If your nonprofit still doesn’t have a blog, you might want to consider getting one.
We hear a lot about blogs. They are certainly a trendy and popular topic of discussion. Some professionals believe blogs are what you should be focusing on as a nonprofit, while some believe they take too much time to maintain. So it’s only natural that it can be hard for nonprofits to decide whether or not to include blogging into their marketing strategy.
Some nonprofit professionals even regard blogs as somewhat of a nuisance rather than as a valuable asset.
We get it! Working at a nonprofit is already more than a full-time job. When operating on shoestring budgets to solve large-scale social problems, writing blog posts can seem like a time-waster or as the least important thing to do in a long list of to-dos.
However, blogs are an almost essential marketing tool when it comes to spreading knowledge of your work and the issues you prioritize to potential supporters and donors.
Let’s take a look at the concrete benefits that a nonprofit can hope to gain from incorporating a blog into their marketing strategy.
Benefits of Having a Nonprofit Blog
1. Blogs Help Drive Visitors Through Search
Blogs are essentially websites, and they help drive visitors through search. So, how come blogs improve your search engine ranking? First of all, blogs have more pages for search engines to crawl and index, which leads to a better ranking.
Secondly, your blog is probably updated much more frequently than your website. Pages that are updated more frequently rank higher on Google.
In order to capitalize on this, use your blog to explore topics that are relevant to your nonprofit and that potential supporters might be searching for on Google. Share your news, campaigns, and advice through keyword rankings.
2. Blogs Help You Build Influence And Authority
Blogging is the safest and most effective way to stand out from the crowd and to assert your nonprofit as a leader in the industry.
It’s very likely that there are other organizations that have a mission very similar to yours. A blog can be a great way for you to stand out since you can prove to your supporters that you know what you’re talking about.
When your nonprofit has a blog, this also increases credibility among your audience. With relevant and engaging content, it becomes easier to build heightened authority and influence within your specific area of work.
3. Blogs Start Conversations
Since blogs allow you to elaborate on a topic of interest for your organization in more details (compared to your newsletter or social media posts), writing blog posts can lead to the exchange of ideas with your audience.
This can happen in many different ways: people leaving comments on your blog, sharing your blog content through social media channels, contacting you to follow up on a topic you discussed on your blog, signing up for your email newsletter as a result of a blog post, coming to an event or volunteering after reading your blog.
Blogs also build communities because they allow people with similar interests and passions to connect around causes they all care about.
4. Blogs Increase Trust With Your Audience
Trust is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not easily earned, but it’s easily lost.
In terms of trust in nonprofit organizations, among the adult (18 years or older) general population, the trust percentage dropped nine points from 58 percent in 2017 to 49 percent in 2018. In terms of just the informed public (ages 25-64, college educated, significant media consumption, and in top 25% of household income), trust in nonprofits dropped even more – 22 points – from 73 percent in 2017 to 51 percent in 2018. (Edelman Trust Barometer)
Blogs help build and maintain trust by humanizing your nonprofit and adding a personal touch. They also showcase stories of impact and consistently offer great value to readers.
5. Blogs Can Fuel Your Social Media Efforts
Even if you create great, high-quality content on your blog, it won’t matter if no one hears about it. You need to promote your content, and the best way to do it is by optimizing it for social media sharing.
Include great images, add social sharing buttons, write tweetable snippets, and have a social call to action.
Let your readers promote your content for you. This not only helps build social proof but allows both your blog and your social media reach to grow.
6. Blogs Are Economical.
Blogging is one of the most economical and cost-effective marketing tools.
Excluding the cost of overhead, it’s possible that you go without incurring other costs, especially with so many free or economical blog hosting platforms and tools out there.
Blogs easily command attention and help you market your ideas to a wide audience. They can link to other content, programs, or your website. Every blog post can have a different call to action.
7. Blogs Are a Great Storytelling Tool.
Storytelling is one of the most powerful techniques to get your audience to notice you and engage with you. As humans, we are hardwired to listen to, remember, and get captivated by stories.
Although you can share stories almost everywhere – on your social media, by sharing videos, or short testimonials on your website – the format of a blog lends itself beautifully to storytelling.
Chances are you have many great stories of your social impact that can’t all possibly be shared on your website. A blog is a great places to share those – whether coming from your beneficiaries, your volunteers, and even your staff members or other stakeholders.