I use Hootsuite to automatically send new blog posts to both Twitter and Facebook. That is, until May of this year, when the Facebook integration failed. I’ve tried to reconnect the two accounts a few times without success (yes, following Hootsuite’s instructions), and then I forgot about it until last week. It’s been almost three months since the blog posts appeared automatically on our Facebook page.

This creates a few interesting questions:

• What’s been the impact on traffic to the blog?
• What’s been the impact on the Facebook page?
• Should I get the posts flowing to the page again with or without Hootsuite?

Here’s what the data says . . .

According to Google Analytics, traffic to the blog from Facebook didn’t change much at all. Apparently, not that many people were really clicking through before, or people are finding the blog links elsewhere on Facebook now. The amount of traffic to the blog from Facebook is really, really small (less than 1% of our total traffic), so I’m not that concerned about this either way.

I’m much more concerned about what Facebook Insights says.

Our active users have been growing steadily from the beginning, but you’ll see that when the blog posts stopped (which represents the majority of our wall posts overall), our active users started declining. If I had made a concerted effort to post to the page every day after the outage, perhaps the decline wouldn’t have occurred. But the reality is that I posted non-blog updates to the page just about as much before and after the outage. So I do think the differences here are attributed directly to the blog posts no longer appearing.

The page interaction data is even more startling. In the three months prior to the blog posting outage, we had a total of 242,636 post views and 312 post feedbacks.

In the three months after the blog posting outage, we had only 71,777 post views and 180 post feedbacks.

Again, if I had changed my manual posting behavior, and updated the status of the page personally every day, perhaps the drop wouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t, which tells me that a lot of the interaction on the page was around the blog content.

This data tells me to get this fixed, but I wanted to get some anecdotal support too, so this afternoon, I asked directly on the page if I should put the blog posts back on — and 100% of the people who commented in the first two hours said Yes!

So we have our answer! I’ll get the blog posts back on the Facebook page, with or without Hootsuite’s help. It will be interesting to see if/how the numbers recover over the next few months.

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On January 3, 2011, I started a daily blogging experiment — and by “daily” I actually meant business daily, Monday – Friday. (Katya Andresen did the same thing, but really did blog every day, including weekends. Here’s what she learned about her 100 posts.)

Out of the 64 business days between Monday, January 3 and Thursday, March 31, I actually posted 58 times, missing one day in January, none in February, and five dates in March. I remember each date I didn’t post, and reasons/excuses include a computer meltdown, travel, a miscommunication with my assistant, and just plain forgetting.

Let’s take a look at the data first . . .

I’ve plotted the trend lines for the number of blog subscribers (according to Feedburner), engagement (averaged over the quarter using PostRank Analytics), and number of posts. Each data point was collected at the end of the quarter, starting March 31, 2009 and ending March 31, 2011, creating nine data points with this January – March highlighted in yellow.

As you can see, daily blogging helped increase both the number of subscribers and the post engagement, which includes commenting and social media sharing. The rate of increase on both of those measures is very strong, especially since they had both leveled off last fall.

Subscribers

A few people were concerned that daily blogging would reduce subscribers, but it actually increased over those three months by 11.3%. The only other time the subscriber rate grew that fast was the first quarter of 2010. In the last quarter of 2009, I was only posting about once a week. Posting twice a week in the first quarter of 2010 increased subscribers by 15%.

I’ll admit that I was concerned too, and to mitigate that, I made it very clear that people could subscribe to my weekly e-newsletter instead, where I would include a roundup of the previous week’s posts. I provide this option in several places, including the subscription box and in a footer that goes out with the RSS feed. I know some people switched, but it wasn’t that many.

Traffic and Referrals

Comparing January-March 2011 to the previous quarter of September-December of 2010 (when I blogged about 2-3 times a week), visits increased by 30% and pageviews increased by 35%, according to Google Analytics. Twitter referrals increased 149% and Facebook referrals increased 138%.

Looking at a year-over-year comparison of January-March 2010 (when I was blogging twice a week) to 2011 (blogging five times a week) in Google Analytics, visits increased 116% and pageviews increased 91%. Twitter referrals increased 275% and Facebook referrals increased 160%.

Bottom Line: Blogging More = More Subscribers, More Engagement, More Traffic, and More Referrals

Now let’s look at why I really did it . . .

I decided to try M-F blogging because I love to write, and because I thought writing that often would challenge me to think bigger and harder about how I can help solve communications and marketing problems that small nonprofits are facing.  I feel really good about the quality of the posts overall, and the experience has definitely helped me see where I can contribute best to the conversations in our field, while also helping me hone what I’m doing in the webinar series and with several e-books that are in the works.

Bottom Line: Blogging More = More Professional Satisfaction

Monday-Friday blogging has been a great experience for me, and the data supports continuing, which is what I plan to do. We’ll see how the next three months compare to these first three. If you are looking for fresh nonprofit marketing advice on the weekends, however, you’ll have to pop on over to Katya’s blog!

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A flurry of questions came in at the end of today’s webinar on Writing for Social Media, so I’m going to try to quickly answer a bunch of them here. I didn’t get permission to use people’s names, so I’m sharing these questions anonymously.

We have both the Facebook Page and the Group.  I know you said stick with the page.  Do we somehow fold our group members into the page and close out the group?  Does that sound like the right way to proceed?

Now that Facebook has made Pages more like Profiles, they are the way to go. Unless you have a subgroup of folks who really want to talk with each other about something specific (groups can be private, for example), I’d say ditch the group. Just post to its wall and send a few messages to members to explain that you are shutting it down on a certain date in favor of the Page.

When writing blog posts, I am asked to always link it back to our organization so it is the focus.  Should this be the case?

It sounds like your blog might not be on your website? If it is on a separate domain, than frequent linking back to the main site is important. But be sure that you are linking to others just as much, especially to other blogs. It’s fine to have lots of links in a post, both to your site and to blogs or websites of others.

What kind of frequency do you recommend for Facebook posting? What’s enough and too much?

Of course, it all depends on your strategy and what you are using your page for. But as a default starting point, I’d say once a day is good. You could even get away with every other day. On the other end of the spectrum, I’d say more than two or three times a day might be too much, unless, again, there is a real strategy behind it. The culture of Twitter is quite different, where multiple updates during the day are the norm.

There are often concerns about compliments and retweets being seen as endorsements. How do we get around this?

This sounds to me like there might be bigger issue with someone not really appreciating how social media works and how it is different from other more traditional forms of communication. To address this issue, I would sit down and look at real examples and scenarios and try to get a better sense for what people think is OK and what is not. We have two webinars coming up in February that will help with those conversations: Social Media Fear Factor-Getting Over What’s Holding You Back and Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit.

I set up a Page for my nonprofit. When the nonprofit does anything on Facebook, it shows up as me doing it, not the nonprofit. For example, I just “liked” a few pages, and it shows up on my personal profile, not of the nonprofit’s page. However, when I add another page as a favorite of nonprofit’s,  it shows up on nonprofit’s page as a favorite.

(2/10/11 Update: Big changes at Facebook! I recommend this post by John Haydon to understand those changes. The answer below no longer applies.)

Unfortunately, what you have described is exactly how it works! While Facebook has made organizational pages act much more like personal profiles do, Facebook does not recognize the Page as a person who can go around and do things on Facebook. So, while you may think you are “liking” something as the Page, you are really doing it as an individual who just happens to also be the Admin of the Page.  You can, however, have your Page mark other Pages as favorites so they appear in the sidebar on your page. It’s confusing, and annoying, but that’s how it works, at least for right now.

We are a research based intermediary so we don’t have pictures of kittens. How do we make facts interesting on Twitter w/out stories? Trivia?

Trivia could be a good approach. Even though you are an intermediary, I would encourage you to work with your organizational partners to identify some stories you can tell that highlight the importance of your work. Even stories about how you help the staff people at your partner organizations is better than nothing.

How much overlap is OK between Facebook and Twitter? Can you post the same stuff in both places?

You’ll find people who will argue with me on this, but I say, yes, you can post the same stuff in both places as a baseline, as long as you aren’t overdoing it on Facebook (The Twitter community is more accepting of frequent updates than the Facebook community.) Then you might supplement with additional material that is really best on Twitter, and do the same with Facebook. But I think some repetition is fine, and actually a good thing.

How do you set up a custom shortened URL?

I use a service called ShortSwitch, which turns links at kivilm.com into my custom short links. You have to have a dedicated URL of your own to use the service.  There are a few others services like that, as well as several programs that you can host yourself on your own server. Search on “custom short URL” and you’ll see a bunch of options.

Thanks for all the great questions!

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up next in our weekly webinar series . . .

January 27: Writing to Raise More Money

February 3: Writing Thank-You Notes That Inspire Future Gifts

February 8: The New & Improved Nonprofit Annual Report

February 16: Social Media Fear Factor: Getting Over What’s Holding You Back

See the Full Webinar Schedule through Mid-March

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I can’t tell you how many times in the last year I’ve heard someone explaining to a newbie how to use an RSS reader for online/social media listening, only to quickly follow it with, “But I don’t really use mine anymore, because I subscribed to too many feeds and am overwhelmed.” Not exactly the greatest endorsement for RSS readers.

I confess I’m guilty of the exact same thing. I can’t remember the last time I opened Google Reader. I use a custom Alltop page to track the top 40 or so blogs I want to follow instead.

The big problem with that approach, however, is that I can’t follow the newer blogs  or those with smaller readerships that haven’t received blessed Alltop inclusion status yet. (Here’s their submission form – it does seem to help.)

If you are in the same boat, save this post so you can use it to keep up with these newer blogs (and if any of them are on Alltop, let me know which page so I can find them!). Here are a few I’m going to try to keep an eye on, and I’d love for you to add your new/smaller favorites to the list in the comments.

Throwing Light is by the dynamic duo of Andrew & Leah Hood. They do incredible visual storytelling for nonprofits. Definitely one to watch.

Bad Words Blog by Doug Gould is a “compilation of good intentions gone bad when good people use bad words to promote good causes.” Very interesting perspectives on the language we use in the nonprofit world.

moflow blog by Marlene Oliveira, an experienced freelance copywriter and certified yoga teacher in Toronto, Ontario. When she decided to put these two skills together in one business, the connection was clear: it’s all about more flow. She’s a writer who gets nonprofits and marketing, which makes her a great asset to our community.

Gracie’s Empty Brain by Grace Cheung, who is a Gen Y’er who’s sharing her experiences starting a career in marketing, with a special interest in nonprofits.

Write for the Cause by Courtney McSwain is brand-spanking new, but I hope she keeps it up, because I have a soft spot for writers who are trying to use their talents for good, given that’s how I got started in all of this.

Nonprofit Chas is by Chas Grundy, who is sharing his experiences as he helps take a small non-profit organization to the next level. He’s been at it a bit longer than most of the people on this list, but I just discovered the blog and Chas shares some great insights for small nonprofits.

Socialize Your Cause is a blog by the company of the same name, where founder David Wells shares tons of tips on using social media more effectively (and he also just posted an hour-long video of my talk at NCTech4Good. Sheesh, that was a long presentation . . . I’m sure David’s arm was cramping holding that camera!)

Marketing Analytics for Nonprofits by Vault Analytics shares ideas and tips on (you guessed it) measurement and analytics.

Low Hanging Fruit Communications by Maureen Carruthers covers lots of bigger-picture management topics like getting organized and working together, as well as more tactical social media advice.

Change 4 Your Dollar is a new fundraising blog by Laura Kaufman, who has lots of experience with foundations and Jewish philanthropy.

Social Change Diva by Ericka Hines covers leadership, adult learning, and presentation skills.

Finally, also check out KristinaLeroux.com, where my virtual assistant (and little sister) is now blogging about all kinds of cool tools to help you manage your online life and Internet marketing.

What other new nonprofit communications, marketing, or fundraising blogs are you following?

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Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now is hosting the next Nonprofit Blog Carnival with an April Fool’s theme, so I decided to share with you those times during my week when I am most likely to think, “This is a joke, right?”

This happens several times a week, as I review the email that comes from my blog’s contact form. Here are the three most frequent requests that make me think, “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding,” along with some tips on getting a more positive response from the bloggers you may be approaching.

1. Can we do a link exchange?

Most of the requests I get are from businesses whose products and services have very little to do with the content of this blog. As if I would actually include a link to your online bingo parlor or travel agency on my nonprofit communications blog.

Sometimes the connection is clearer, but the request comes from someone I don’t know on behalf of a site I don’t recognize. It’s very unlikely that I would link to a site like that. After all, what’s in it for my readers and for me? How would my readers benefit from knowing about this website? How would having a link on their site to mine help me (I already have pretty good Google juice, so random links from unrelated sites don’t interest me).

Lesson: Don’t just ask for the link. Instead, explain all the goodness that my readers would find on your site. Tell me about your existing traffic. Invite me to explore so that I naturally want to link to you, and would even think about asking you for the link.

2. Will you write about me, print this press release, or pass this on to your readers?

I never reprint press releases verbatim. I rarely use them at all. With very few exceptions, I only write about products or services that I have personal experience with or that have been recommended by other people I trust.

This is not a “news” blog. It’s what I call a “tips and toolkit” blog. Therefore, if you want me to talk about your product or service, you are much more likely to get my attention if you offer yourself as an expert for a Q &A interview on a topic I’m likely to cover.  Otherwise, don’t bother pitching your product to me unless (1) you have testimonials from lots of nonprofits along with it or (2) you can name-drop people I already trust as fans of your stuff.

Many people use a blanket pitch and then customize it by adding in my first name and the name of my blog. Unfortunately, people often work too quickly and forget to switch out the names in one place or another. As a result, I often get emails addressed to someone else, or addressed to me, but referencing a blog I don’t write.

Lesson: Understand what kind of blog you are pitching. Do you see the blogger frequently doing what you are asking them to do? If not, you need to customize your pitch if you really want to get that person’s attention so that it makes sense for the kind of blog they write. Double-check all customizations of names and blog titles.

3. Will you do my job for me?

OK, it’s not usually worded that bluntly. And I do encourage readers to send in questions, so I may be asking for some of this. I’m very happy to get questions that can be answered in a quick email or in a few paragraphs in a blog post. But don’t ask me to do more than that for free.

All too often, I get email from people who are asking for hours and hours of free consulting advice. Don’t ask me to develop a marketing plan for your fundraising event. Don’t ask me what foundations you should send your grant applications to. Don’t ask me to review your new product sales pages and tell you if they speak to nonprofits.  If I offer to do the work for you for a fee, don’t give me a sob story about how you are a poor nonprofit (nearly everyone reading this blog is associated with a nonprofit so claiming poverty doesn’t make you stand out for special attention).

Lesson: Be realistic in what you are asking for. Make the connection both easy and worthwhile for both of us. Introduce yourself and develop a rapport before you start asking for favors.

If you write a blog, what tips do you have for people who pitch you? If you pitch bloggers, what works for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

P.S. Here are our next three webinars:

April 28: Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit

May 6: In Search of Your Little Black Dresses: Find the Stories That Will Raise the Most Money for Your Nonprofit

May 11: Turn Your Fundraising Event into the Best Party in Town

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Thursday’s Webinar: Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps and Tales July 9, 2009 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) Get the details and register Missed It? Watch the recording when you get an All-Access Pass.

Does your nonprofit need a blog? That depends on your overall communications strategy. But to help you think through this question, here are my top five reasons why a nonprofit should have a blog and my top five reasons why a nonprofit shouldn’t.

5 Reasons Why You Need a Blog

1. You need a better way to share the small stuff. You have many wonderful little anecdotes that your supporters would love to hear. You also run across cool resources and surprising statistics all the time, but none of it really ranks as “newsletter worthy” because they are too short.  Blogs are perfect for 50-word updates.

2. You need to take people behind the scenes. This is especially important for organizations that work in places people either can’t get to easily on their own (e.g., overseas or restricted areas like hospital wards or prisons) or are reluctant to visit, even if they could (e.g., the “bad part” of town). For your supporters to really get what you do, they have to understand where you do it. Blogging lets you take them there by giving you a platform to share stories and photos over time, creating an ongoing narrative, post by post, all in one easily accessible place.

3. You need a better way to organize the resources you have available. If you see yourself as a service, training, or resource provider, you probably have a ton of information on your website that is actually pretty tough for people to find. One of the beautiful things about blogging is that categories and tags are a natural part of the software, so you can easily group items and your readers can easily find them.

4. You need to react quickly. If your organization responds to breaking news, I don’t see how you can be effective online without a blog — or without the functional equivalent built into your website (i.e. some other kind of RSS-producing “news” section).

5. You need to incubate content for bigger publications. If you produce reports, white papers, books, etc., then a blog is perfect for your organization. It lets you publish bits and pieces as you create them and get comments from others who care about your issues. Then it’s all right there when you are ready to create a larger publication.

5 Reasons Why You Don’t Need a Blog

1. Because transparency is too scary. Blogging is about sharing. If the idea of strangers getting a peek into your work wigs you out, then forget about blogging.

2. Because writing in a personal tone of voice is too hard. Good blog writing is direct, conversational, and personal. If you are only comfortable writing as “the organization” rather than as a person working at the organization, then blogging is not for you.

3. Because criticism is too scary. If you only want to hear from people who think you are brilliant, blogging is not for you. In my opinion, you can’t turn off comments and still call what you are doing blogging. Moderate comments, yes, but don’t delete comments just because they are critical.

4. Because you can’t make the time. Because of the chronological nature of blogging, people pay attention to how often you post. If you can’t post once a week, blogging probably isn’t for you.

5. Because you can’t articulate the value of your blog. If you don’t know how your blog fits into your nonprofit marketing strategy and what you what to accomplish with it, then don’t do it.

P.S. On Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 1:00 p.m., I’m teaching my Blogging 101 webinar called Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps, and Tales. If you can’t make it live, you can watch the recording if you have an All-Access Pass.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Interplast’s blog is one my top favorites in the nonprofit world, because it does such a fabulous job of sharing success stories and letting readers behind-the-scenes, which are two of the best uses of blogs by nonprofits, in my opinion. (Here’s more on different ways nonprofits can use blogs.  Also see my Blogging for Nonprofits webinar happening this Thursday.)

Interplast provides free life-changing surgery for children and adults with clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries, and the blog shares the stories of the surgical volunteers and the people receiving care.

Before the holidays, I interviewed Liliana Vazquez, Interplast’s Communications and Technology Coordinator, about their blog. Apologies for just now getting around to posting it, and special thanks for Liliana and Interplast for generously sharing their perspective. Here’s the interview . . .

What did Interplast hope to get out of blogging?

It’s been an amazing tool for us. We really see it as one of our best tools to communicate with donors. We use Typepad and we blog through Flickr, so the pictures are tied to the stories. We also use the blog to announce what else is going on within the organization. We also answer questions that come in through comments.

The posts from surgical trips are written by the volunteers. How do the posts get online?

Our volunteers are doing the writing in their own voices and taking the photos. Since a lot of the countries we travel in don’t have good Internet connections and the volunteers are busy doing surgeries, we ask that they simply send us an email and attach the pictures. Blogging is such a foreign idea for many of the older volunteers, so we had to make it really simple for them, to convince them it would work. Now the volunteers love it too. They send the links to their families as a way to keep in touch while they are traveling.

How much editing do you do?

Outside of grammatical editing, we try not to edit them too much because they are writing from the heart, from their personal experiences. Sometimes the posts come in as stream of consciousness and we clean those up a little bit. We do edit the pictures, because we do get a lot of gory medical stuff.

A lot of it is not specifically written for the blog. We’ll take stories out of quick emails we get or from the back of napkins! Sometimes we’ll hear cute stories about kids donating and we’ll turn that into a blog post.

How many people contribute content to the blog?

We are relying on everyone to contribute: staff, volunteers, everyone who can. We ask people to keep their eyes open to everything going on around them and we pull in stuff from everywhere. It’s easy to ignore the every day, but a lot of impressive stuff is going on! We have over 100 people telling their stories on the blog.

How do you handle comments?

We don’t spend a lot of time on comments. We get lots of positive comments that don’t need a response. For those that do require a response, like a referral, we’ll contact the person directly. We haven’t had any bad experiences on the blog with comments, although we have had some people making inappropriate comments on photos on Flickr and we’ve deleted those and blocked those people.

How does the blog fit in with your other communications?

When we do an e-newsletter, we link to the blog. We also use blog content in the e-newsletter, our print newsletter, and in donor reports. If someone donates to a specific trip, we can acknowledge the donors in the posts about the trip on the blog and keep them updated on the trip. It’s also a great archive for us internally.

Are you considering any changes to the blog?

Interplast does more than surgical trips. We also empower and train local doctors. I’d like to give that part of what we do some more screen time.

What has surprised you about blogging?

I was surprised to see how the blog is being used to refer patients to us, which is also great. We’ve seen people who are traveling and meet people who need our help use the blog to put us in touch with those people. So it helps with our mission that way too.

Want to learn more about nonprofit blogging? Check out Blogging for Nonprofits, this week’s webinar.

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Last week I gave a short talk at a statewide conference for the United Way. If I had to pick one slide that summed up my talk, it would be this one:

As Claire Meyerhoff, who was also on the panel, put it, you can spend a whole day writing a press release and trying to get a reporter to use it, and get nothing. Or you can spend that time creating your own content, using it in several different places, and having it work for you for months to come.

Nonprofits are no longer dependent on the media to get their messages out beyond their inner circles, and yet so many groups are still fretting about whether to double-space a press release. Traditional media still plays an important role, but it’s not what it used to be.

Instead of thousands of newspapers landing in the driveways of your potential supporters, you should be looking at ways to generate thousands of messages from members of your inner circle to their own inner circles, talking about your cause, using everything from email to social media to do it. The tools to make that happen are now easy and inexpensive. Anyone, or any nonprofit, can be a publisher, broadcaster, and media mogul.

I’ll be talking a lot more about this on Wednesday, February 11, during the webinar called “Online Marketing Basics for Nonprofits: From Email to Social Media.” During the webinar, I’ll help you sort through your online marketing options, emphasizing how they all fit together, and helping you see how they can help you form your own media empire.

For those of you who are really ready to dive into the social media components of this in particular, check out NTEN’s We Are Media wiki.

You might also find two additional webinars helpful: Blogging for Nonprofits on February 12 and Creating Online Evangelists on February 17 March 20. Single webinars are $35 and the All-Access Pass for 12 weeks is $97 (attend as many live webinars as you want and watch the rest as recordings).

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Looking for an online marketing crash course for your nonprofit? I have a trio of three webinars just for you.

Online Marketing Basics: From Email to Social Media (Wednesday, February 11). We’ll start the series with an overview of online marketing that will help you put all of your options in perspective and give you some tips on coming up with a strategy that works for you. How often should you email your list? Should you be on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or some other site du jour? Should you blog? This webinar will give you the big-picture perspective you need to sort all of that out.

Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps, and Tales (Thursday, February 12). While it isn’t right for everyone, I confess to being a huge advocate of nonprofit blogging. It’s an easy way to connect more personally with your supporters, to let them behind-the-scenes, and to engage in conversations with your professional community — not to mention that it also improves your search engine rankings. If you are ready to explore blogging for your organization, join me for this webinar.

Creating Online Evangelists: How to Excite and Motivate Your Supporters (Tuesday, February 17). If you want to move beyond the basics and really start to support your biggest fans — individuals who want to advocate for you and your cause — you’ll want to hear what guest speaker John Kenyon has to say during this webinar. Learn how nonprofits are using Web 2.0 and social networking in particular to empower their current supporters and to reach entirely new groups of people — and how you can do it too.

Each webinar is $35 and includes as many people in your office as you can fit around one computer. Want to attend all three? Then the All-Access Pass is the way to go. For $97, you can attend these three webinars and all of the others we host in a 12-week period. That also gets you access to our Webinar Archive, so you can view recordings whenever you like, whether you attended live or not.

I hope you’ll join us!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Thinking about starting a blog in 2009?

Before the holidays, I asked some nonprofits to share with me their blogging lessons learned. Here are some of the comments I heard through  NTEN’s Nonprofit Blogging Affinity Group List. (NTEN groups are a great resource, by the way, and this same list just had a great discussion about some of the best nonprofit blogs online. You’ll have to join NTEN and the Blogging group to learn more).

From Mike Sweitzer-Beckman: “I run a blog in my spare time for progressive young adult Catholics. I wish I had known ahead of time that we would need not just writer’s guidelines, but commenting guidelines. We post them on our site now at www.youngadultcatholics-blog.com. The other thing I wish I had known was how to implement advertising. We just haven’t thought it through. There are more and more people that are requesting that we put their website information up, but we’re hesitant to do it without some guidelines and parameters, not to mention rates.”

From Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog: “I wish I had know about Feedburner so I could have tracked my subscriber metrics from the beginning and consolidated by RSS feeds. I also wish I had a benchmarking process so I could measure and track and improve what I was doing.”

From Barbara Christensen of Conservation Northwest: “If only I’d known how hard it would have been to convince the rest of the staff a blog was worth the effort, I would have compiled more research on industry standards, conversion rates, etc, as well as some anecdotal stories of blogs working for other environmental advocacy NGOs (I see tons of info
on web 2.0 successes for non-profit service oriented groups, but so little for folks like us who don’t offer so concrete a product as people served or acres purchased).”

For me personally, I wish I had given more thought to the difference between post categories and tags. I’ll blame part of my confusion on the earlier versions of WordPress, where they were one and the same. Now that WordPress supports both, I have a list of categories a mile long that could really be knocked down to a dozen categories, with the rest as tags. Fixing that is on my blogging to-do list.

I also wish I had taken an hour or two to learn how CSS really works so I could have tweaked my blog templates more easily. I ended up learning as I went along, but I think I could have saved myself lots of hours in the end had I just sat down and worked through some tutorials. (I like to play around too much to pay someone to make all those little changes for me.)

How about you? What blogging lessons have you learned the hard way? Leave a comment to add your voice to the conversation.

P.S. I’m teaching an intro to nonprofit blogging on February 12 — Get the details on Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps, and Tales.

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