Blogging


Blogging allows you to share content related to your organizational goals with the wider world. It allows for more expansive writing than social media sites like Twitter, where brevity is king. Setting up a blog is as easy as picking a blogging service, setting up a publishing schedule, and writing posts.

Pick a blogging service. Here are some options:

Medium - Pro: Clean, sleek design. Medium is ideal for blog posts that will contain images and/or video, not just text. Con: you can't customize the template, so all Medium blogs look alike.

Tumblr - Pro: Popular with young people. Tumblr is all about reposting: a popular image, video, or post can get shared by others hundreds or even thousands of times. Con: because of its association with young people, has less of a "serious" reputation than the other servers.

Blogger - Pro: No advertisements. Ease of navigation. Custom templates can be uploaded (just search "best free Blogger templates," download the ZIP file, unzip, and upload the .xml file to Blogger under the template section). Con: If you don't use and customize a custom template, which can take a long time (and involve digging through lines of HTML/CSS), the templates available are limited and not very pretty.

Wordpress - Firstly, there's a difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com -- wordpress.com is the site that allows you to create a blog in much the same way you would on Medium, Tumblr, or Blogger, while Wordpress.org allows you to download the Wordpress software and build a blog from scratch (translation: lots of coding). Wordpress.com is recommendable for beginners, while Wordpress.org allows for a lot of advanced customization by people who know how to use it.

Recruit content contributors. Look for interns with a flair for writing. Team members who are not confident writers can put together simpler pieces, like listicles (an easy-to-read article presented in the form of a numbered or bullet-pointed list--see this for an example). It's important that not everyone writes in the same style; you want a diversity of content to keep readers interested and coming back.

Think about what you want to post. Always ask: why would someone read this? How can this content be useful to them? Don't just post pictures from ribbon-cutting ceremonies with congratulatory platitudes or news about your organization's latest achievements. Pictures from ceremonies or news about awards don't help readers learn something or accomplish a goal. Instead, think about how the areas of expertise your content contributors and organization can bring to current events, academic subjects, or interesting skills (for example, the TED-Ed blog has a how-to post on video animation!)

Create a publishing schedule. With a personal blog, you have some latitude to write feverishly one day and not post anything for the next month. Readers expect a higher level of professionalism from an organizational blog. You'll want to draw up a publishing schedule--what will you post, and how often? Will you have recurring posts by the same author (in a newspaper column style?) For instance:

Monday: Interview with Amartya Sen
Wednesday: Article on creativity by intern
Friday: 10 Top Blogs on Development
Monday: Interview with Deepika Padukone
Wednesday: Article on SDG #8 by intern
Friday: 10 Up and Coming Foundations

In this example, an interview is posted on Mondays, article by an intern on Wednesdays, and a listicle on Fridays. This schedule does not need to be set in stone, but should be used as a rough guide. Ask writers who will be contributing content (e.g., interns, guest writers, etc.) to send you their article pitches at least two publishing cycles ahead, so that you have time to add it to the new publishing schedule.

Blogs to look at:

Adora Svitak

Student, UC Berkeley Class of 2018. Tata Communications CSR Intern, Summer 2016.

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