Everything I’ve done with my blog design is intentional. I’m not saying that my blog design is perfect, and I certainly have other things I’d like to do in the future, but I wanted to share with you some thoughts about blog design, starting with my blog, but then showing some design ideas from other sites as well. Why should blog design matter? Because you want your blog to serve the purpose you’ve built it to serve.

Link: Make Your Blog Design Work For You

One of the best ways to get publicity and generate buzz is to get bloggers to write about what you’re doing. Boing Boing co-author Cory Doctorow provides some tips on making it easy for bloggers to point to you.

Link: 17 Tips For Getting Bloggers To Write About You

Think your nonprofit organization has no need for a blog? You may want to think again. According to Technorati, more than 10,500 blogs were tagged charity, 4,000 blogs nonprofit and 2,300 blogs philanthropy in January of 2007 and these numbers are predicted to rapidly increase in the future. Below are ten reasons your nonprofit should participate in this movement and harness the power of the blog today.

Link: 10 Reasons Why Every Nonprofit Must Have a Blog

Although this article is targeted at nonprofits, the same argument could be made for small business. A blog would allow you to both manage information about your business and interact with your customers. Blogs have come a long way in a short time: they are no longer just for personal journals.

Monday 9:30 a.m. It’s time for a frank talk. And no, it can’t wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don’t even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there’s plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that’s sick in our society today, and it’s on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

Link: Social Media Will Change Your Business

There’s just too much information to process these days. And when people feel overwhelmed, they react in ways that aren’t good for your blog…You can’t alter the flow of information out there, but you can do some simple things in your writing to make the information you present clear, simple, and easy to understand.

Link: Information Overload: The Blogger’s Worst Enemy and 8 Ways to Avoid It