Nonprofit blogs: tips and tricks for success

Why blog?

If you work at a nonprofit, chances are that your organization has a blog. But are you using that blog to its full potential? By developing engaging and useful content on an ongoing basis, your blog can help raise the profile of your nonprofit, which can lead to more patients reached, for example, or more donors engaged. Here are just a few of the reasons we recommend becoming expert at nonprofit blogging:

Showcase your nonprofit’s accomplishments. No doubt your organization is doing some great work, but does everyone know about it? Sure, sharing on social media is great, but space on social media platforms is limited, as is reader attention. A blog allows you a bit more space to take a deep dive into accomplishments you’d like to share. As Wayne Eskridge from the Fatty Liver Foundation told us, he blogs “because it’s flexible space to share your message.” If your blog feels too long, you can always break your post into installments.

Build trust with your community. Certain types of content can help you establish trust with your community. Sharing patient stories, for example, tells your patient community that you understand what they’re going through. Offering advice shows that you are trying to help. Posting thought leadership pieces on the latest news shows that you are the experts. Taken together, all of these elements build solid trust with your community.

Build a relationship with your community. The beauty of blogs is that they don’t have to be a one-way communication tool. If you update your website, it can be hard for a community member to weigh in on what you’ve done — but if you post to your blog, the comments section is a whole new space for community engagement. And, if you’re concerned about unmoderated comments, you can always build in an approval feature using your blogging platform.

Drive traffic to your website. It should come as no surprise that more content drives more traffic. We know that traffic means exposure — which can lead to interest and engagement.

Build habits/familiarity. Regularly producing useful, compelling content can help make checking your website become a habit for people.

Rank higher in search engines. Using keyword optimization with your regular content can help you rank higher when someone uses a search engine. Search engines like updated content, so your blog is likely to rank higher than a static website.

Create more shareable content. You’ll find that as you create more content for your blog, you’ll want to share it everywhere you can. This means you’ll have content for tactics like social media and email outreach, without having to create anything new.

Gain free publicity. Getting the word out can be expensive, but blogging doesn’t have to be.

Vanessa Chase Lockshin, President of The Storytelling Nonprofit, shared her perspective on the benefits of blogging and content creation for nonprofits:

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What should I blog about?

Consider your audiences

To develop a content strategy for your blog, start by thinking about your audience and the different kinds of content they would be interested in. Create a few different “personas” and consider their needs, interests, and goals. For example, your blog may speak to:

• Patients
• Caregivers
• Volunteers
• Donors

You can then tailor your content to these audiences. For example, a patient’s goal may be to learn more about living well with their condition and find out about research updates around their condition. A volunteer may be interested in learning about the impact of their donation, as well as fundraising ideas or stories about other successful fundraisers.

Brainstorming ideas

Once you’ve identified the different audience segments for your blog, you can start generating ideas around the specific topics they’ll be interested in.

Research updates: Especially if your organization funds research, keep your audience updated on the latest breakthroughs as well as smaller studies that may be of interest.

Event coverage: Share pictures and highlights from events and conferences your team attends.

Volunteer profiles: Short profiles about some of your most involved volunteers can be a great thank you for volunteers, as well as an inspiring piece of content for your audience.

Advice on living well: Share advice on everyday living with a condition. Interview doctors, physical therapists and other professionals for tips. You can also crowdsource your social media audience for their advice.

Lockshin also shared a few tips for bloggers who are struggling with writer’s block:

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Analyze your results

As you start to create different kinds of content, it’s also important to keep track of how your audience responds to each piece. If you’re using Google Analytics, you can track how many visitors are reading your blogs, how long they stay on each page, and where visitors are coming from.

Time on the page: How long did a visitor spend reading your content? Breaking up your text into shorter paragraphs can help make your posts more readable and increase time on site.

Bounce rate: Did the viewer look at any additional pages on your website after reading your blog post? Including more internal links to other content can help encourage visitors to read additional content.

Contact creation: Set up your blog so that visitors can easily sign up to receive newsletters and other communications from your organization.

Multimedia content on your blog

In addition to creating written content for your blog, you can also incorporate videos into posts. If you’ve already been creating videos and sharing them on YouTube or Vimeo, you can also create a blog post around the video to extend the life of the piece of content.

You can do the same around graphics your team creates, photos from an event, or a podcast your team creates. Most nonprofits are short staffed, so it’s important to make the most of every piece of content whenever possible.

Maintaining a content calendar

Stepping up your blog content production can feel overwhelming. How will I coordinate all of my posts, and distribution strategies for each? The answer is simple: create a content calendar.

Organize your content calendar. A content calendar is simply a document with which you plan out your blog posts, tracking what posts will be written, who will be writing them, when they will be posted, and how you will share them.

Include the aspects that are most important to you. Remember that your content calendar is an internal tool for your organization. It should reflect the information that you want and need to know about your future blogging plans.

Ask for help. Creating content can be time-consuming, and sometimes, someone else may be more expert at a certain topic than you are. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other staff members, partner organizations, or even experts in the field to ask them to contribute guest blog posts.

Blog distribution strategies

After you create great content for your blog, the next step is to share it. Site traffic from social media and email newsletters can give a strong boost too, so it’s important to incorporate a distribution strategy in your blog content calendar.

Social media best practices

Facebook: Facebook can still be a strong source of traffic to your blog. Feel free to tag anyone associated with the blog, including experts you interviewed and other organizations who provided input.

Twitter: Share your blog post on Twitter, tagging anyone who you think would be particularly interested in the post.

LinkedIn: This is a great forum for sharing blog posts appropriate for a business-oriented audience.

Lockshin shared her advice on how to make sure your blog posts get out into the world:

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The importance of community management

One important part of engaging your community on social media is responding to comments in a timely manner. Timely responses show that you’re listening to your audience and their stories, questions, and concerns.

Nonprofit newsletter best practices

Email newsletters are another great way to distribute your content. Whether you send emails regularly or just stick to a monthly or quarterly newsletter, including your best blog posts in an email can help bring visitors to your website without relying on social media.

Test your subject lines. Research the latest best practices on subject line performance and run A/B tests to see what results in higher open rates.

Inspire your recipients to click through to your website. In the body of your newsletter, tease your blog content with an interesting blurb, but give readers a reason to click to your website.

Welcome new email subscribers. Create a welcome series that introduces new subscribers to your list.

Include social media buttons in your newsletter. Add links to your social media channels at the bottom of your emails.

Technology

Using a content management system

Content management systems provide an easy way to manage blog posts and other content on your website. There are many different content management platforms to choose from, so take the time to talk to a few different vendors when you start your search.

What nonprofits has the company worked with before? If the vendor has other nonprofit clients, you can check out their websites to see what’s possible with their technology.

What other features, like analytics, does the system include? It’s very important to measure the success of each blog post you publish.

Does the company offer a nonprofit discount? It doesn’t hurt to ask!

How will the CMS integrate with my customer relationship management (CRM) and donation records platforms? It’s important to use a CMS that can easily connect with your current contact management system.

About the authors:

Nancy Ryerson is a Digital Marketing Manager at Antidote. Prior to joining, she spent three years on the marketing team at The Michael J. Fox Foundation, where she wrote top-performing blog posts and managed the Foundation’s social media community. Nancy holds a degree in Journalism from New York University.

Lisa Conroy is the Director of Communications at Antidote. Prior to joining Antidote, she worked at TEDMED managing the Great Challenges Program, an RWJF-funded initiative designed to drive awareness and innovation around the top public health challenges in the country. She also served as the organization’s community manager. Lisa holds a degree in English from Northwestern University and an MPH from Columbia University.

About Vanessa Chase Lockshin and The Storytelling Nonprofit:

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