By now, most eveyone has heard about blogs and the blogging phenomena taking the Internet by storm. In case you haven't, blogs are nothing more than a series of short, digestable writings displayed in chronological order on a website.

When done right, blogs can go a long way to growing your site's readership. More importantly, they'll really help your union build emotional connections between union leaderhip, members, and the community.

News blogs
One common way of using a blog is to post updates about happenings in the world and community that impact your union. The AFL-CIO blog is a good example of such a blog. News-oriented blogs like this will often mix the opinions of blog authors while delivering links to facts from outside sources about the news.

As the AFL-CIO blog demonstrates, a blog doesn't have to be from just from one author. Several contributors can make blog entries. This not only distributes the workload it makes the blog varied and more interesting.

Personal blogs
Another blog option for your union is to have one or more high-ranking union officials within the local to write in a more personal way. The official might want to write about experiences from a recent conference they attended, or a give a blow-by-blow account of a recent negotiating session, or publicly praise a steward for good work done at a grievance.

Writing about topics close to home demonstrates that the leader is in touch with what's going on in the union. It also helps to create a bond between members and leadership.

Guest bloggers
Your labor organization probably has access to a lot of prominent people in the community. Think about inviting them to write a blog entry or two for your site. Getting someone prominent in the community to write for your site shows you have clout and, again, makes for a more interesting blog.

Interactive blogs
Most blogs, including the blogs that come with Prometheus software, allow users to make comments to the original blogger and have conversation with each other. This is a sticky issue.

On the one hand, allowing comments makes your blog a much more interesting place to visit. This will help you in your efforts to keep people coming back to your site. However, it also opens your site up to cranks, spam, and the manipulation of your site by management and other enemies of your union.

Prometheus software comes with many controls that let you maximize the benefits of a blog while limiting their pitfalls.

General blogging tips
If you decide to keep a blog, here's a few key tips:

1) Keep your entries short. With the rest of the world just a click away, the Interent is shrinking attention spans like never before.
2) Write well. If your entries are poorly written, it's better not to have one.
3) Write frequently. Try to get your blog updated at least once a week.
4) Prepare to work and keep at it. Creating and writing a good blog is work. Prepare to do a lot of thinking about what you write about and how you write it.