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:

Apparently, yes. Downloading songs for free is destroying the profits of the traditional recording companies. But that doesn’t mean that musicians can no longer make a living creating music. They just have to go about it in a different way.

This week, my favourite podcast, Planet Money (from NPR) did a profile of a successful singer-songwriter (you’ve never heard of) who makes a very comfortable living giving away his music on his 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:

Whether you’re in the searching, ladder-climbing or sector changing mode, you’ve got a reason to start (or recommit to) your career-focused blog.

A blog is a great way to showcase who you are and what you want to offer. When you begin sharing the story of your work, your unique combination of training, experience and values come together to create a picture of your ideal role and team. Rather than pigeon-holing, this helps focus your job search efforts and helps employers …