Hello all - thanks for this, and huge apols for the delay in responding.
We have been giving this lots of thought - honest. These things can take a little while, but we've now got some changes underway which we really hope will make a big difference.
Firstly, we're going to be redesigning homepage to make it much more engaging, and give us extra space promote more of your blogs.
We've also designed a 'blog of the day' block, which will soon be appearing on most Mumsnet Talk pages. We hope this will raise the profile of the Bloggers Network, and integrate it much more effectively with the rest of the site - as well as bringing lots of traffic to those blogs.
And we're also going to have a 'latest blogs' box on key Talk topics pages, which will link out to some recent, related blogs. We think this will be a great way to introduce interested MNers to blogs that will interest them, and which they mightn't otherwise see.
We're also exploring ways of encouraging more MNers to blog - we'd really like it to be seen as equivalent to MN-ing, but longform
Finally, we're going to experiment with allowing MN Bloggers to link to their blogs on all Talk topics, and not just this one, as currently. We're working on the guidelines for this - as you know there can be some resistance on the boards, so we want to be clear to bloggers and non-bloggers alike about when it's fine to do this, and when it's not. But this will be happening sooner rather than later.
With our guest blogs, we've had several brill ones recently from MN Bloggers: Lowden Clear on disability hate crime, Stephanie Pomfrett on the rise of one-child families, Chiller on the Daily Mail's Philpott front page, Pint-sized Rants on Eddie Mair's grilling of Boris, and Glosswitch on press regulation for bloggers. They were all great - and the plan is to continue with a mix of guest posts from MN bloggers, and public figures/experts.
Some of these changes will happen soon, others (eg the homepage redesign) will inevitably take a lot bit longer - but we hope they'll make a big difference and we're v excited. Do let us know what you think?