Michael Nealis spoke at the 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service about how nonprofits can use blogs to reach out to their communities. This a the first of three posts based on his session notes.

What’s the most important thing that you and your organization need to know about blogging?

It’s not where to host the blog, or how to bring readers to your blog, or even how often you’re going to update.

These are important things to consider, but the most important thing to know about blogging is this:

Content is king, and platform doesn’t matter.

If you don’t have a message, if you don’t have something that you’re passionate about, if you don’t have something that you really want to tell other people about, and you don’t want to do it with some kind of regularity, then blogging might not be the best use of your resources.

If you’ve got something that you think is pretty awesome and you want to talk about it, chances are pretty good that someone will want to listen.

If you share why you think the things you do are awesome, you’ll get people to start thinking that those things are awesome too.

Don’t believe me?

On July 8, 2010 a Google search for ‘worm composting blogs’ returned two hundred and sixty thousand hits.

(That’s a lot of people thinking that worm composting is pretty awesome!)

This just in, the internet is not a fad.

It doesn’t matter where your blog is hosted.  Does your organization have buckets of money to throw at hosting and design?

(We all do, right?)

For those of us who aren’t heating their offices with rolls of twenties, there are plenty of websites that will host your blog for free.

The great thing about a lot of the free blog hosts is that you can make a fairly attractive and functional blog without knowing any programming languages, and without any expensive software.

There are plenty of blog hosts out there that will work just fine for what your organization wants to do, that is, if your organization knows what it wants to do.

So, just what can you do with your blog?

You can tell a story.

You have a story, right?  Is it funny?  Great.  Embarrassing?  Awesome.  Horrifying?  Even better.

This is what we do, right?  Every day we’re telling stories.

We talk about the cute thing that our cat did.  We talk about the person we met in line at the grocery story yesterday.  We tell stories when we talk to people about what we do, and we do it when we’re applying for grants to help fund our organizations.

It’s a great thing to do with your blog, too.

Tell me a story.

Tell me about what your organization does, and why you do it.

Give me a chance to better understand your organization and build a connection with it.

Tell me about the people who volunteer with your organization.

Tell me about how they’re just like me.  They’re making an impact on your organization, maybe I can too.

Tell me about one of your clients.

Tell me about their successes and challenges they’ve had, and what I can do to help them.

Tell me about something awesome that your organization is doing, and then tell me how I can get involved.

Does your organization do something really well?  I hope so.

Can you teach other people to do it well?  Why not give out advice to organizations that work in areas similar to where you work.

You might say, “But we don’t want to give away our secrets!”  You don’t have to, but chances are pretty good that they’re not as secret-y as you think they are.

Tell me how to do something, but tell me why you’re the best at it.

Bob Vila and Norm Abram don’t care if you steal their ideas, they’ve got a show and a website dedicated to you stealing their ideas.  Not just stealing the ideas, though, learning from what they already know how to do really well.

Your blog can also serve as a great place to bring all of your social media together.

Show me what your organization does, don’t just tell me.  Does your organization have a video camera?  How about a digital or film camera?

You don’t need a video camera to make videos about your organization, just a bunch of pictures and an Animoto account.  Animoto for a Cause is supporting nonprofits by giving them access to their Pro accounts for a year for free!

There’s a lot more to do than just make sure all of your pictures are in your blog, and that you’re able to make videos out of your pictures.

You’ve got to make everything accessible.

Your blog is a great place to link together all of your social media efforts, either with blog updates linking directly to new content, or by setting up your blog to display content that exists outside of your blog.

Tying everything together in one place allows someone to visit the blog to read stories, click on a YouTube link to watch a video of your last big event or hear a story be told to them, and then head over to your Flickr page to see pictures of your volunteers, all while staying at a site that talks about your organization.

Do you want to get started right now?  Great!

There are two more entries about blogging coming, over the next few days so stay tuned.  You may want to read those before you jump into the blogosphere…

Michael Nealis is an AmeriCorps member serving as a Regional Coordinator for Volunteer Maryland, which means he’s a lot like Vanilla Ice.  When he’s not busy solving problems, collaborating, and listening, he’s busy supporting Volunteer Maryland’s Volunteer Maryland Coordinators, volunteering with Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake, and planning and conducting social media trainings in and around Baltimore.