#nonprofit

Top 10 Reasons Every Nonprofit Should Have a Blog

Part of the Series “Be a Social Media Expert Series” here.

When you start and run a nonprofit, you’ve just signed up to become the best storyteller in history. If there is anything you need to do well, it is to develop your story and then tell it over and over and over again. See http://oceangrand.org/a-simple-fundraising-formula/ for a step-by-step on how to develop and tell your story. Telling your story needs to happen in all kinds of ways, shapes and forms and in this article I am going to explain why your nonprofit should have a blog and be telling your story on it. Read on and I will break this complicated subject down into 10 bite-sized pieces.

Blogs and Web Sites

Blogs are not much different than web sites anymore except for a couple of critical differences. Web sites contain mostly “static” information which is information that you or a webmaster puts on the site, but once there, rarely changes. It resembles a brochure on the web more than anything. On the other hand, a blog has pages also, but the “blog page” (like what you are reading here) has ongoing posts or stories that are easily changed and updated. The blog gives you the ability to quickly post new information without needing the help of a webmaster. The other pages on a blog can also easily be changed. So in essence a blog is a web site with multiple pages that are easily changed with the addition of an area that has ongoing new information posted to it. It much better resembles an effort to tell an ongoing story. There are a lot of added benefits to having a blog rather than a static web site, that I will outline 10 reasons below, and then take you through the 10 reasons to set up a blog for your own nonprofit.

Blogging Benefits

I get asked a lot if every nonprofit should have a blog and I personally believe they should. Every nonprofit understands the benefits of having a newsletter whether it is one you design, print and mail or one that you put together on the web and send out in an HTML email. A blog, if done well, can serve as the newsletter for your nonprofit with constant updates, success stories, pictures, and needs that are accessible by more people in more ways. When I say accessible in more ways, I am referring to RSS and email subscriptions which we will cover below.

Benefits of a Blog For Your NonProfit

1. Easy to Update

   Blogs are much easier and quicker to update for the average person. A new article or change can be updated and be live on the web as fast as you can type and push the publish button. This gets your most relevant information to the web and in front of the world quicker than any other method. No more static web pages; instead, every page on your site will be relevant and up-to-date with the latest information about your organization.

2. Blogs Increase the Traffic

   Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of getting your web site or blog ranking better in search engines like Google. Many blogs are automatically better optimized for search engines, which can take a lot of guesswork out of trying to get your web site closer to the top of web search engines. More traffic equals more people who know and are involved in your nonprofit work.

3. 

   RSS and Email Subscriptions

   Getting your message out in multiple formats helps people subscribe to your constant updates easier and in the format they prefer to read them. Blogs can instantly give you multiple ways to deliver your message without you doing any other work. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way that many prefer to read information from the web because it allows them to subscribe and see the information as soon as it is updated.

4. Email Subscriptions

   A blog makes it easy for people to subscribe by email to your updates and is very easy to set up. By updating a blog you are in essence writing a constantly updating newsletter that is live and accessible to anyone at anytime. Unlike a printed newsletter that only gets published and mailed every couple weeks or once a month, your blog is always up-to-date and gives people the ability to read the stories and info in bite-sized chunks. Images are also easy to share with people. RSS and email subscriptions have definite advantages for getting your supporters information and are easy to set up if you use a blog.

5. Help You Build the Relationships

   There is no substitute for building personal relationships with volunteers, board members, donors, grant makers and anyone that is interested in your nonprofit. Like in a previous article http://oceangrand.org/building-nonprofit-relationships-equals-success/,the ability to build relationships is something that we are born with; however, many times while growing up we forget the fundamentals. Relationships are the life-blood for your nonprofit and to dismiss them as unnecessary is a fatal mistake. A blog is more of a relationship builder and can be an ongoing conversation with those that are involved in your nonprofit. Building relationships is much easier on a blog than a web site and people will feel more connected to you.

6. Gives You Feed Back

   Blogs are more like conversations because they have an area where people can comment on each article or post. This gives followers the ability to be a part of a conversation about your information, projects and fundraising. Blogs give you an automatic feedback mechanism through these comments and anyone can subscribe to the comments to keep up-to-date on the conversations. These comments and conversations can be powerful as it keeps all those involved in your nonprofit interacting with each other in real time.

7. Connects All the Social Media

   In our Social Media articles and How-to’s, we have covered how important it is to have other Social Media avenues open such as Twitter and Facebook. A blog can easily connect all those other avenues of Social Media. Each time you post a blog article, a blog can update your Twitter stream with the article and simultaneously post the article and URL to your FaceBook profile. This way no matter how people follow your organization (Twitter, Digg, FaceBook, RSS, email, etc.), they get your new content and information the way they prefer it, but it all connects back to your blog. Your blog becomes the “hub” of all your nonprofit information and updates and sends it out to multiple publishing avenues.

8. Easily Embed Video

   Video has arrived as an important part of keeping people up-to-date with nonprofit organizations. By taking even the most primitive video of a project, those supporting your organization are instantly “teleported” there. Embedding video on a blog is fairly simple now. By using video services like vimeo, viddler or utube, you can take a video and upload it to the web and have it embedded in your blog in a matter of minutes. Even those with the most basic computer skills can embed a video in a blog post, whereas doing the same in a web site would be challenging.

9. Makes it Easy for Others to Share Your Info

   When you use a traditional web site, you can share the URL, but then people have to actually go there. When you print and mail a newsletter, the people you mail it to get the newsletter but what about all the others they would like to share your information with? However, with a blog, it is not only easy for you to share information with others, it also makes it easy for them to re-share your information. When people want to share your information that is on a blog they have a library of ways in which to do so. At the end of each post, your article can have a “share” button that will transport your article to any number of hundreds of social media sharing sites. In addition, they can forward the emails or RSS feeds, print the articles, or even publish references to it on their own blogs (called trackbacks). This allows you to post information and allow others to share it in the way that best fits their preferences. Every time you make it easier for others to share your information, you win.

10. Easy for the Beginner and Pro Alike

    When I was the VP of Business Development for an internet company, several years ago we used to develop our web based software for a fictional user we lovingly dubbed “The Gray Haired Lady”. The Gray Haired Lady was a typical grandmother who was not terribly internet savvy. She did however want to learn and would stick it out as long as things made sense. We thought if we could get our software simple enough for her to use, practically anyone could use it. Many blog software companies must develop around the same type model because updating a blog is just about as simple as writing an article in word processing software. Yes, you have to learn a little but there are a ton of people willing to help. So whether you are a Gray Haired Lady or a teenager, blogging is very simple.

Whatever you’re doing in the nonprofit world, my stance is you should have a blog. If you have a web site, then you should also have a blog. A blog gives you so many benefits and other than maybe not looking as flashy as a flash site, they look good and work great. You would never want to compromise looks over how well a tool gets your information out there and known. If you need some help figuring out how to get your blog up and running, subscribe to our RSS or email feed by clicking here. In further articles in the next weeks, I am going to take you step by step through the set up and use of a blog for your nonprofit. Stay Tuned and tell others about our Social Media for the nonprofit series.

Catch the rest of our “Be a Social Media Expert Series” here.

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