…Kathy Fletcher, of People for Puget Sound!
Big congratulations to Kathy and the rest of her folks at People for Puget Sound, for recognizing the importance of the personal, frequent online communication that blogs allow. Executive Directors are busy folks, and it’s great to see Kathy taking the time to write from the heart about her work and why it’s important to her (and the planet).
Of course, being an environmental technologist/communications strategist, I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Turn on comments. A blog is a conversation, not a monologue. And it’s the conversations that blogs allow that build the relationships that justify starting a blog in the first place.
2) Turn on trackbacks. Same reasons.
3) Encourage your staff to start blogging, too. I know that lots of them are doing lots of interesting stuff, and blogging is a great way to power the voices of the folks who are “in the trenches” doing the heavy lifting of environmental protection. (Paging Jim Dawson!)
4) Post shorter, more frequent entries. It was nearly two weeks between your first and second posts. I found your blog about a week after your first post, and, when I didn’t see anything new, I almost didn’t come back. Effective blogging is all about getting folks coming back frequently (or reading your RSS feed regularly). And putting new stuff up at least once a week is pretty important. It can be short, though — in fact, short is good.
5) Spread the word among your fellow environmental E.D.s! You’re an online communications role model — talk it up!
PS… yes, the first Northwest environmental group Executive Director to start a blog is none other than ONE/Northwest’s own E.D., Gideon Rosenblatt. (Who could probably stand to post a little more often himself.)
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Hey Jon — looks like your trackbacks aren’t working. I linked to ya here.
Kari — I think it is working… it’s just that first-time commenters and trackbackers must be approved before the comment/trackback goes up. (Spam prevention, you know.)
Hey, Alan and company at NEW have started a blog, too–the Cascadia Scorecard Weblog. http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com/blog/
Okay, so it isn’t officially just Alan’s blog, and yes, he’s gone all summer, but hey, still worth mentioning.
Doh! How could I forget my downstairs neighbors at NEW, whose blog I read almost every day! I guess that makes Kathy the third!
Hey Jon,
Check out OSPIRG Executive Director Mo Kirk’s blog – http://www.ospirg.org/blog/home/ – it started back in 2003.
Steve
Steve — Excellent!
I hope blogging will be very contagious within the environmental community as I wish podcasting would as well. As the blog person for EcoTalk, the weekly radio program by Betsy Rosenberg on Air America I hope people also discover how to listen to this show on line. Of course I would also like to produce local radio programs. Anybody interested?