According to Roger Burks and NTEN, our identity- and personality-less nonprofit blogs need less brochure speak and more authentic, engaging stories.

He offers these five element of a successful nonprofit blog:

Blogs are great testing grounds for honing our storytelling craft, and should be a place to play with the types of stories we tell and the way they’re delivered.

Once you’ve identified the goals of your blog and figured out who your audience is (Session 1), choose and experiment with your stories from a place that makes use of your values and your value.

Here are a couple of methods to work with:

We’ve been running the Blogging for People Who Should workshop for a year now, and have taught a lot of people the basics of spreading the word online about the work they do. Now we’re delivering the first online version of the workshop.

Blogger.com, Google’s free blogging platform, is a great tool for personal blogs. It’s free, easy to set up and it comes with dozens of templates that are easy to install. It is great for personal blogs for family and friends.

But Blogger looks a little amateur – there’s a strange little toolbar that with links to a (random) “Next Blog” and your blog address is “yourblog.blogspot.com.  There are quick ways to change these limitations: one is free, and one costs as …