Some tips when blogging for your nonprofit

I’ve written extensively in the past about how to combine social media tips and tools to help raise the profile of your nonprofit to heighten awareness of your professional fundraising activities. While we have discussed the relative advantages of what are currently recognized as the ‘big three’ namely Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, one method to communicate with a potential donor audience predates each of those and remains one of the most effective ways to draw online traffic and a higher profile for your organization. In fact you’re reading that method currently.

‘Blogging’ has been in existence for over 12 years now and has become a global phenomenon that can be attached to a business, a sports team, a hobby or just about any other topic that a person desires. Originally called weblogging I recall hearing the term seven or eight years ago and thinking who would possibly read the unsolicited thoughts of any random individual. A few years later I found myself reading more and more blogs about politics, music, soccer and a host of other matters. I’ve always enjoyed writing and shortly after that I began to blog about music and then later specifically about one band. I’ve since found that blogging performs a number of great functions that will benefit a nonprofit organization including community building, first hand communication with donors, cause awareness, research, website ranking and pooling of ideas.

Blogging really took off in the middle part of the last decade as new platforms such as WordPress and Blogger meant that you didn’t need to learn endless strings of code to get your content online and published. The rapid growth of social media in the last four or five years has only helped to enhance the popularity of blogging and expand it so that it can be a definite asset to an organization. As blogging has grown so has the sophistication with which users search the Internet, therefore writing a blog about a specific arena such as a nonprofit that assists the homeless means that your content can and will be found by your target audience when you use the tools that come with a blog correctly. I’ll write more about that at a later time. Blogging isn’t for everyone but I do feel that a well-maintained blog can greatly increase the online visibility of a nonprofit organization.

Having topics in mind is key to your blogging success

Today I wanted to provide a few blogging suggestions to help you ascertain who within your organization might be best suited to the task when you add a blog to your website.

Consider your content: The single most important aspect of blogging is your content of course, trying to combine the right balance of what is useful and what is unique to your audience. If an interesting story breaks today there will be dozens or sometimes hundreds of bloggers sitting down to write about it within the next 24 hours. Adding your own personal insight, opinion or relationship to a story is what makes for quality blog content. Whilst I think that personality and opinion matter within the content of your blog above all else your articles should be useful and informational, sharing important information or relatively unknown facts to a global audience can do wonders for your nonprofit in the daily setting of a blog, adding new views, updates and counterpoints to information specific to your organization that can’t easily be achieved via a standard HTML website.

Personality matters: If a reader just wants to read it three or four sentence summary about an issue they can and will visit Reuters. The power of a blog is to dig a little deeper and provide more background information mixed with your opinion. Writing in the first and second person describing your nonprofit as ‘we’ and the audience as ‘you’ achieves a level of contact not possible via a newsfeed. Draw on your own experiences and include your personality in your writing, one thing I’m very confident about when it comes to nonprofits is the passion that is held for the cause by those who work within the industry. Writing provides the perfect canvas to explore that passion and share it with your audience. Don’t be afraid to end your blog posts with your name, the personality of your nonprofit is determined by the people within it. Try and have some fun with it also, your audience will always appreciate some self-deprecation and by default blogging isn’t considered to be Pulitzer prize-winning journalism.

Take a stand: While your blog should not be sowing the seeds of revolution, it is a suitable place to express an opinion and just as importantly to encourage one from your readers. Explaining why your nonprofit matters and can truly make a difference is sometimes hard to do via a Facebook update or a tweet. A blog provides the space and the continuity to look at news and topics in depth, to explore what has happened and what is likely to happen, to expand upon the goals of your organization and share the successes that it achieves.

Engage with your readers: If they leave a comment make sure you respond. If they make a suggestion give it due consideration. If they counter your opinion don’t censor it (within reason). Creating an environment that expands knowledge and awareness is the goal of the blog and without readers you’re basically just typing.You’ll meet some remarkable people with excellent knowledge via your blog and networking has never been quite as easy.

Be patient: Building up a blog audience isn’t like turning on a light switch. Measure your growth in weeks and months, not from one post to the next. Measure the ratio of readers who return to your blog, the best way to tell if your content is capturing attention. Give your blog and yourself time to find itself, within a few months your writing and content will both develop a rhythm that work in concert. Experiment with new ideas, polls, try different topics plus videos and images that help to make visiting the blog a richer experience.

Tell a story: Finally and perhaps most importantly a blog should tell the story, your story, about the organization for whom you work. Personal stories about your involvement with the nonprofit, the best and worst moments within the organization and what motivates you to support this cause are all very important to you and your nonprofit. Sharing those things can’t always be accomplished in the brief time it takes many to read a website homepage or brochure, a blog can really take the accomplishments of the nonprofit into the public realm and attach a human face to what your organization is doing.

Does your nonprofit include a blog? I’d love to hear your success stories or even provide a few tips if you have any questions. Blogging itself is a little bit addictive, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

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