I look at a lot of nonprofit websites, Facebook pages and
other online communication mediums while working on messaging or developing a
grant narrative for clients. About half of them have a blog. After reading
them, I sometimes wonder if they truly understand their audience, or the
purpose of the blog
.
Business-related blogs today are not about posting a note
about an up-coming event or a notice of a sale. There are too many short-form
ways to communicate to use a blog for that reason.
Blogs today are a way to provide a way to keep customers or
in the case of nonprofits, donors and supporters, interested in supporting your
organization and recruit new supporters.
To do that you need to provide something that takes more
than three seconds to read, and while there is an SEO (search engine
optimization) element, good blogs are
more than that.
Savvy for-profit businesses know that a good blog engages,
educates and informs as well as selling something. The blog should integrate
with another facet of the business.
For instance, a business selling safety equipment for homes might
link to their blog from their product description page like this:
"Item Description: Home fire alarm. Do you know how long you have to escape a
residential fire? Check out our blog(link here) to see how long
you can safely stay in your house when a fire starts."
The blog post then goes into detail about how long you can
safely stay in a burning room, why and how to escape and offers a link back
to the product ordering page.
The blog post does two things. First it provides factual information
that makes the purchase of the item they are selling seem imperative. Second, it keeps the business name connected
to the customer in a very personal way.
Nonprofit blogs usually don't seem to be written for the
right reasons or the right audience.
I recently checked out a nonprofit blog for an organization
that provides a type of monetary assistance for medical needs. The last few
posts were all about how this or that legislation affected this organization,
and it contained a lot of industry jargon and acronyms that only a health
care-savvy insider would understand. Yet, on their SM page they were
complaining that they were having trouble getting their message out. Other than
the URL, the nonprofit name, mission and
program title wasn't mentioned in the blog.
The audience I would think they would be interested in is
one that can use their help or support their mission, but they seemed to be
writing to effect some sort of political change at best, or just complaining
to the world in general at worst.
Perhaps a more useful approach would be to engage donors by
explaining how their support could provide X dollars for Y medicines or medical
devices. Or, they could engage their
potential beneficiaries by offering information on support groups that they
work with to reduce medical costs, or show how much their help had increased
access to care or equipment. Even better, they could have done the occasional
in-depth feature post about a person they had helped.
The point is, there was no reason for someone to engage with
them vs.some other nonprofit.
If I was a donor looking for background on them, I might
worry that my contribution would be used to lobby for something, or that the
organization was about to go under because of the legislative pitfalls they
described. That's not a good message to send.
Good blogs bring good results. Think about what outcome you
want your blog to have, and write it for the right audience. Don't assume that
they know all about you. Offer them some reason to remember you, and to
connect with you regularly.
Don't be afraid to
have some length to the posting if the topic warrants it. Most of the blog
posts I write for clients are from 350 to 800 words. If you'd like a free review of your blog, send
me an email. Let's make your blog a truly effective
outreach medium.
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