Help your nonprofit fundraising objectives by blogging more in 2015

If your nonprofit fundraising strategies include online marketing, raising awareness or simply content creation there is every chance that at some point in time you’ve added or considered adding a blog to your website. Blogging has been 100% validated as an important tool and method for sharing your message, creating social media friendly content and perhaps most valuable of all greatly assisting in search engine rankings (SEO) helping to allow your focus keywords to be found by the largest search engines.

There’s also a pretty good chance that after adding a blog to your site finding the time and establishing a routine to create regular content has been an ongoing struggle. For many a blog sounds great in concept but can lead to some challenges in creating new content on a frequent or at least semi-regular basis. Believe me that is a focus and a difficult task for almost all organizations and until we find our footing and indeed our voice it can often be a case of grasping for content to write and headlines to create. Even the largest nonprofits don’t have breaking news every single day or even a few times a week so don’t restrict your subject matter to internal news only as that will make the idea of content creation seem even more intimidating.

Take a deep breath, step back and consider your audience and the overall goals of your organization, write about your sub-sector of the fundraising world and even some key philanthropy news and views in general. Relate stories that are happening locally, nationally or even around the world back to the work of your own organization, look at how technology continues to change the sector and even share some of the ideas that you’re considering. If you find something that you consider fascinating, valuable, controversial or even simply thought provoking include it in your writing and relate it back to your cause, your community and your focus. Above all else establish a voice and a position and encourage spirited participation and the viewpoints of your reader too.

Decide how much time you truly have available to write and focus on content creation, whether that be the writing, researching, editing, interviewing or analysis of data. If your goal is a weekly blog post or every other week build a routine that allows for that regular output to see fruition and more importantly publication. I feel that for a blog to generate a lasting audience a minimum frequency of three to four posts a month can see begin to see you build an engaged audience and definitely register some lasting search engine value as well. If possible consider shorter posts to increase your posting frequency but with very rare exceptions (perhaps the sharing of an infographic for example) try and keep your posts above 400 words in length.

Shortly I’ll provide my top tips for creating regular content for your nonprofit blog that should allow you to write 2,3 or even five posts per week without it consuming even as much time as you might imagine without losing quality in your output. With due attention to these tips you can generate a fine balance of original and re-purposed content that can go a great distance to aiding the online awareness of your nonprofit organization by attracting interested readers and potential donors while also helping to fill the social media channels that you work so diligently on.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.