6 Steps to Devise an Effective Content Strategy for Your Nonprofit

Content is king. So marketers say. An effective content strategy for nonprofits of every type and category can be highly successful at receiving donations by reaching people eager to help. Content helps you build expertise and authority in your niche, allows you to share news and tell stories to engage your audience, and builds new supporters by appearing in the search engines for relevant search terms.

Why is Content Important for Nonprofit Organizations?

More than any other organization, marketing for nonprofits is about building trust. Your donors and supporters care deeply about your cause and must trust that you are doing important work worthy of their donations. Your content allows you to talk directly to your supporters in an authentic way where you can demonstrate the work you are doing at every opportunity.

At a time when trust in charitable organizations is yet to recover to pre-2014 levels and recessions have hit countries due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it's never been more important to have a robust marketing strategy that involves constantly creating high-quality content that satisfies your current supporters and builds new ones.

Creating a content strategy that will work effectively for your nonprofit is the first step toward creating great and consistent content. These six simple steps and some valuable tips will help you get started.

Step 1: User Personas

Before creating content mindlessly, you and your whole team must understand what your average supporter is like. This involves looking into demographic and behavioral information that you can access from the data you have on your current supporters. Take a look at the following:

• Who engages with your social media content?
• If you have a mailing list already, who all signed up for it?
• Who has visited your website (using Google Analytics)?
• Which supporters have made regular or large donations?
• Have your supporters organized fundraising events in aid of your organization? If yes, then who are they?

Demographics: Are there more male or female supporters? What age are they? Where do they live? What's their education level?

Behavioral: What are their interests? Which news and media channels do they consume the most? What device do they most frequently use to engage with content?

These questions will determine the marketing channels you use and the content you create. Good donor management software like Donorbox helps you filter donor records effectively based on their donation frequency, number of donations, donation amounts, location, and time frame. It can be an added advantage in case you're looking for in-depth data regarding the donating nature of your donors, as well as a way to improve engagement.

Step 2: Decide on the Right Social Channels

Social media is a powerful tool for nonprofits to connect with their audience. However, not all social media platforms may be suitable for your organization. Here are some considerations for the most popular platforms:

Instagram: Getting visual

Instagram generally has a younger audience, so it is a wise choice if your supporters fit into a younger demographic. It is the best social media for visual content, posting photographic or video content. If you are able to capture lots of this type of content (which you should), then you should be using Instagram. The Instagram stories feature, where posts are shown for just 24 hours, allows you to give snappy and regular updates.

Twitter: Good news source

Twitter is an excellent place to follow accounts related to your organization for the latest news in your niche. You can also contribute your work to the conversation and expand your network. Twitter is a great place to network as well as build your audience.

Facebook: Getting personal

Many people declare Facebook dead, but the data says otherwise. Facebook is worth investing in. It offers a variety of tools, such as the ability to collect reviews and set up events and groups – all of which can be incredibly useful for nonprofits.

Step 3: Have a Website with Great Content

In this day and age, you need a website – and today, it's much easier than it used to be. There are plenty of easy and low-cost website builders to choose from. Your website needs information about you, contact details, and content about your cause and work. That's where blogging comes in.

Having a blog, posting regular articles, and updating old ones are essential. But with over 600 billion blog posts out there, breaking through the noise with your blog can be tough. You can take a few steps to ensure your audience and Google love your blog content.

1. What do your donors want to know?

As well as appealing to Google's algorithm, more importantly, you need to think about your donors. What are their frequently asked questions? What content have they engaged with the most on social media? Use this information to come up with content ideas to satisfy their needs.

2. Educate people on your cause

Your blog is a great place to inform and update your supporters on your progress and general information about the cause you are supporting. You can use Reddit to highlight queries people ask on different topics, use Ask the Public, which gives you data on frequently asked questions, and look on your social media for frequent queries.

3. Keyword research

Doing keyword research allows you to find low-competition phrases that have high search volume – in other words, the low-hanging fruit. Put simply, these are phrases that a lot of people are typing in that don't bring up hundreds of resources already. You'll need to use a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or free tools like Ubersuggest for this.

4. Content tips

• Don't write thin content: thin content has little-to-no value to the user. It doesn't delve into a topic or offer enough helpful information. Google doesn't like it, and your users won't either. Ensure your content offers enough depth around a topic but is broken down with subheadings so it is digestible.
• Keep content snappy: people often scan pages rather than read them line-by-line when reading online. That's why using short sentences and breaking down paragraphs is important to make this scanning for information more accessible.
• Vary it up – use video and imagery: getting messages or stories across by video is very effective. Research has found we retain 90% of what we see via video compared to just 10% by text, so it is well worth using video to show your work to supporters.

Step 4: Use Videos and Podcasts

Podcasts have seen a boom in popularity over the past few years – it is expected that by 2025, 125 million will listen to podcasts at least once a month. The benefit of podcasts is they are easy to create – all you need is a podcasting microphone and some sound recording software. Many free or low-cost tools exist, such as Garageband, Audacity, and Studio One. You can interview guest speakers in your niche and discuss topics that interest your audience. If you plan to focus on interview podcasts, Podcastle is another great tool for recording remotely. You can record in high-quality, host up to 9 guests, get a separate track for each, and edit your audio files into a publication-ready podcast online.

YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google and a great way to show impact, educate people, and tell stories about your cause, so you'd be making a mistake not to consider video in your content strategy. In fact, with YouTube, you can collect online donations too.

Step 5: Press Strategy

Nonprofit organizations need clout to build donors. Being cited and referenced in relevant publications in your niche helps build trust and credibility for the organization. Gaining press means building relationships and wowing journalists with your press releases. Working with an external agency or consultant who has built up relationships in such an industry over time may be worthwhile unless you are particularly competent. But you can start by building press lists of relevant people in your niche. You can find people on websites' 'About' pages, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Segment your press list into top-tier (larger publications), mid-tier, and low-tier. The way you contact each tier will differ. Anywhere you can personalize your emails is worth doing – this helps cement relationships and shows publications you've done your research.

Step 6: Email Strategy

Emails have always held a remarkable position in content marketing strategies. With time, it has not lost its shine but only emerged with newer and trendier techniques and tools. Let's see how email strategies can help you ace nonprofit content marketing.

Some say email mailing lists are irrelevant and ineffective. But the data says otherwise. Email is still one of the most direct ways of marketing to people who have expressed an interest in your organization. You should integrate your email provider with your database, donor management platform, or CRM. This allows you to keep up-to-date data on supporters that can be accessed anywhere. You can gain subscribers by having a sign-up form on your website that is easy to find and fill in and can be promoted on social media.

Here are some more tips to maximize email marketing:

1. Aim for quality over quantity
2. Personalize wherever possible – their name as the bare minimum
3. Thank your donors for their support in every Email
4. Deliver news updates/ show them where their money is going
5. Include a CTA at the end
6. Never add anyone without asking permission

Reddit can be a great place to discover what discussions are happening in your niche. Find relevant subreddits and look at repeat topics and what's being said about them. This can be useful in coming up with blog topics.

Marketing nonprofits isn't accessible, particularly when many are stretched for staff and resources. But in the long run, strong marketing will help build awareness and increase support for your organization. Having a solid plan focused on the marketing priorities and with your audience in mind is essential if you want to stand out and communicate the importance of your work.

Read more about how nonprofits can leverage digital technology on our website here?https://www.digitalfornonprofits.com/