Blogging is an important part of your organization’s online presence. The upside is that new content posted consistently to your website is one of the things Google is looking for when ranking your page (we recommend a new 300-500-word blog post two to three times each week). It can easily be incorporated into other social media planning you do with your team each month and your editorial calendar. At a loss for ideas on what to write each week? Post photos and a quick summary of your last donation drive, profile a donor who has just made a special gift or let your readers know about another organization collaborating with yours to create bigger impact.
Still not sure where to get started? Reading Blog, Inc.: Blogging for Passion, Profit, and to Create Community by Joy Deangdeelert Cho could be the right tool to help you get started. Though the book’s audience is more targeted to solo bloggers who are trying to earn income by monetizing their blogs and sharing their ideas online, the advice is sound and can be easily adapted to a team that want to use a blog as another way to reach their audience. Included are several things that lend itself specifically to how nonprofits can use blogs: collaborative blogging (making several team members responsible for the content rather than just one person), notifying individuals or other organizations you mention on the blog so they can share the links with their networks too (widening your reach) and just sharing the day-to-day effort the people behind your operation put behind your cause.
Your organization’s blog can easily marry with the social media presence you already have. Integrate your blog with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through a streamlining platform like Hootsuite so your audience there is informed each time you have a new post up.
It’s another way to tell your organization’s story.