Archive for December, 2006

C) WHY: How a Blog Could Work for You

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Why Does Your Organization Need a Blog

  • What value is there in providing content more frequently to a particular audience or on a particular topic?
  • What projects, issues, staff, or clientele seems particularly well suited for a blog?
  • How would a blog fit into larger communications or organizational goals?

Gauging Your Readiness to Blog

23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?

Several Models for Nonprofit Blogging

1) Straight Advocacy: Trying to motivate action and effect change

See Darfur Actions Alerts and Accessible Airwaves in blogroll

2) Letting Supporters Inside: Make personal connections between staff and supporters with behind-the-scenes detail, personal experiences and emotional reflections
See IFAW Animal Rescue, Easter Seals Recreation Camp, Drug-Free America Parent blog, and Greenpeace in blogroll

3) Building Community: Helping volunteers, clients, or other groups come together under your umbrella

See Interplast, ACS Fabulous at 50, and March of Dimes NICU in blogroll

4) News and General Publicity: Getting your public information and news commentary out more quickly in a organized, straightforward way

See ASPCA and Nomination Watch in blogroll

5) Issue Expert / Professional Development: Covering a topic not specifically related to your mission, but of importance to you or your field more generally

See Confessions of a Nonprofit IT Director in blogroll

6) Events Coverage: Promote an event and archive what happened

See National Recycling Coalition and N-TEN in blogroll

7) Internal Reporting: Help keep staff informed about each others’ activities

See article excerpt on Austin Free-Net.

EXERCISE: Go back to your practice blog and write a post about the type of blog you’d like to create. 

Internally Focused Organizational Blogs

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Excerpt from an article in Nonprofit Quarterly, Winter 2003, entitled “What’s a Blog and Why Should Nonprofits Care?”

Ana Sisnett, executive director of Austin Free-Net, a community technology nonprofit discussed the use of blogs by her organization in this article . . .
“When she encouraged her staff to blog about their work, Sisnett recognized another benefit of nonprofit blogging: She could now easily keep up to speed on her staff’s work and the progress of various, concurrent projects. Soon, between the executive director, the technical staff and volunteers, Austin Free-Net had three staff blogs full of updated and archived information that could easily be incorporated into strategic plan updates, VISTA reports, press releases, newsletters and grants. When a colleague, a sponsor or even a journalist needed information about a project or issue, Sisnett could refer the interested party to a blog.

Free-Net’s experiments with staff blogging fit a trend developing in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. According to Teresa Crawford, Technical Director at Advocacy Project and a leader in the movement to provide technology assistance to international nonprofits, blogs with an “internal focus” have made it easier for organizations to capture the knowledge of teams and support their collaboration. “Rather than only a linear discussion list for a team,” she points out, “individual and collaborative blogs make it possible to see ties among team members and issues they are working on.”

D) WHO: Blog Writers and Readers

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Writers (Bloggers)

  • Official or unofficial blogs
  • Single or multiple authors
  • Inside and outside the nonprofit
  • Guest bloggers

Readers (Subscribers)

  • Who is your target audience?
  • RSS / Feeds - Feedburner.com
  • Subscribing via Email - Feedburner.com or Feedblitz.com
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • Register at Technorati.com
    • Use lots of keywords in titles and top of posts
  • Pinging
  • Other Ways to Publicize Your Blog
    • Feed blog headlines to your website and other sites
    • Feed blog headlines into your email signature
    • Ask related blogs to include you in their blogrolls
    • Ask other bloggers to write about your blog
    • Include links in press releases, e-newsletters, etc.
    • Submit to blog carnivals - BlogCarnival.com
    • Submit to directories - NonprofitBlogExchange (see blogroll)

EXERCISE: Go back to your practice blog and write a post that explains who will write and read your blog.

E) WHAT: Writing Good Blog Content

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Writing Style

  • Timely
  • Personal
  • Storytelling
  • Chunks of information
  • Scannable titles and subheads in posts

Topics

  • Organizational news
  • News in your field
  • What board members, volunteers, donors, and other supporters are doing
  • What clients are doing
  • Resources
  • Tips, how-to’s
  • Interviews
  • Event summaries
  • Status reports
  • Reminders
  • Connections to what’s in the headlines
  • Commentary on what other bloggers are writing

Linking

  • Do it liberally
  • Give credit when you get leads from other bloggers
  • Link back to items you are referring to or commenting on

Fundraising Considerations

  • Great, inspiring, moving content will lead to donations
  • Prominent “Donate” buttons in sidebar and links at bottom of posts
  • Running Google Adsense or other ad networks. See ProBlogger for lots of tips.
  • Charity Badges from Network for Good, where your volunteers, etc. can raise money for you on their own blogs
  • Blogging for Money by ProBlogger, commercial ways to make money, some of which nonprofits can use

Other Elements

Also see Making Blog Content More Valuable to Readers

EXERCISE: Go back to your practice blog and write a post that describes the type of content you would include. What categories might you have? What type of posts? 

F) WHEN: Fitting Blogging In

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

How Bloggers Spend Their Time

  • Researching posts
  • Reading other blogs and commenting on posts
  • Drafting posts
  • Managing and responding to comments
  • Marketing your blog
  • See The Blogging Process for one take on the workflow process.

Making Time for Blogging

  • Consider it a real part of your job
  • Set time aside each day or week to work on your blog
  • You can draft multiple posts at one time and schedule them for release throughout the week

G) WHERE: The Blogging Platforms

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Hosted v. Installed

  • Hosted: Up in minutes, ease of use, may have ads
  • Installed: Much more control and customization, search engine benefits, no ads unless you put them there

Pros and Cons of Various Platforms

Review and Wrap-Up

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

  • Answer each other’s questions from this morning - then we’ll go over them.
  • Review everyone’s practice blogs and comment on them (if time allows)
  • Recommended resources - See blogroll
  • Course evaluations (on paper for Duke and on this blog for Kivi)

Course Evaluation

Kivi Leroux Miller December 13th, 2006

Add any comments you’d like to share with Kivi on today’s course by clicking on the comment link below this message.

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