtime users of WordPress have rather negative feelings about the entire writing experience in the system. 2. People dont trust WordPress. The new updates included an autosave that works well, but many bloggers still have that old ingrained fear of writing the Greatest Blog Post Ever only to lose it by accidentally swiping the wrong way on their Apple Magic Mouse or closing the browser tab. Theyve known that possibility, and experienced it, in the past. 3. Getting them to write is the main battle. Sometimes your writers are writing because they have to, not that they want to. Getting them to write is the main battle; why fight another about where they write? If they are more likely to write in Word or Evernote, great. Be happy that they will write. What do you do when your writers wont work in WordPress?Try to Change Their Mind Its worth the attempt to try to get your writers on board with WordPress, and heres how you can do it. 1. Get them training. Whether its in-house or through an online course, you can insist that your writers get training. There are many place online that offer training and tutorials in using WordPress. Theres the popular Lynda.com training site, as well as WordPress.orgs very own tutorials. 2. Give them a contributor account. A contributor account in WordPress allows your writers to write and manage their own posts, but they cannot publish them. You can keep them from having access to anything that might seriously do damage to your blog. Even if they dont know anything about formatting, the writing is happening inside of WordPress and will save you from importing it in. 3. Use a third-party app. Apps like MarsEdit, Live Writer, and Editorially allow your writers to work outside of WordPress, and import what theyve written beautifully into the system. The can choose an interface that is less intimidating to do their work. Remember, you are changing a habit for your writer. They may have been writing in Word their entire life, and this is going to be nothing short of a rebellion for them. Be sure the battle to change the habit is worth it in the long run.