Blog Basics for Effective Nonprofit Storytelling
Starting a blog for your nonprofit is an excellent way to tell community stories and communicate your organization’s impact. Unlike emails and social media posts, blogs have a greater staying power and are less likely to be lost in an inbox or feed.
Writing and managing blog posts isn’t for everyone, but by understanding a few nonprofit blog basics and best practices, even the busiest nonprofit employees can feel confident in their abilities. Follow along for my tips for drafting, formatting, reviewing, and publishing nonprofit blogs.
Choosing your blog topic
There are two kinds of blogs every nonprofit can benefit from: Keyword-focused informational blogs and narrative-focused human interest stories. You can produce both, but the style you choose depends on who you’re speaking to and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Not every blog has to target keywords, especially if search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t part of your nonprofit content marketing strategy. But every blog should focus on benefits and outcomes that serve your readers.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Styling and structuring your blog posts
As you engage in nonprofit storytelling through blog posts, consider their structure, voice and tone, and length.
Structure: What your story looks like on the page
The best blogs, regardless of topic or industry all follow the same pattern. So if you’re wondering what a blog post should look like, consider the one you're reading now. It has short paragraphs separated by headers every time I shift topics.
Headings break up major points and help readers navigate to the part of the story they’re interested in most. And each heading is formatted according to its value.
Headlines (or H1s on your site’s blog publisher) summarize the point of your post. Every blog post or webpage should have a single, unique headline. Each headline should feature the most important information first and shouldn’t exceed 70 characters with spaces. After that, your title will be cut off or truncated in a search result or your blog’s homepage, forcing readers to work hard to engage with your content.
Subheaders (or H2s and H3s) establish the hierarchy of information. Every time you change topics or parts of the story, add a subhead. For example, let’s say you’re writing a blog on the benefits of equine therapy. Your H2 subheads might be “reducing anxiety and depression,” “practicing trust and empathy,” and “increasing self-esteem.”
Voice and Tone: How your story sounds to readers
How you sound to readers in your nonprofit blog posts may differ from how you sound in materials like press releases, impact reports, and other marketing and brand materials. And that’s OK. Blogs are a great space to share details and paint a picture for readers that wouldn’t be possible elsewhere.
Your voice is your personality and how readers know they’re consuming something from your brand. Your tone sets the mood and conveys the story’s emotion. For example, William Shakespeare’s voice is immediately identifiable. But how you feel reading a comedy like “Much Ado About Nothing” is very different from reading a tragedy like “Romeo and Juliet.” That’s the playwright’s tone at work.
Overall, your nonprofit’s voice might be hopeful and inspiring. But if you’re writing a blog about the rise of heart disease in your community, you might adopt a more serious tone. And you might avoid words that downplay or make light of the negative effects of the issue on vulnerable populations.
As your voice and tone evolve, maintain a word list or style guide to help maintain consistency across all your blog posts. Include things like words you don’t use, how you identify your audience (i.e., “clients” versus “community members”), and how you spell or abbreviate your organization’s name on first and second use.
Length: When the story ends
If an average email is fewer than 200 words and the average press release is no more than 500 words, at minimum, a good blog should be around 800 words. That’s because you’ll want to give yourself the space to tell a complete story, especially if you’re writing a narrative-style blog.
If you’re writing a keyword-focused blog, aim for at least 1,200 words. But even that depends on the articles or resources you’re competing with for the top result. To get closer to the length or word count you’ll need to compete effectively, read the top three search results for a target keyword. If each result averages 1,000 words, you’ll need at least that many to be competitive. The length of a blog post alone won’t guarantee a top result, but it’s a good place to start.
Adding photos to your blog
A picture’s worth a thousand words, especially when you’re trying to convey emotion and show, not just talk about, how your organization’s work affects your community. And they can help break up walls of text on a post.
Stock photos and images your nonprofit owns are both acceptable for nonprofit blogs. Your choice depends on your topic and what’s available to you. Images from events and volunteer activities will always be more powerful than stock images. But stock photos may be necessary if you’re concerned about confidentiality, for example, protecting a domestic violence survivor’s identity in an impact story.
Whenever you publish photos with your blogs, be sure to include alternative text (or “alt text”) for each one. Alt text describes the content of a photo for assistive reading devices, screen readers, or other web accessibility tools. And using it ensures a greater number of web users can comprehend your blog post. Just remember that photos and images supplement words in your story but don’t replace them.
Reviewing your blog
Before you publish a blog, review it carefully for spelling and grammatical errors. The best ways to do this are reading your work aloud or using a free tool like Grammarly, QuillBot, or GrammarCheck. Microsoft Word’s spell-checking capabilities are pretty good if that’s where you’re drafting, but Google Docs’ is poor overall. As an avid writer and storytelling, I don’t recommend relying on native spell checkers alone.
Additionally, you can share your work with someone in your organization. In fact, this might be a required part of your workflow. But I would caution you from letting too many people in your organization play a role in reviewing blog content.
While teamwork is a necessity in most aspects of your organization, when it comes to reviewing content, "content by committee" can cause challenges. Instead, identify who needs to be involved in blog review and to what level.
Who reviews your blog from depends on your organization. And if you ask someone to review your work, ask them to review for things in their specialty. For example, a marketing or other communications rep might verify numbers, dates, or event information for accuracy. Your legal counsel might verify you haven’t said anything proprietary or private. Anyone within your org who you quote directly should have an opportunity to approve their words.
Be mindful of having too many cooks in the kitchen who might be tempted to provide feedback on the writing itself. Too many reviewers and opinions can lead to content by committee where the result is delayed publishing and confusing or unfocused storytelling. If you want feedback on the writing itself, consider consulting someone who doesn’t have a stake in the content.
Publishing your blog
Once you’ve copied your blog into your web publisher, the last step is to customize your post’s URL (also called a “slug”) and metadata. Many site builders will prefill your post’s URL (i.e., yournonprofit.com/blog/post-2). Change the text so that it speaks to the purpose of and summarizes your story. When in doubt, use a shortened version of your headline with words separated by dashes.
Every page or blog URL is unique. By default, your site publisher won’t allow you to publish a new blog or page that uses an existing URL. Overall, it’s best practice to avoid using years or other information in a URL that will date your piece. If you need to include a year in your blog, consider placing it in your headline and updating it annually to keep the post evergreen.
Your metadata is what appears in a search result and includes an SEO title and description of our post. Metadata is also unique to every page and summarizes your post content. Meta titles can be identical to your headline or H1 but have to be an exact match. Your meta description summarizes the takeaway of your post in one or two sentences.
For example, my meta title for this blog is “Blog Basics for Effective Nonprofit Storytelling,” same as my headline. And my meta description is “With a few nonprofit basics and best practices, even the busiest nonprofit employees can feel confident in their nonprofit storytelling abilities.” Keep your meta title under 70 characters and meta descriptions between 140 and 160 characters to ensure words — and essential information — isn’t cut off.
Craft stories to elevate your mission with Sprig
If you’re ready to transform your mission into a captivating narrative that drives engagement and support, watch a replay of a webinar I hosted for executive directors, development directors, and board members at nonprofits with small teams. You’ll learn the role of storytelling in advancing your cause. Plus, understand the value of storytelling to show, not tell, people about your mission, and gain a basic structure to make basic storytelling easy.
