Laura Iancu is a guest contributor for Nonprofit Hub and a passionate volunteer who loves being involved in social and educational projects. She currently tries to bring NPOs around the world closer to technology through 123ContactForm as their PR Specialist.
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The importance of a blog was a trending topic for NPOs in 2013, and will remain an important matter in 2014 as well. Seems like many nonprofits fail to see the actual importance of a blog and don’t have the time to invest in it. All the efforts you make to create and maintain a good blog are often translated with donation growth. “Why?” you ask. Well, with a good strategy in place your blog can be a valid communication channel with your supporters and especially with present and future donors.
It is a medium where you have absolute control over the message you send to the outside public. In the business sector, according to Social Media Today, 77% of internet users read blogs, but nonprofits are still skeptical about this.
Consequently, we try to seek new ways to present a blog for a nonprofit. For example, have you ever considered it can be a wonderful addition to steward your donors? There are many cases to use a blog as a mean of expressing gratitude and praise your supporters.
Post Updates From Your Projects
Most people who are involved in charity giving and willing to donate, actually expect to see the finality of their actions. Moreover, maybe one of the reasons that convinced them to chose your nonprofit and your cause is the story behind it. So you have all the reasons to post regular updates and let them know how the adventure unfolds. You’ll keep them closer to you and your actions, eager to find out new results.
It is also a great way to transform one time donors into regular donors. Because a story can tie a relation and bring people closer, it is in our nature to emphasize and a sneak-peak behind the scene always makes us feel part of the story. Storytelling is not an easy job and finding the right angle might come difficult sometimes, but keep in mind that at the end you will get great results. There already are a few nonprofits which manage this with grace—see their story and get inspired.
Discuss Changes or Improvements
When you think about changing something inside your blog or even about a new theme for the next charity gala, you might benefit from having some insight over what your stakeholders want, what they like the most and what they care about. Your blog is a good way to ask them all these things. With the help of a dedicated tool you can generate different kinds of polls and surveys to use for your blog. It is a known practice to stimulate engagement and learn about your audience. Not to mention that you can create cool infographics and posts by analyzing the results. Polls and surveys from simple to really complicated researches, they all help you grow and find the right path to follow to communicate and address your donors while making them feel important for your organization.
Answer Questions
After filtering the spam from your comments section, make sure you interact with your users and answer all their questions. If you regularly receive relevant questions either on your blog or your social media pages, it might be a good idea to start a Q&A section. This can be included in your website or published as a new category on your blog where you periodically post articles that answer certain questions. Being open about what you do and how you do it can determine your audience to trust your organization and make donors understand their contribution.
Share the Enthusiasm
From time to time you will encounter among your donors people who truly identify with your cause. This kind of true supporters often tend to share their story with you and how your cause appeals to them, or even better, how it helped them in certain situations. As a matter of content for your blog these kind of contributions are diamonds. So make sure you talk to your donors and share their story with other donors. You’ll discover a community of people that believe in your strengths and will encourage you along the way. And more importantly you can open new perspectives to gain major or regular donors.
So before you decide that your organization doesn’t need a blog, make sure you have thought about it from all the possible angles. Because although it requires commitment and perseverance, it is a wonderful opportunity to steward your donors and expand your communication reach.
What made you start blogging? Or what keeps you from doing it? We’d like to hear all about it in the comments below.
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Laura Iancu is a passionate volunteer who loves being involved in social and educational projects. She currently tries to bring NPOs around the world closer to technology through 123ContactForm, an online form an survey builder. She also shares her experience on npEngage and Edudemic. Find her on Google+ and Twitter.
