Why Blog?

It might not be new, and it might not be sexy. But blogs can help your organization in a few key ways:

Central Communication Hub

It’s important to have a place that you can link to for more information and for follow-up, instead of sharing news or updates only in a tweet or facebook message, and especially if it is just in an email newsletter. A blog can provide the space for sharing news, announcements, stories, and other information and let you reshare and distribute it all over the web. A blog can also help people find out more about you or find other ways to stay connected to you. If someone sees an interesting post from you on Twitter, clicks through to the blog, and then can sign up for the newsletter, click to “like” you on facebook, and learn about your organization – well, that’s a whole lot more engagement and communication (that you didn’t have to work for) than simply posting to Twitter and leaving it at that.

Create Community Dialogue

Another great opportunity you have with a blog is opening up your organization by allowing comments and dialogue. Whether you are asking for feedback, sharing stories, or urging people to take action, providing a place for your community to share back with you shows your openness to feedback and interest in the community. And no, the possibility of getting a “bad” comment is not enough to disable the option for people to share their ideas, support and encouragement. Most of the time, if someone has something bad to say, other community members will step up to right the remark before you even have a chance!

Multimedia Storytelling

Think blogs are boring? Well, maybe the kind you have seen are. Or, maybe you weren’t interested in the stories being told. Your blog is a chance for your organization to show just how NOT boring it is! Do you have videos, pictures, or slides? Do you have lots of different voices? Your blog doesn’t have to be plain text on a big white page. You can use videos or images, you can hold competitions for ideas, you can post your favorite links or have guest contributors. Your blog is for you to share the storytelling you want to, with the kinds of media you want to!

How To Start a Blog

So, you’re ready to get started – woohoo! Starting a blog can be similar to planning your first road trip. Here are a few basics:

Plan Your Route

Before you jump in the car and hit the open road, you want to take the time to plan where you’ll go, and what you need. Planning for your blog means thinking about who on staff, and who not on staff (board members, volunteers, organizers, community leaders) may contribute. What kind of content do you already have that you could reuse (videos or interviews from events, data or research, etc.) or stories you know you will have important information about (issues you are watching closely, political or social issues you are involved in). Getting an idea about the kinds of things you could post and the people who will post it will help you select the most appropriate platform to use and create an editorial/content calendar.

Test Drive It

There are two aspects to a proper test drive:

First, give it a go without having a blog. That’s right, I really said that. If you know who and you know what will be involved, have your “blogging team” operate as if there’s a blog, without one, for a month. If over the course of four whole weeks, you are still writing posts (even if they are just text files or emails to each other) then you know you have the stamina to get started. If you go a week and can’t get anyone or even yourself to keep going, then you may never get the blog off the ground.

Secondly, pick a platform based on the content you want to use and give it a try before you start promoting it, linking to it, and sharing it with the world. (There are lots of great posts out there about getting started and selecting a platform, including this one from ProBlogger.) Some of the leading platforms you may want to consider include (in alphabetical order):

• Blogger
• MoveableType
• Posterous
• Squarespace
• Typepad
• WordPress

Prepare to Change Directions

Just like any good road trip, sometimes the winds pushes you in a different direction, and you just have to go with it! If you get started with your blog and find that the content your community responds to (or doesn’t) is not what you had expected, that’s a great sign telling you where to go. Don’t let the what or the how determine your success, but instead whether you are meeting your goals (sharing information, getting feedback, building community, growing trust, etc.). It isn’t a sign that you have failed if your blog changes direction from talking about news items to sharing the stories of volunteers – it isn’t the “what” that matters but instead that your community is engaging and you have content to support your work and communications.

Resources:

• Global Voices has created a Guide to Blog For A Cause
• Here’s a how-to guide for Community Planning & Measurement
• Get data and information about the blogosphere from Technorati
• Start reading other blogs to get an idea of how to do it – here’s a whole dashboard full of blogs to get you started! (Have suggestions for blogs that should be added? Just let me know!)

(Photo credit: Flickr futureshape)

The 3.5 day conference was split into two tracks for IT and NGO, sometimes meeting separately, sometimes coming together to collaborate. I had the opportunity to facilitate the IT track and had lots of fun poking, prodding, and supporting some really interesting conversations and sharing sessions. I also had the chance to provide a couple presentations to the NGO track, one focused specifically on using facebook for campaigning in Romania.  The slides are below as well as some notes.

Notes:

In June 2010:  253,360 new users joined in Romania – Coming in 3rd in the world for adoption for the month. In July 2010:  1,555,360 total number of users in Romania. For context, think about it this way: in a country of 21 million, where only about 7 million have internet access, about 1 in every 20 is on facebook!

When it comes to campaigning on facebook, the real question is page vs group. The way functionality changes so rapidly means that what you need to think about the options in so far as they can be helpful to what you want to do today, in case the way you want to use them is discontinued or changed. Not the best scenario for a campaigner or organizer, but it is the reality.

Some of the key attributes that you may want to include:

• a welcome page/message that highlights who you are and the calls to action – remember that it’s more important for people to take the action related to your campaign than it is to only join your page/group
• connect events to your group or page – part of the role you or the organization can play is that of shepherd to the community, helping move people between online and offline; part of that comes from any events (whether they are online things or offline events) can be created using the facebook events tools and connected to the page or group so members that join on one side can follow through to the other
• add applications that can help automate the work – do you have a blog, add a blog or rss application to auto post for you; do you have a twitter account, add the twitter application to connect conversations – not all of the content or communication needs to be automated, but remember that there are lots of options out there and you can try out tools to see what’s right for you and your campaign
• don’t be afraid to have secondary pages/groups – for some, the organizational presence is the appropriate place for the campaign information and calls to action, but for others it is more appropriate to create a separate page or group just for that campaign, especially when the campaign may only target some of your full organizational audience and/or has other organizations partnering/contributing

I’d love to hear your examples of campaigning on facebook! In the slides, I highlighted some of the work of 350.org but I know there are lots of great examples out there. Has your organization campaigned specifically on facebook? I’d love to hear how it went!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Net2 Think Tank Round-up: Creating Awesome Video | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – "For this month's Net2 Think Tank we asked you to share your tools and tactics for creating effective video messages – regardless of budget and organization size. Affordable video capability and basic editing software are now widely available and easy to use. But, how can organizations and enterprises best use video to inspire change? Below is a list of tips and suggestions on making decisions to do with hardware and software, message and editing, video quality, and promotion ideas."
• Women Give 2010 | Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University – "Women at virtually every income level are more likely to give to charity and to give more money on average than their male counterparts, after controlling for education, income and other factors that influence giving, new research from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University finds. Women Give 2010 is the first report to compare philanthropic giving between men and women across all income levels based on a nationally representative sample. It uses data from the Center on Philanthropy Panel Study (COPPS), the nation’s largest study that tracks giving patterns among the same households over time."
• Facebook app causes raises $16m – "Causes, the popular Facebook charity application, has raised another $9 million in funding and introduced gift cards to let people donate online without using a credit card. The story in the San Francisco Chronicle says the new gift cards are available in Safeway and Vons supermarkets in California in denominations of $25 and $30."
• Local Philanthropy Playground | Local Philanthropy Playground – "The Local Philanthropy Workshop (LPW), developed by the Odorheiu Secuiesc Community Foundation and TechSoup Global with the support of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, first took place between August 31 and September 4, 2010. More than 35 NGO and IT practitioners came together to explore ways of strengthening Romanian civil society through communications and local philanthropy development, lowering barriers to outreach through involvement of the Romanian IT&C community and developing a practical best practices repository with a platform for ongoing discussion. This blog seeks to capture the information gathered at the workshop, keep the discussion alive and build momentum."
• The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine – "Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures."

Location: Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania

Topic: ITC & NGOs in Romania

Description:  Run by the OdorheiuSecuiesc Community Foundation and TechSoup Romania, this three-and-a-half day event brings together NGO and IT participants to work together, share needs and expertise, and build capacity to move Romania and our communities further towards the civil society and engaged philanthropy environment we all want. I am facilitating the IT track and making presentations to the NGO track throughout the event.

Related Links:

• Local Philanthropy Workshop blog
• TechSoup Romania
• Slides – Facebook Campaigning in Romania
• Intro blog post
• Blog post with slides and notes