Why Your Nonprofit Needs Blog Posts

Courtesy of Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Does your nonprofit website include blog posts? As the year winds down, you may are probably setting goals for the new year. While the list of tasks to complete before the holidays grows, you’re probably also checking in on the success of your marketing efforts this year. Are there gaps in your marketing plan that need to be filled? 

If you have stumbled upon some content and engagement holes, this is where a blog steps in. If your nonprofit doesn’t have blog posts with content that is regularly updated, the new year is a fantastic time to kick off that project. There are multiple reasons why your nonprofit needs a blog — statistically, blogs are one of three popular types of media that content strategists build marketing plans around. 

What content should your nonprofit blog posts include? 

While a blog takes time to maintain, it can be an essential facet of a marketing plan. Blog posts don’t have to be thousands of words long, or even full of hard-hitting content. A nonprofit blog is simply giving your target audiences a deeper understanding of your organization: a new perspective for them may encourage them to participate or make a donation. 

If you’re stuck on what content to schedule in your editorial calendar, here are some ideas: 

  • Non-profit breaking news (i.e: new hires to your team, upcoming organization events, etc.) 
  • Fundraising campaign information
  • Non-profit mission/goals progress and achievements
  • Campaign updates and recaps
  • Profiling team members or testimonials from volunteers
  • How donors and volunteers make a direct positive impact on your work
  • Thanking donors or volunteers for their work

There’s plenty of room to dig around and get creative when developing blog content. Having a blog will provide your nonprofit with several benefits, including: 

Nonprofit blog posts promote deeper connections 

Your website copywriting handles the “About” of your organization: the “Who, What, When, Where, Why” that makes up your nonprofit. 

A blog, however, gives you an opportunity to dive into the details that make up that “About” page. Why, exactly, are you passionate about providing children with books? Or what inspired your nonprofit to open three food shelters in the past year? The potential of the impactful stories you could share is incredible. These stories give your readers a deeper inside look into your organization and there’s a stronger chance they’ll understand your “why” on a deeper level, thus resulting in deeper connections and sparked passion that may encourage readers to participate in your nonprofit’s mission. 

Blogs give you control of your story 

When you regularly post to a blog, you gain more control of the story you’re trying to tell. You control the amount of content published around a campaign, concept, company value, etc., and you control how the information is communicated. What’s the narrative of the information you’re sharing? With a blog, you can decide how to tell your story in deeper detail than an email blast, newsletter, or a quick elevator pitch. Blogs are great for increasing brand awareness!

Putting out nonprofit blog posts that explain your newest campaign or share campaign-related updates will remove confusion and misinformation. It also gives you credibility in your industry; it shows donors and your audiences that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy as a nonprofit. 

A blog is great for SEO 

Blogging is a boost for your nonprofit website’s SEO because your website will be positioned in search engine results as a higher, more relevant answer to your audience’s questions. For example, if you conduct keyword research and find that “nonprofit donation opportunity” is a trending keyword topic, you can plug that phrase into your blog content so the search engines capture those keywords and rank your content higher in searches. In short, your website traffic will increase because of the increased hits on search engines, thanks to your blog content.

To get traffic to your website, your nonprofit blog posts must be optimized for SEO. The blogging industry is more competitive than ever, in the sense that you are competing against all other blogs and facets of social media and the internet for your reader’s attention. There’s millions of pieces of content online, and there’s a certain way to frame a blog post to effectively capture your audience’s attention. 

To stand out in the crowd and get better hits on search engines like Google, there are several strategies like writing a meta description, linking to other pages, plugging in keywords and adding alt text that can optimize your blog posts for SEO. Be careful to pay attention to common mistakes that can negatively affect your SEO. For example, make sure your blog post is mobile responsive, loads quickly, your “dwell” time (how long a reader stays on the page) matches the length of your content, visuals load quickly, the list goes on to ensure your blog post is optimized. 

Contact Us Today

Need help creating a blog for your nonprofit website? Look no further. We can help you design and build a blog page for your website that not only provides your communities with regular content, but tells your nonprofit’s story. 

Contact us today for a FREE 15-minute consultation to achieve the website of your dreams in the new year.