This blog post has one purpose: to refine the vision for the Compassion blog.
That might mean we simply affirm what the blog’s purpose has been for the last few years. Or it might mean we come up with something new. Either way, now is the time to tell me where you want to go.
Tell me why Compassion should have a blog and what its focus should be.
It’s been four years since we launched. And in that time we’ve published over 1,600 posts from more than 150 authors, approved more than 26,000 comments, created waaaay to many tags (4,400), exceeded more than 1 million pageviews in a year, and left the million visitor mark in the last town.
We’ve run nine blog trips, celebrated our 1 millionth sponsored child, launched OurCompassion, responded to the earthquake in Haiti, enjoyed being named one of the Best Corporate Blogs in 2011, joined a few social networks, then joined a few more, grew our social media team beyond just me, and met tons of great new friends.
When the blog launched we defined its purpose as:
giving a behind-the-scenes view of Compassion at work and at play and exclusive looks at our child development ministry around the world.
That was our initial framework for running this thing and deciding what to post. I thought it was a good start, but I soon wanted more clarity.
I have always said that the blog is about you and what you want and are interested in, not what we want to give you. But what does that look like?
For years I’ve answered that question by describing the purpose of the blog as helping you feel more closely connected to your child. I’ve imagined it this way, like an archer trying to place the arrow as close to the center of a target as possible.
At the center are our children. Stories focusing on individual children aren’t just meant to be about that specific child. They’re meant to represent the friends your child plays with. And in the blessed instance when the story is about your child, we share with you the extra photos and information we have but didn’t publish.
Since it’s difficult to always hit the bullseye, we can help connect you with your child emotionally by providing insight into what life is like in a typical child development center in the child’s country so, by extension, you have a better idea of what your child’s daily life is probably like.
Sometimes the content we publish is meant to bridge the geographic distance by educating you about your child’s culture and traditions or it’s meant to strengthen the bond you have with our ministry: why we operate the way we do, how our programs work, who we are, etc.
Beyond that, we want to help you understand the broad issue of extreme poverty, so that poverty isn’t just a concept any longer but is instead has meaning in your personal life.
Then finally, when we can, we want to help foster your relationship with our Savior, which is why we’ve been sharing our employee devotionals with you this year.
Despite my effort to focus the blog on your needs, I can’t forget that our ministry is about releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name. And we do that primarily through child sponsorship, which means we need to get more children sponsored and raise money for all of our programs. This adds another variable when determining what to publish.
Now that you have some of our backstory, what do you think about it? Is this the right place for the blog to be? What adjustments would you have us make to the content we publish? Am I even asking the right questions?
Thanks for your help.