With over one hundred million blogs in cyberspace, blogging has become a powerful communications tool, giving bloggers the ability to bypass traditional media and bring its message directly to readers.
According to Kivi Leroux Miller, president of NonprofitMarktingGuide.com, blogging “brings the people behind the organization out front and center and lets supporters make more personal connections with the staff, creating a sense of community.” It can also boost your organization’s search engine rankings. Here Miller shares some tips on blogging.
- Do your research. Miller suggests reading lots of other blogs for and by nonprofits before you get started. That way you’ll start to see what others are blogging about and get a feel for the writing style they use. She recommends “[looking] for nonprofit blogs in three places: Alltop.com (Nonprofit and Good categories); the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Give and Take blogroll and the Nonprofit Blog Exchange.”
- Commit to posting on a regular basis. “Blogging does take time to do well,” according to Miller, who suggests updating blogs a few times per week. Posting regularly will ensure that your blog has lots of new content for readers and for search engines, which favor regularly updated sites instead of static ones. But remember that a blog post doesn’t have to be a fully developed essay. According to Miller, “it’s OK to do a post that’s just a sentence or two.”
- Position your blog strategically. The nature of your blog will depend on your organization’s mission and goals. “Blogging needs to be part of a larger communications strategy,” explains Miller. “Who do you need to connect with and what kind of information do they want from you? What do you want to be known for within your professional universe? Answering strategic questions like these will help you determine what your blog should be about.”
- Include lots of useful links. As Miller points out, “it’s very easy to connect your blog with other social media and your website. Make sure everything is linked together.” This helps drive traffic to your blog and creates a sense of continuity in your online messaging. You should also link to partner organizations and other helpful resources. “Ask others who blog on similar topics to include you in their blogrolls (link lists) and include them in yours,” adds Miller.
- Repurpose content for other materials. According to Miller, “if you think creatively about your larger content creation strategy, which includes your website, your newsletters, and press releases, you can repurpose much of what you put on the blog, making what you write do double or triple time.” You can use the blog to explore topics for an upcoming newsletter article or “if you’re thinking of a particular issue, you might blog on them a little a bit at a time,” combining several posts into “a full blown newsletter article.”
Remember, blogs are usually “more conversational and more casual than traditional formal writing,” according to Kivi. By following these tips and tailoring the writing style to the web, your blog will become an effective communications tool for your organization’s mission.
Tags: blogging, communications strategy, online communcation
