Why nonprofits need to tell their stories by creating new content

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, journalists, general public.

I‘ve been to dozens of nonprofits’ offices, but there’s a phrase I’ve never heard uttered even once: content marketing.

Sounds kind of mysterious, doesn’t it? But when you strip it down to its essence, content marketing is just a way for organizations to tell their stories.

I was interviewed, along with marketer Greg Jordan, about content marketing for nonprofits at a new podcast from the Content Marketing Examiner moderated by publisher Martin van der Roest. Here’s our conversation:

To get discovered online, you must create fresh content

Some highlights from the podcast:

• Don’t be put off by the term “content marketing.” The marketing landscape has evolved with the realization that all nonprofits and businesses are media entities now. If you have a nonprofit or business with an online presence, guess what? You’re a media publisher. For people to find you through search, you have to create content. The webinars I give for CharityHowTo cover search engine marketing in part and explain why keywords are critical to your nonprofit or business.

• Content comes in many forms, from blog posts and Facebook updates to Pinterest pins and Twitter tweets (I’ve never liked the term “micro-blogging” so won’t use it here).

• Don’t get hung up on crafting perfect content. Don’t get frozen by writer’s block. As my partner John Haydon likes to say, Done beats perfect.

• Greg Jordan made an important point: Before you begin, start with identifying your business goals. Write them down, make them something that’s attainable, realistic and worth achieving. And measure them, little by little.

• I suggested trying to find individuals who represent your cause or brand. Ask if they’d be willing to share their stories. Have someone inside your organization, or a contractor, come in and capture those stories on video, on audio or in text. By bringing your story down to the individual level, you make it universal.

• Consider asking people in different parts of your organization, in a respectful way, whether they’d be interested in sharing their skills and passions. Do they blog in their off-hours? Do they shoot photos or video on the weekend? Are they willing to attend an event you’re putting on to help capture it and share it in social media?

• Greg reminded us that it’s not just about creating your own content. It’s about sharing others’ content and updates.

What would you add about storytelling or content marketing for organizations?

Related articles on Socialbrite

• 8 great examples of nonprofit storytelling
• 10 secrets to video storytelling success
• Step-by-step guide to creating a media strategy
• Complete guide to creating a video project
• How to find amazing, powerful stories for your nonprofit video
• How nonprofits should be using visual storytelling
• How to create high-quality Web video interviews
• Visual storytelling checklist

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Get your Facebook page buzzing by using these tactics

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, Facebook administrators.

If you’re like most busy nonprofit professionals, you make your best effort to have an organized content strategy on Facebook. Still, there are times when you get buried with other projects and simply have no idea what to post on your Facebook page.

Here are 19 quick Facebook page post ideas that you can use right now to get your page buzzing.

1. Ask a fill-in-the-blank question about the specific area of your cause. Begin the prompt with “Fill in the Blank:”
2. Ask a multiple-choice question related to a specific area of your cause. Begin the update with “Quick Poll” and then write the choices on separate lines (A, B, C).
3. Cap that! Ask fans to caption a photo. Post an unusual photo (that has to do with your cause) and ask your Facebook fans to come up with a caption. Tell them that the best answer wins an Einstein award.
4. Play the elephant game. Crop a small section from a photo, post it on your page and ask fans to guess what it is. For example, a dog shelter can post a picture of the dogs ear and ask fans to guess what breed the dog it is.
5. Let Google Analytics help you. Post a picture from your one of your top viewed Web pages and post it with a comment or excerpt from the article.
6. Let aliens abduct your page. The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta did a show that involved a tiny alien. In December they dressed it up as Santa and shared it on their page.



7. Isn’t that Pinteresting? Post a picture from one of your Pinterest boards that’s received the most repins. For inspiration, see what Survival for Blondes does.
8. Play and edge. Ask a question about a topic where people have strong opinions one way or the other. For example, “Yes or No: Do you think we should ban assault rifles in the United States?
9. Supporter love. Post a picture of one of your top volunteers in action and share something really great that he or she did recently.
10. Let locals know that you care. If you notice a news article about a tragedy in a specific city, target an update to that location letting those fans know that your organization cares.
11. Post a fun fact related to your cause. “Did you know that…?”
12. Share a post from George Takei’s page. You won’t go wrong there, unless your organization leans more conservative.
13. What the FAQ? Post the answer to the most common question you get asked at events.
14. Ask your supporters for ideas. If you have an event coming up, ask your Facebook fans what they’d like to see to make it memorable, different and amazing.
15. Share your work life. Snap a quick picture of a peculiar item in your office and share it on Facebook with a comment. Or take a picture of staff doing cool and interesting things.
16. Share a post from a partner page. Your sponsors spend a lot of resources to support your nonprofit. Make a point of regularly promoting their agenda to your fans.
17. Try conditional sharing. Post a compelling photo related your cause and ask people to share if they’ve been affected by the same issue.
18. Learn from the best. Post a similar updates to one of the top ones from your competitors.
19. Steal success. Oscar Wilde said, “talent borrows, genius steals.” An example Jeremy from The Dundee Hills Winegrowers Association shared is the someecards ecards site. If you see one that is already getting a ton of likes and shares, go ahead and post it as your own (with proper credit).

Bonus: Here are 16 ideas to get more comments on your Facebook page using text.

Do you have a creative example of a Facebook update that worked for your nonprofit’s Facebook page? Don’t be shy — share your example below!

Related

• 16 ways to get more comments on your Facebook Page (Socialbrite)

• 27 ways to increase engagement on your Facebook page (Socialbrite)

• Facebook tools and tutorials (Socialbrite)

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How to get your content noticed in a sea of information

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, businesses, brands, bloggers, Web publishers, marketing professionals, educators, individuals.

Guest post by Debra Berger
Founder, The Academic Support Link

In 2011, people are tweeting 200 million times daily, reports TechCrunch. With that kind of competition, your target audience can jump ship before you can say “nanosecond” (1 billionth of a second). What’s going to keep them glued to your information and coming back for more?

Here are five tips on making a long-lasting impression:

1Energize your copy with action verbs (you learned about them in fourth grade)
Social media writing is all about descriptive verbs: “Google,” “share,” and “recommend” – you get the point. Power up your information by beginning sentences/tweets/postings with vibrant verbs and steer clear of the dull ones: is, are, am, etc.

2Cut content to the core
Clarity and conciseness is your goal. If you have ready-made copy, try putting it into bullet points. It’s amazing how many words you can eliminate (by doing this – I cut these last words. Do you miss them?). To craft concise content, you can also imagine that you’re writing an outline.

3Create engaging, quality copy that educates
You’ve probably heard this before, and you’re thinking, “How?” One way is to scan reports, e-newsletters, and other information for memorable statistics that create a buzz. Here’s an example: “Shocking unemployment rate for veterans at 14.3% – they deserve better.” However, don’t make the mistake of writing news headlines – you’re the expert here.

4Ensure that your information is easily accessible
If readers have to use your search engine to find what they need, they’ll quickly give up and go elsewhere. This also includes social media icons. Center them at the top and bottom of your website – the more the merrier.

5Reread your information for errors
The two minutes you take to check for spelling and grammar errors and general readability is well worth the effort. If you’re a bit rusty on proper English language use, it might be time for a quick review. Remember, the quality of your information is a reflection on you and your organization’s brand.

How will you spice up your organization’s social media content?

The post 5 tips on writing knockout social media content appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, cause organizations, businesses, brands, social media managers, Web publishers, bloggers, individuals.

Lately, I’ve been using Google Plus as a way to find, collect and create content.

Here are some examples of what I’ve been doing — I’d love to hear your thoughts on these uses for Google Plus.

Search

The search features in Google Plus are extremely robust. You can search public posts, posts shared with you, personal profiles (the parts that are public or shared with you), Pages and Sparks.

You can even use Google’s Search Operators when searching Google Plus. This allows you to fine-tune the results and save time.

When you do a search on Google Plus, you can also save the search in your left sidebar, under “What’s Hot.”

Discover

A common way to use Circles is to categorize people you follow based on their area of expertise. I have a circle that includes nonprofit techies, where I’ve discovered useful articles, ideas and discussions.

What makes using Circles different from using search is that Circles allows for off-topic discoveries that could never happen with “pre-meditated” searches.

Collect

When we think of Google Circles, we normally view them as a tool to organize people. But why not create circles for storing content that you’ve discovered on Google Plus?

You can do this by creating a circle and adding only you to this circle. When you do this, anything that you share with this circle will only be seen by you. This stream is located under your profile image with all of your other circle streams.

Create

When you create a private circle as described immediately above, you can add notes, links and even draft ideas for your content piece. Remember that no one can see any of this because you’ve shared the circle with yourself (you also don’t need to lock the post).

How have you been using Google Plus for creating content?

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