31 Days To Better Nonprofit Blogging

Michele Martin is one of my favorite BlogHers in the nonprofit space. I've been a fan of her blog for about two years. Michele covers a wide range of topics related to how nonprofits are using technology. She also writes about training and personal learning. What's even better, she is a terrific community-builder. I learn something everytime I read her blog.

This month, Michele has taken the Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog challenge. The goal of the project is to help bloggers build traffic for and community at their blogs. Each day, Darren provides a homework assignment. Michele has not only taken the time to do each assignment and written about on her blog. She has, in turn, challenged her readers to follow along with her on this journey. Twelve of her readers have taken her up on that and are seven days into better blogging. One of them, Sue Waters, upped the ante by offering a kilo of chocolate to the "winner" of the challenge (although the criteria for winning hasn't yet been defined).

Here's a few words of wisdom that Michele has passed on about how to improve the quality of your blog.

The best way to move forward is to include some peeks in the rearview mirror--I've tended to belong to the "stream of consciousness school of blogging where I create as I go along and don't necessarily look backward too often. But that means I'm missing out on opportunities to provide people who look at old posts with the benefit of new information and learning. It also means that once I've finished with a feature (like an About Page) I haven't periodically looked back to see if it's time for an overhaul. It's great to have a lot of forward motion, but I can't forget that people will also come in from behind.

The personal touch means a lot--I've always tried to respond to commenters and those who email me individually, but this week's exercises to email both a new reader and a long-time reader really brought home to me how much people value the personal. Yes, we're connecting in a digital world that can seem anonymous and cold. But it doesn't have to be that way. And people always respond when you're willing to be personal. I think I've felt better this week about my blogging experience than I ever have.

Michele has built a lovely community on her blog. I discovered some wonderful nonprofit BlogHers by checking out the bloghers who participating in this learning experiment.