Content Marketing for Nonprofits: Why You Need to Blog (2021)

If you run a nonprofit, you may not be a writer. You may not even read blogs. But people do.

So, you sat down and put together a strategy for your nonprofit, evaluating all the ways to be successful. Let us ask you, is content marketing a part of that strategy? Do you truly believe your blog can drive awareness to your mission?

Here’s the short answer: it absolutely can.

If you don’t believe us, check out these stats:

• Each month, approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion blogs.
• There are about 70 million posts being published each month by WordPress users.
• 77 million new blog comments are generated by readers each month.

So what’s the blog buzz all about?

What is Content Marketing?

The word ‘content’ can take on many forms. From landing pages to social media, content touches all aspects of your brand. Having a content marketing strategy is key to creating a successful campaign – no matter what it is.

Content marketing is really just a fancy way to describe writing and publishing on your website or preferred social media platform.

Just because we call it blogging for short, doesn’t limit content marketing to 2,000 word articles on your website. It can be a 120-character tweet, an original photo on Instagram, or a live stream video on Facebook.

“Content marketing is a strategy to write, produce, coordinate and share various content types (such as blog posts, social media updates, videos, photos, reports, and infographics) to attract and engage your community.”
Big Duck

What Should You Blog About?

Publishing content on your nonprofit’s website is a great way to communicate with like-minded people, focus your mission, and gather a base of supporters. Blogging, or content marketing, is one way to use storytelling to engage your audience. There are three main types of blog articles you might consider:

• Thought Leadership
• Education
• Connection

Thought Leadership

There is power in the written word. Published content has more credibility. Nonprofits publish to show their expertise in their mission and their cause. You’ve worked hard and sharing your successes and stories of change will bring awareness to your cause. Publishing facts, statistics, or other useful information related to your cause positions your organization as a leader in the field. This helps raise money by inspiring more confidence in your work.

Education

Describing your cause is education and can lead to conversion and more support. Your cause is your passion, right? With education you can change “your passion” to “our passion.” Use blog posts to teach about things your mission supports.

Impact and Origin Stories

When you’re creating a community around your nonprofit, it’s important to build a connection. What better way to do that than to tell the story of those you’ve impacted? You can also share the story of how your organization started. Everyone loves an origin story – and it’s your organization’s job to tell it.

Nonprofits have the most compelling stories on the planet — and stories are the heart of a successful content marketing strategy, according to Robert Rose of Content Marketing Institute.

Where Should You Blog?

Writing gives your organization a voice. It’s true that you can publish on Medium, LinkedIn, or Facebook. It can be a great way to experiment and test audiences. Honestly, it can be the easy way to start, if you don’t have a dedicated website yet.

Remember that your end goal is to drive people to your nonprofit. Wherever that lives, your blog should too. The easiest answer is blog on your own website and drive traffic through these channels:

• Social media (including YouTube and Instagram if you can!)
• Community groups and events
• Email marketing campaigns

The important thing to understand is that free platforms don’t belong to your nonprofit. You are at the mercy of their own funding and they own your content. Anytime Medium decides to quit, everything is gone. Remember how everyone loved Katch.me for Periscope? It’s gone now and so is the archived content.

Who Should Write for Your Nonprofit?

Find the writers and storytellers in your organization. Use the resources who are already dedicated to you.

The key to this is using your resources: online, offline, etc. Once your web property is set up, anyone can publish who you give access to. You can determine who manages those WordPress user roles: admin, editor, author.

There are several ways to go about curating content from your organization. Perhaps your founder doesn’t feel comfortable writing but loves to tell a story. In this case, you can record her telling a story and a volunteer can transcribe it. With your point-and-shoot camera or iPhone you can film your founder, upload the video to YouTube, and embed and publish that content on your website.

If budget is your issue, call for volunteer writers. There are many people who believe in your cause but aren’t sure how they can help. They may give this time as an in-kind donation. You never know until you ask, right?

Utilize the free tools! In the Google Suite, there are options for nonprofits to help your content strategy.

Google for Nonprofits offers organizations like yours free access to Google tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Ad Grants, YouTube for Nonprofits and more. These tools can help you reach new donors and volunteers, work more efficiently, and tell your nonprofit’s story.

Tips On a Long-term Content Strategy

Even if you doubt yourself, just start writing. Read up on successful blogs and adopt their strategy.

If you follow The Guide to Content Marketing – then your workflow might roughly look something like this.

1. Create SMART marketing goals (with your keywords)
2. Build out a content publishing schedule
3. Involve your team
4. Create a workflow with the right tools
5. Craft templates
6. MMRA – Measure, Monitor, Report, Adjust

These six simple steps are a guiding light to a successful content marketing campaign. But, since we love you, we are going to send these extra tips – because we know they really work.

Write Often and Write Ahead

Writing can be done ahead of time by anyone in your organization. Really. Team leaders and volunteers can tell their stories. Be creative.

Write often and publish regularly. Start off once a month. Increase as you can.

The more you write, the more likely your audience will find you.

Communicate your passion through storytelling. How did your efforts affect the community? How can people help? Use your resources to tell your story: both staf and volunteers.

Repurpose Your Content

Repurposing content is a great way to conserve your resources. Every piece of content you write on your web property (blog) can also be repurposed on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever the next big thing in social media platforms comes along.

“Become the king of content repurposing. If you help change kids lives by making their dreams come true, then be sure to take each story and turn it into a high-quality video that you put on YouTube, a short video that you post on Instagram, a blog post (or series of blog posts), a set of Facebook images, a handful of tweets, a testimonial on your website, and so on.”
Content Marketing Institute

Choices to Consider in Content Marketing

Consider these factors in your content marketing strategy:

• Readability: Formatting for your blog matters. Make sure your content has short sentences and paragraphs, image alt text, and flows well.
• Accessibility: Visual and audio content should be accessible to all accessibility needs.
• Tone and Voice: Your brand is represented in your voice.
• Optimization: Make sure your primary keywords are in the title, first paragraph, at least one header, image alt text, and your search engine meta description.
• Grammar and Spelling: Proofread and use editing tools for all proper final edits – be sure to check capitalization (it’s the #1 problem with blogs out there).

But always remember three very important things: have fun, tell your story, and just start writing.

Content Marketing Takeaways for Nonprofits

Here’s what will happen when you start blogging for your nonprofit.

Your organization will start to drive traffic to your online donation page — without really trying. Donations will increase. It’s a wonderful way to passively ask for donations.

Your cause will sign up more volunteers. You’ll be further inspired to write. You’ll make new, valuable connections.

Get started blogging now!