Beth Kanter commented on my last post, asking:

Have you written anything specifically about the practice(doing it and doing it well) of discoverablility in a nonprofit setting? Not the technical stuff, but the art of bloggish conversation and participating in the network effect.

Despite my 10 years of experience consulting to nonprofits on the use internet technologies, I'm actually pretty new to blogging. So nope, I don't have any previous writing to refer to. But I think the two points you make on your post are good ones (that context matters, and dont be afraid). And I'll add this...

Blogs are great for starting and facilitating conversations. But, talk is cheap, as they say, and conversations don't solve problems. So, for nonprofits, you must be blogging not to blog, but to insert your message into the world's ongoing conversations. How?

6 Guidelines to Behaving Bloggishly (or How to be Discoverable)

1. Speak in a human voice.
   
2. Place your message in context to others by directly linking to an existing article, post, story, web site, resource, or whatever.
   
3. Make your mission clear. If you dont have a position to be advancing, you're just noise.
   
4. Find like minds, and comment directly on their sites.
   
5. Find dissenting minds, and comment directly on their sites.
   
6. Ping the powers that be. Everytime you post, make sure to ping blog aggregrater services (I know we were trying to avoid tech tips, but needed to get that one in there)
   

As a practical examples of those who are embracing these guidelines, I can think of two.

From a grassroots/advocacy perspective, I would point to what Jason Lefkowitz is doing over at Oceana. By having Oceana staffers speak directly to the public, they are heightening awareness and extending their message in a way that no direct mail campaign ever could (or would, I should say).

From a policy standpoint, The Center for Global Development, is following these approaches with 2 weblogs: The Millennium Challenge Monitor Weblog and the The Vaccine Development Weblog. (full disclosure, CGD is a Forum One customer).

What we need now is some solid evidence that behaving bloggishly has had a positive impact on these NGO's missions. I'll ask around for some evidence, and see if that can be a subject for a future post.