6 Pointers for Effective Blogging for the New Nonprofit Blogger

In my last Social Media Summer Series post, I wrote about how a nonprofit can incorporate a blog into their existing website in 7 Steps to Adding a Blog to your Nonprofit Website. Blogging has become an essential part of any online marketing strategy and nonprofits are no different. The consistent influx of less formal and fresh content can help increase traffic to the main website, improve visitor engagement for new and existing supporters and position your organization as an authority in its sector. The following six points will assist with the effectiveness of your blog writing efforts:

• • Length. There is no clear cut rule for the ideal length of a post as some topics can be covered in under 500 words and others could need 1000. We are living in a “140 characters or less” world now so you can’t help but be mindful of the shrinking virtual attention span. I would never recommend sacrificing the quality of your content to keep within a certain word count. Ultimately, the best length and layout is what does the content the most justice but, all things being equal, a good rule of thumb is somewhere between 400 to 800 words.

Free blog image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• Images. The image you select for your post contributes to its look and appeal. We are visual by nature (look at the popularity of Pinterest) so an image can influence someone to read your post. Although original pictures are ideal, they are not always possible so alternatives can be: stock photos (they are convenient and relatively inexpensive), royalty free images (without copyright implications) or you can copy an image from other websites or blogs (providing you get permission or give proper credit with a link back).
• Catchy Titles. Regardless of the research, time and effort you put into your post, the title will be a major factor in whether or not the words you sweated over get read. You want your blog title to be catchy and grab the attention of your target audience yet simple and descriptive about the information contained in the post. If you have SEO strategies in place, then you will want to try to include keyword(s) but don’t sacrifice your title for the sake of SEO. A good practice is to have a working title for your post and when it is finished, create a final title that best reflects the contents on the whole.
• Lists. Creating posts that are based on a list can be very effective especially when you want to incorporate a lot of varied information. Lists are also appealing to readers as they can be quickly scanned even if they are longer in length because the bullets break up what would otherwise be long run-on text plus each bullet contains detailed yet condensed information. Incorporating paragraph style posts into your blogging strategy is a good way to ensure there is a good balance of content to appeal to a wide-range of readers but create lists when fitting to the content.
• Make Sharing Easy. Just as having a clear call to action is a key tip for an effective nonprofit website, a blog post also needs to give the same direction to its readers and social media sharing buttons are an excellent way to do that. You want to make it easy for readers to share your post through a variety social media networks to help expand your reach and drive traffic to your post. Installing social media sharing plug-ins is simple and can accommodate any number of channels. Distribute each post to every social media channel your organization has a presence and encourage your team to share posts with their personal networks. Don’t forget to share images and videos on Pinterest as I mentioned in my post the 5 Benefits for Nonprofit Supporter Engagement on Pinterest.
• Monitor Results. The backend of your blog platform will provide some traffic data for you to assess by day, week and month. You may also be able to determine the referring site (including social media channels), keywords used to reach your blog, links that were clicked during each visit and your most popular posts by day, week, month and overall. From there your blog team can assess which site(s) refer the most traffic, and what topics/types of blogs are generating the most traffic. When you are ready to bring your analysis to the next level, Google Analytics and StatCounter offer much more detailed data on visitors to your site and both are excellent free tools that are easily installed on your blog.

These are just some basic pointers to help establish your blog but there is so much more to cover.  Feel free to browse through my Social Media Summer Series for nonprofits which includes a series on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest along with other related topics.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.