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Nonprofit Blogging Resources: The Best Current Advice, Examples, and Experts
By Michael C. Gilbert, June 13th, 2008
I'll be teaching a popular seminar on Nonprofit Blogging Strategies next week and so I've been doing one of my regular scans of the online resources available on the topic. There's a remarkable amount of excellent advice out there, reflecting the maturity of the field of nonprofit technology and communication. I've selected a few resources that stand out in terms of both value and relevance to a strategic approach. They should be of use whether you're taking my seminar or not.
Beth Kanter - herself a very fine observer of this topic - interviewed me back in 2005 about nonprofit blogging. One of the outcomes was an article that captures some things about my own experience blogging that may be relevant to others in the field. In the mid-Nineties, the Nonprofit Online News blog emerged quite organically from my other communication practices. Nowadays, many nonprofits seem interested in blogging as something rather removed from everything else they do, which shapes both their positive and negative impressions. I made a strong case in that article for strategic integration of blogging, whether personal or organizational.
I want to give Beth Kanter the credit she is due by recommending two resources of hers: One of the things I like best about her Nonprofit Blogging Game slideshow is that, as she lays out the steps to getting into blogging, the very first step is listening. This takes the form of finding out who else is writing to the same communities and about the same topics and then reading and participating in those conversations. In her post about blog Conversation Strategy she explores the shape of such conversations, whether between blogs or within the comments of a given blog. Great stuff.
Britt Bravo is another person who gets it when it comes to the shape and promise of new media. She offers five great tips for new nonprofit bloggers: (1) Read blogs. (2) The best person to write an organization's blog is the person who is the most excited to write it. (3) Post consistently. (4) Have an RSS feed and comments. (5) Just start.
Bravo has also compiled ten inspirational examples of how nonprofits can use blogs: (1) To report back from an event or conference. (2) To involve staff and take advantage of their knowledge. (3) To involve volunteers and document their work. (4) To provide resources and information to constituents. (5) To provide resources and information from constituents. (6) To give constituents a place to voice their opinion. (7) To give constituents support. (8) To create the media coverage constituents want. (9) To give constituents the power and tools to create change. (10) To reach potential donors.
Nonprofits are often persuaded to explore blogging by virtue of the fact that blogs often increase the search engine ranking of the websites of which they are a part. (This is part of the field of Search Engine Optimization, a valuable but overemphasized practice.) But we would all do well to heed Pam Ashlund's advice when she wrote about How SEO Sucks the Life Out of Nonprofit Blogging. We might choose to start a blog because of SEO, but the actual writing of the blog should be driven by an authentic desire to say something.
I think Lance Trebesch and Taylor Robinson's ten reasons why every nonprofit must have a blog were really well done: (1) Search engine optimization. (2) Positioning expertise in the field. (3) Building credibility and trust. (4) Building awareness. (5) A way to handle negative comments. (6) Promoting and documenting events. (7) Making annual report easier to prepare. (8) Information and education. (9) Fundraising. (10) Communicating the ‘Heart' of the organization.
For a look at even deeper reasons why nonprofits should embrace blogging, I recommend Blog Heaven by Jeff Brooks. Blogs are a bit paradoxical. On the one hand, they really can be just natural outgrowths of existing relationships and communication. On the other hand, as Brooks points out, blogs have the potential to be a seed of positive transformation of organizations. They are a kind of training for the future, not because of technology, but because of how they support authentic communication with our stakeholders. Any blog that people actually read will teach nonprofits to avoid "sounding like an idiot" to donors (among others) - no phony superlatives, meaningless claims, self-aggrandizement, or "unnaturally long and complex sentences that abandon all pretense of human speech". Brooks gets a bit more specific when he describes a model for a fundraising centered blog that he calls the "donor-hero blog".
Michelle Martin runs a small online community called Building a Better Blog, which you might consider joining if you like that kind of peer support. As a result of working with that community, she's compiled some fine advice for new bloggers including some reassuring advice about some of things that just aren't worth worrying about up front (like site design) and the critical insight that you should write for yourself first.
Blogging isn't just for small organizations, as illustrated by this short interview with Wendy Harmon, New Media Integrator for the Red Cross. She points out that Easter Seals, Humane Society, National Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy, Oxfam, and others have positions very similar to hers. She also emphasizes, as so many others have, that the most important skill and practice for a good nonprofit blog is listening. Nonprofits often talk before they listen and good blogging turns that around.
Nor is blogging just the job of some specialized underlings in an organization. More and more nonprofit leaders are realizing how valuable it is for them to blog as well. Nancy Scwartz has several examples of nonprofit leaders who blog: Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club; Patricia McGuire, the President of Trinity University; Jim Fruchterman, the Founder of Benetech; and others.
It's amazing to me how people who almost never have any trouble thinking of something to say can be stunned into silence by the infinitely large blank page that is a new blog. My own approach to consulting on this problem is to help people get grounded in all the ways in which they are, in effect, already blogging, just not in a formal blog. One fabulous metaphor for this can be found in A Blog Can Be Like a Business Lunch by Celeste Wroblewski.
Finally, what would a new medium be without awards? New Communications Review issued awards to four organizational blogs in 2007. One of the things that I respect about these awards is that they completely avoid the design heavy criteria that influence so many other communication awards. The blogs honored here are not the most personal and intimate, but they do reflect a great many of the other strengths of blogging discussed by the many authors I've recommended.
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