Joanne Fritz’s blog posts are like the breakfast bar at the Ayres Hotel. You don’t expect breakfast bars at hotels to be good. You expect them to be skimpy, with little boxes of Froot Loops and stale-ish bagels and sometimes even those weird egg patties. They are a business traveler’s last resort.

And then occasionally a breakfast bar comes along like the one at the Ayres Hotel, and it’s actually very good. Surprisingly good. Like you’d go there even if you weren’t staying at that hotel.

So About.com may not strike one as the vortex of the nonprofit world. But that’s where Joanne blogs. And her blog is always really good. Never a weird egg patty there.

So as you read her posts generally, make sure to check out her post specifically about the purpose of nonprofit blogs. Writes good egg Joanne:

I looked at a fair number of nonprofit blogs in preparation for this blog post. Many were really good, but some were simply full of information about the next event, the current fundraising campaign, or where the executive director was speaking next. They were inwardly focused rather than audience focused….

Curation is the cure. Provide information about what you know best…your field. Share your expertise, knowledge, advice, even the news about whatever corner of the world in which you exist. You will be focused, never run out of topics, and will be performing a huge service for your readers. Those blog posts, if well optimized, will be indexed by search engines, drawing in even more people.

Or, as I would say, use your blog (and your press releases) to coach your champions in relation to your shared cause, not to promote your organization.

The classic book on this subject is David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR. If you find yourself liking the idea Joanne has suggested but are not sure how to implement it in your context, give that book a read.

And next time you’re visiting Southern California, try the Ayres.

Unless you happen to like little boxes of Froot Loops.