hayduke

I had a great chat with Ted Fickes and Rachel Weidinger on Twitter yesterday. Since it lasted all of 5 tweets of 140 characters each, it was short and to the point. I'll summarize:

It's not about you. It's about your network.

We live in a new world, a world where people aren't looking to authority figures to answer their questions -- they're looking to each other. The best thing you can do as a nonprofit is show off your network.

Chris Brogan had a nice, clear example of how to do this in his latest newsletter. (Do you get his newsletter? You should.) He says:

Week Two of the We Are Media Toolbox begins!

Today, our topic is blogs. To this day, whenever I hear the word blog, I think to myself, "It's better than bad, it's good!" Ren and Stimpy jokes aside, blogs are typically one of the first things people think of when they hear the phrase "Web 2.0." Many begin their launch into the social media space with blogs; I always get questions about how blogs work and what software an organization should use.

Since I've become a near-daily blogger, I have lots of tips and opinions. But we want to know what you use to blog. What features are important? Share your intel with us in the comments below or on the We Are Media wiki.

Flickr Photo: kirstenvIf there are any "Laws of Blogging," then posting consistently is one of them. One of the keys to retaining and even increasing your readership is to post regularly. My own personal experience with the NTEN blog is that more IS better. The more we post, the more traffic we have, period. I'm sure there's going to be some point when this will no longer hold true, but for now, that's our reality.

Which means, of course, that I am now trapped. I've worked really hard over the last few months to become a (near) daily blogger. In fact, you're reading this while I'm on vacation because I made sure to have a few posts in the bank before I left. But being a daily blogger is a commitment rivaled only by kids and marriage. (OK, that's an exaggeration, but it is a lot of work.)

So I thought I would share some of my challenges, as well as a few of the things that help me out along the way. Mostly, though, I want you to write this post. Share with us. What are the strategies that you use to make your blogging work? What are the difficulties you encounter?

Here are my challenges:

CommonCraft is at it again. The most recent installment of their "In Plain English" series: blogs. Happy Friday! Enjoy!

Flickr Photo From: thedpqThe fires in Southern California are a tremendous tragedy. I've heard estimates that up to 500,000 people have been asked to evacuate their homes.

As this is one of the most tech-saturated areas of the country, though, it's interesting to see how many individuals and organizations are turning to the web to organize, share, and emote.

I asked the NTEN community to tell me what they were watching yesterday. Here are a few of the things you told me: