Full Circle Associates

Here are some snippets from TechSoup: Weblogs: The Promise for Nonprofit OrganizationsSome things (snipped) out – see the article for all the good stuff.

10 Reasons You Should Start a Weblog Right Now

1. Updating is easy. It can be difficult to organize information on your Web site. The better weblog tools (such as Movable Type's TypePad, WordPress and Blogger) have … templates that give you a functional site at the click of a button. (snip).

2. Links are valuable to your readers. Most weblogs are made up of separate posts that consist of a link with some commentary. These links to other sources of information give readers a reason to visit your site. Your organization's blog can serve as a clipping editor on a particular topic, pointing your readers to the best sources of information so they don't have to do all the sifting themselves.

3. You can become a trusted information source. The more you add useful links to your weblog, the more you become a trusted source for information. (snip)

4. A Weblog gives readers a reason to visit your Web site regularly. The useful information you post gives visitors a reason to come back regularly. Frequent visitors are more likely to engage with your organization's efforts online and off-line.

5. Weblogs provide a more personal communication vehicle. Writing a formal Web site takes a lot of work writing a polished presentation of your organization, your projects, and your fundraising efforts. The nature of the weblog medium, with its quick and frequent updates, promotes a personal voice that can engage users on a more human level. For example, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth is a personal site. Andy's voice comes across. (snip)

6. Google loves weblogs. Google ranks frequently updated sites with many links (and many links to it from other pages on the Web) as more valuable than those with fewer links…. If your weblog comes in high, so will your organization's Web site, issues, and viewpoint.

7. Reverse chronological order is wonderful. The vast majority of weblogs display information in reverse chronological order, so that the newest information is automatically on the top of the page. This makes it very easy for your readers to find and follow what is fresh and topical.

8. It's easy to be topical. With the newest information at the top, lots of links, and easy content formatting and publishing, weblogs give you tools that make it very easy to be topical, pointing your readers to the most recent relevant issues and news. (snip)

9. You can use a variety of media. Look at Andy Carvin's weblog again, and be sure to check out the column on the left. There you will find an audio blog with posts that provide, for example, a narrative of what was going on outside of Fleet Center during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. (snip) By using other media in this way, you have other ways to engage with your users. And the blog tools make it easy.

10. The sum is more than the parts. The nine reasons cited so far work together to help you create a valuable, credible resource that points to outside sources, publishes a variety of media, and uses your own voice to engage your constituency in an ongoing conversation about the issues to which your organization is dedicated. (snip)

Okay, So Blogs Aren't Really for Everyone

The success of a Weblog depends on the strength of your message and your sense of audience. For this, you need people who regularly search for valuable information, relate it to your organization and audience, and posting it. Easy content formatting aside, this still takes work, time, and commitment. A weblog that was last updated six months ago does not build credibility, it begins to destroy it.

Not everyone enjoys reading them, either. In this TechSoup Community thread, you'll see that some people don't like having to follow links to follow a conversation. Sometimes links can even lead you in a circle, without a feeling that you've actually found any new information. Research indicates that weblogs are read by 17 percent of Internet users. That's around 4.76 million users. And some of them could be visiting your site.

What Weblogs Already Can Do
1. Allow you to informally gather information from your co-workers
2. Track a project at work
3. Point to outside resources related to your work
4. Provide a way for your constituency to engage with a less formal version of your organization
5. Make it easy to frequently update your Web site
6. Make it easy to turn a portion of your Web site over to your constituency, through commenting or authoring privileges
7. Serve as a personal knowledge management database
8. Allow you to share a variety of media, audio posts, images, and videos
9. Make Google love your Web site
10. Entice readers to come back to your site

What Weblogs Might Be Able to Do If We All Play Our Cards Right
1. Provide an opportunity for ad hoc collaboration
2. Raise the profile of important issues to a large, cross-organization constituency
3. Provide a World Wide Web-sized conversation in context
4. Provide access to tools to organizations that might not be able to afford them
5. Create a variety of win-win situations