Content Marketing for Nonprofits: A Guide to Goals and Strategies
If you want to start (or restart) a content marketing program for your nonprofit, let me be the first to say you don’t have to publish content everywhere. You don’t have to start a blog, and you don’t have to be on every trendy social media platform.
But, I do want to reinforce that content and content marketing are essential to growing awareness, expanding your reach, and making a bigger impact on your community. And with a little guidance, you can start putting quality, effective content in the world that doesn’t overwhelm your time and energy and helps you reach your nonprofit’s goals.
What is content marketing for nonprofits?
Content marketing for nonprofits is the process of promoting your organization, message, and impact stories through content campaigns that span marketing channels and types of content.
Content tells your story. Content marketing is how you help the world find that story.
Content marketing channels:
Websites
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Email marketing
Podcasts
Organic social media marketing
Paid social media ads
Newspaper or TV ads
Events and fundraisers
Webinars and community presentations
Content types:
Long-form blogs
Donation landing pages
Press releases
Short-form audio or video content
Image carousels or slideshows
Newsletters
Community success stories
Content is your story. A content marketing strategy, which may include everything from blog posts to media events, is how you get your story - your content - into the world.
A content marketing strategy is how each channel and type of content connects and helps you reach a larger goal. There’s no one way to do content marketing for nonprofits. And there’s no single cut-and-paste marketing tactic, method, or campaign that’s going to produce the same result every time. Where you start depends on key factors.
Where to start content marketing for nonprofits
You have options when mixing and matching content marketing channels and types of content. But starting to do content marketing for your nonprofit comes down to three things: your goals, your audience, and your resources.
Each informs the others until you have a reasonable, sustainable, and actionable path forward. It’s a three-leg framework that can ensure you’re not starting something you can’t maintain, which can be worse than not starting at all.
A little louder for the people in the back: Build something that you can maintain. This means that you don’t need to let yourself be bullied by Instagram influencers who tell you that you need to be everywhere all the time to be effective.
1. Define your goal
If you’re doing content marketing for the first time or trying to gain momentum in your current program, the more you can focus on one outcome per campaign, the better. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to pick one goal forever. You can complete the three-leg framework for all your nonprofit goals and craft unique content marketing plans for each.
If you think your one goal is to get donations, I challenge you to think again. There are many ways to secure donations, and each way is a goal in itself. Goals can be seasonal, aligning with major holidays and community events. Or they can be focussed on hiring or turning board members into mission ambassadors. All of those can significantly impact donation milestones that support your nonprofit’s mission.
Examples of nonprofit marketing goals that aren’t just “secure donations”:
Building interest in your event at a community center.
Growing your social media following.
Earning more traffic to your website.
Increasing online or recurring donations.
Signing up more volunteers.
Expanding your authority on a topic related to your mission.
Generating more impact stories.
2. Define your audience
Your audience is who you’re talking to in or attracting with your content. Not every goal is suited for every audience. But your audience is essential for determining the content format you’ll use to reach them.
As you consider your audience, think about the groups that interact with you most now. Then ask yourself if they make up your ideal customer persona (ICP) and represent the values and financial and behavioral attributes of your biggest donors or most passionate mission ambassadors.
Let’s say your goal is to sign up more volunteers. Your audience is your ideal volunteer: students and young professionals motivated to earn senior project or internship credits, for example. You know this because this group already comprises your most committed current volunteers. (If you want more help figuring out your ICP, check out the recording from our content planning workshop.)
Because your volunteers are students, you deduce they get their news from social media and one another. So your physical content types might include printed materials you can distribute in or around schools. And your digital marketing content types might be short videos or images of current volunteers shared across social media, highlighting the benefits of volunteering and how to get involved.
3. Define your resources (and be honest about them)
Your means for content marketing are the tools and knowledge you can access right now. If you don’t know how to update your website, search engine optimization might not be the right content marketing channel for your nonprofit organization. But if you have writing experience and a knack for storytelling, starting a nonprofit blog might be a more effective content type.
Be honest with yourself about your tools and knowledge. And prioritize content marketing goals that align with them and won’t need significant investment, investigation, resources, or ramp-up time.
Tips for building a nonprofit content marketing strategy
In nonprofit environments where time is short, a content strategy for your nonprofit can keep you on track or lay the groundwork for delegating tasks to an employee, volunteer, or contractor.
1. Set a campaign content calendar
When you’re creating a content strategy, consider any seasonal changes, major events, or upcoming events that will inform your schedule. Once you have your date, work backward, establishing milestone dates you can meet. Your timeline includes the time you need to build and launch content and the time it takes you to create or design it, too.
The amount of time you’ll need depends on your means and resources. In my experience, a reasonable content campaign runway is anywhere from two to four weeks, more if you’re promoting a fundraiser or event with lots of logistics.
Nonprofit seasonality can also determine how frequently you pursue content campaigns. At the very least, consider at least one major content marketing initiative per quarter surrounded by smaller, quick-turn campaigns (i.e., your monthly email newsletter). Successful content marketing differentiates channels for major and supplemental campaigns to avoid oversaturating one channel — and its audience — with content.
2. Publish content on the right channels
Not every content type is right for every channel, especially in the nonprofit sector where you’re focused on telling impactful community stories and moving everyday people to action. Knowing where to publish certain content assets can mean the difference between getting results and getting lost in someone’s feed or inbox.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to decide between writing a news release or a blog. That depends on your goal and audience. Write a press release if you want to inform journalists and news agencies of your timely, interesting update.
Generally, you should save blogs for more long-form, evergreen content. Nonprofit blogs are stories that won’t be dated after a few weeks or months or need consistent content updates. That’s what is meant by evergreen. An update or teaser for an upcoming or recent event would make a better email than a blog—unlike evergreen content, this information has a shelf-life.
But a blog explaining who you connected with and how you positively affected your community at an event has much greater staying power. Meanwhile, a long-form blog with paragraph-heavy content isn’t great for social media where highly sharable images and videos thrive.
3. Repurpose content across channels
When you repurpose content, you save yourself the trouble of trying to create a unique story for every channel. But repurposing content is one of the best ways to ensure you make the most of a single piece of content. A successful nonprofit impact story has more life than you realize, for example.
Use the before-and-after photos of a cleanup project in a social media image carousel or reel to boost awareness of your work.
Add the quote from a board member about a project or initiative to your press release instead of getting a new one.
Add quotes from community leaders or legislators thanking your organization for its work as proof of success to your donation pages.
Use the budget breakdown or economic impact of a project or initiative in your next grant application or in your impact report to show you know how to allocate funds effectively.
Share videos of happy volunteers to recruit more help for your next project.
4. Motivate with a strong call to action
However your nonprofit content marketing strategy comes together, remember to close each content type with a call to action that shows your audience where to go or what to do next.
For example, add QR codes to printed materials to direct your audience to your website or volunteer sign-up form. Or make sure website visitors can find and interact with donate buttons or CTAs on each page easily. Your organization’s content should always be actionable as well as emotional and relatable.
FAQs about nonprofit content marketing
What is a content campaign?
A content campaign is how you can put your message or impact stories into the world. Content campaigns can focus on one type of content (blogs, emails, social media posts, videos, etc.) or a combination. Your campaign strategy will tell you when to publish or distribute each piece of content. Every content campaign you conduct for your nonprofit should focus on one major message, goal, or impact story.
What is the purpose of content promotion for nonprofits?
Content promotion for nonprofits gets your message out, expands your reach, and highlights your success or impact. It builds awareness or interest in a single content type. For example, you may promote the positive community health outcomes of your organization in your annual report and showcase the results in a press release to gain news coverage that grows awareness.
Are content marketing and communications the same thing for nonprofits?
No. Content marketing rolls into the larger bucket which is nonprofit communications. The bucket also includes activities where nonprofits solicit charitable contributions from new and existing donors via brand-building, marketing, fundraising, and advocacy.
Impactful storytelling and valuable content for nonprofit organizations
Every nonprofit wants to change its community for the better. But not every nonprofit worker or leader is ready to create content that improves its marketing and development efforts. The solution is to find the time to learn, ramp up, and start creating or bring on a trusted partner who can write the stories that support content marketing campaigns for annual appeals, fundraisers, galas, and more.
Through Sprig Communications, I work with nonprofit staff, teams, and organizations — large and small — to tell stories that:
Secure dollars and show the necessity and value of work in the community.
Solve problems and share how products and services help people’s lives.
Set audiences on paths of change that lead to promising futures.
By partnering with us, you can use storytelling in your current and future communications and content to inspire action with words. Schedule a 30-minute discovery call, and we’ll explore what it takes to translate your mission into meaningful messaging.
