I met with a client this week who told me that she is having trouble focusing on topics for their nonprofit blog. She asked me “what should I be blogging about?” She is a former marketing writer, and in her own words “can write about anything,” but isn’t sure whether her nonprofit’s blog posts are relevant. I asked her three simple questions: Who is your audience? Why are they coming to your blog? What do you want them to do? Inspired by this exchange, I created a small presentation embedded here entitled: Blogging IS a Strategy. Blogging should be relevant, targeted and strategic for your organization, and should move your organization closer towards meeting its goals. It should be written for your stakeholders, but also provide relevant information that attracts new … Continue Reading
New Links
Some recent additions to our Resource library: The Role of Email in Your Communications Mix Nonprofits have a lot of choices when it comes to communications - from direct mail, to websites, to social networking sites and more. With Spam on the rise and open rates down, what role should email play in a successful communications strategy - and when should nonprofits choose to use it? Spam Reports Aren’t All Bad News No one who follows the rules and best practices of permission-based email marketing wants to get branded as a spammer. However, sometimes even the most reputable, best-intentioned businesses and organizations can send email communications that trigger spam reports. 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site Before we go too far, let me start by saying, … Continue Reading
Blog Metrics: Measure the Conversation
What is the best measurement for a successful blog? Is it number of unique visitors, returning visitors, page views, incoming links, or Technorati ranking? Do any one of these typical measurement tools by themselves tells us what we need to know: who is engaged? Non-profit organizations want to engage stakeholders through social media and ideally move them to act on their behalf. We know that, without engagement, people are not moved to act. Blogs are a particularly challenging platform for creating engagement. It’s easy to passively read a blog. How do you know if you’ve engaged? Three metrics for measuring “blog conversation” are: number of unique engaged readers, average number of engaged readers per blog post, and number of posts that engaged readers in blog conversations. … Continue Reading
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