A Nonprofit's Guide to the Blogosphere

Even if your organization has no interest in starting its own blog, other nonprofits' Web logs can be a valuable source of information you won't find elsewhere. Yet with millions of blogs out there, how do you hone in on the ones you need? And, if you have a blog, how do you make sure others can find it?

To find out the latest advice, links, and insights on blogging, we went straight to the horse's mouth. Or should we say, straight to the bloggers' posts. Read on for tips on why nonprofits should consider blogging, how you can find blogs that cover your interests, and ways to make your blog stand out -- all from nonprofit technology bloggers themselves.

Up with Blogs

Human chains, ad campaigns, and letters can be effective ways to attract attention to your cause. But you can't link arms across an ocean, advertisements can be prohibitively expensive -- and sometimes the issue at hand is just too urgent to wait for a newspaper or magazine to cover it.

As blogger, activist, and consultant Ruby Sinreich writes on her blog Lotusmedia.org that blogs can be an effective way to promote your cause and generate awareness. In a post entitled So You Wanna Start an Advocacy Blog, Sinreich lays out the basics, offering helpful links and statistics for new and veteran advocacy bloggers alike.

In addition to an overview of key blogging terms, a brief history of the phenomenon, and suggestions for ways organizations can leverage blogs, Sinreich provides compelling evidence on the popularity of the medium, citing a 2005 Pew Internet and American Life Project report on the State of Blogging that found that 27 percent of Internet users in the United States (32 million people) say they read blogs.

Sinreich also directs readers to consulting firm Issue Dynamics Internet Services' Presentations for Nonprofits, which cover nonprofit-oriented topics related to blogging, such as fundraising through blogging and RSS feeds. Issue Dynamics' own Blogger Relations Blog, a forum analyzing recent blogging trends and best practices, provides further evidence that blogging is an effective way to educate and inform. What's more, respondents to a 2006 survey from blog-only ad network Blogads considered blogs a more accurate news source than other media, relying on blogs for up-to-date information they couldn't find elsewhere.

Sinreich's own words of advice -- such as "blogs are conversations" and "a key target for blogs are the media because your content helps them do their job" -- remind bloggers and would-be bloggers alike that, while they can be entertaining, a blog is also a type of service. The human chain they form may be virtual, but it's a powerful one all the same.

Ideas for Your Blog

While you could use your nonprofit blog to track organizational celebrities ("Accidental techies -- they're just like us!"), your goals are probably more high minded. Consultant Britt Bravo offers some great suggestions for ways you can use your nonprofit's blog to help your cause (along with examples of success stories) in her 10 Ways 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

There are Other Blogs in the 'Sphere

Bloggers, you are not alone. In his blog Sifry's Alerts, Technorati founder David Sifry cites some humbling statistics in his State of the Blogosphere. According to Sifry, Technorati, a search engine for blogs, now tracks over 37.3 million blogs worldwide, and this number is doubling every six months. Moreover, he writes, Technorati records about 1.2 million new blog posts each day (that's about 50,000 per hour).

Among Technorati's other findings:

• English isn't the dominant language of the blogosphere. Making allowances for what may have underreported Korean- and French-language blogging, Technorati found that Chinese and Japanese posts edged out English blog posts in 2006. Other languages with the most posts on Technorati include Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German.
• Nearly half of all blog posts are tagged. "Many bloggers use tagging to help get their content found by people who are searching for a particular topic, even if that topic isn't listed as a keyword in the post," Sifry notes.

What does this mean for nonprofits? First, tagging -- adding keywords to online content to enable others to find it more easily -- is becoming increasingly important in helping like-minded parties find your blog, despite the risk of misuse. "A strong social pressure to use appropriate tags (or at least to not use inappropriate tags) manifests itself," writes Sifry, "especially with bloggers who want to cultivate influence and readers."

Second, Technorati's findings serve as a reminder that organizations should never underestimate the international scope of the Internet. In a sea of information, investing in international outreach -- by networking with organizations supporting similar causes in other countries, or even adding other languages to your site -- can increase your audience and profile.

Tools for the Masses

Blogs can be an attractive platform for nonprofits because they require little in the way of investment. When it comes to blogs, talk is cheap -- and, in most cases, won't cost you anything at all. Below are some free tools bloggers themselves recommend for creating, updating, saving, promoting, and finding blogs.

On her Lotsmedia.org blog, Sinreich offers links to free online tools for both bloggers and blog readers. For bloggers, Sinreich recommends blogging platforms Drupal, TypePad, and WordPress. For blog readers, she suggests Bloglines, a service that collects and organizes RSS feeds, allowing you to skim blogs quickly.

In her blog ext337.org, CompuMentor's Vice President of Knowledge Services Marnie Webb recommends Flock, a free Web browser with built-in tools that allow you to publish to your blog straight from your browser. Other Flock features include site- and photo-sharing tools.

Emily Chang's blog eHub, which reviews the latest Web 2.0 applications (and which we found via Blogher 2006's section on nonprofit and NGO blogs), contains other blogging tools. These include blog search engine Sphere; Feed Rinse, which allows you to sort through syndicated content ("like a spam filter for your RSS feeds"); urlfan, which shows and ranks the popularity of sites and blogs; and the eponymous BackUpMyBlog, a free service that automatically backs up your entire MySQL blog database daily. (Other free blog backup services include HTTrack Website Copier and BlogCollector, although some blogging platforms will back up automatically.)

If you are looking to read other nonprofit blogs and want to know what's out there, check out the Nonprofit Blog Exchange, which lists (at last count) 100 nonprofit blogs, along with news and events on nonprofit blogging.

Blogged and Found -- Tools for Getting Noticed

With so many blogs out there, how can you make sure yours can be found? Aside from tagging, you might consider using a blog "pinging" service. Grassroots.org writes, "Besides having a link to your blog on your main Web site, and including the blog's Web URL (and/or RSS feed URL) in other materials, blog pinging services allow you to update blog directories (like Technorati, WebLogs.com, and FeedBurner.com) with your latest posts."

Grassroots.org recommends Pingoat and iPings, two free services that includes pinging for more than 40 different blog services (including specialty and non-English directories). Other pinging services include Ping-O-Matic, which automatically notifies search engines when your blog has been updated, and TrackBack, Moveable Type's blog communication feature, which notifies one blog when another blog has commented on a post. Pingback offers a very similar service.

One way to advertise your blog -- or get bloggers to advertise your site -- is via Word of Blog, a Web site that helps organizations promote their work by hosting downloadable badges and their HTML code for free. Here is an example of a Word of Blog badge and link from one of our favorite sites:

Talk the Talk

As with many forms of new media, there is a whole particular language to blogging. Before you join the blogerati -- or become a blogaholic -- it can be helpful to have some blog lingo at your fingertips.

The newness and versatility of blogging makes it an exciting, fun medium. Its flexibility allows nonprofits to experiment with the medium with little upfront investment, while its networking and information-gathering potential is constantly expanding.

So go ahead -- give blogs a chance.