Why Content Strategy Matters
The importance of managing content for nonprofits
In a world where content is king, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to content management. Users today expect customized, tailored content across the digital mediums they encounter—social media, email, web, podcasts and the like. As an organization in today’s landscape, you can no longer craft one post caption to copy and paste across all of these mediums, as your donors, partners, volunteers and consumers are getting smarter, and they expect more intentionality.
So, just what is content strategy?
More than just crafting posts, content strategy is the planning, development, management and execution of your brand’s content. The content you create as an organization should always:
Be mindful of organizational communications goals.
Keep users (and their intent) at the forefront.
Be thoughtful and engaging.
Present valuable and relevant information.
Why content strategy is important for nonprofits
Over time, delivering thoughtful, customized content to your target audience can do two things—create relationships and build trust. Using an authentic, consistent voice to communicate with potential donors, volunteers and consumers is increasingly critical in this cultural moment, and by nurturing their trust, you can continue to build brand awareness and loyalty.
As you manage your organization and internal resources, nonprofits organizations are often called to a higher standard of stewarding resources efficiently. Having a thoughtful, well-planned content strategy can streamline marketing and communications efforts on a number of fronts, allowing your teams to think smarter, not harder.
Building a content strategy: where to start
Creating a thoughtful foundation is a crucial step in implementing your organization’s content strategy.
Segment your audiences.
Determine the distinct groups you consistently communicate with. This may span various types of donors, volunteers, corporate partners and your local community. Be specific, and as you begin to think through each unique group, you should put pen to paper to spell out their demographics, user intent, common behaviors, interests, needs and more. The more specific you get, the more tailored your communications will become. You may even consider building out audience personas for each segment, giving your target audiences a name and personality.
Conduct a content audit.
Before brainstorming or ideating new content, assess what’s already in your content arsenal. Is there an old PDF in the archives that could be optimized for a content article on the website? Is there existing social media and video content that can be refreshed and repurposed? Is there any content that’s off brand or entirely outdated that needs to be archived? Take the time to look through every blog post, web article, social post, video, donor mailer and brochure, categorizing each piece of content by topic and, ultimately, identifying the content gaps. Once you optimize existing content for a few quick wins, begin forming a strategy to address new, relevant and pertinent topics for your key audience segments.
Align with your organization’s goals.
A content strategy is useless if it doesn’t support key organizational goals. Whether it’s increasing recurring online donors by 20%, supporting an upcoming event or moving the needle in driving additional organic search traffic to your website, re-centering on the key goals of your nonprofit will help anchor all content that’s developed moving forward.
Set channel strategies.
Before tailoring any piece of content, begin to outline and determine the strategy and content direction for each platform. Oftentimes, various social media and marketing channels are tied to unique intent, such as informational, navigational and transactional. Work with your marketing and communications team to determine the appropriate brand voice and brand personality, asking which tone fits each specific channel best—formal? approachable? welcoming? Will photography or video content take the lead? Short-form or long-form? Once the channel strategy has been set, consider how to customize the caption for a specific piece of content across each platform.
While it does take some upfront work, setting a detailed, thoughtful content strategy will certainly bear fruit in the long run.
How to implement your nonprofit’s content strategy
Executing a thoughtful, integrated content strategy is a bit like running a marathon. It takes consistent training, buy-in, endurance, performance and monitoring.
Optimize your current content workflow.
Take a look at how content is currently developed at your organization? Does it happen across several teams in silos? You’re not alone. Before implementing a new content strategy, consider opportunities for collaboration through content alignment meetings or a customized template to guide your team in facilitating thoughtful consideration of all channels, SEO-related fields, etc., in the content development process.
Get your team on board.
Training, equipping and communicating to your team about this transition is a crucial step in the change management process. Create buy-in among leaders and staff by painting the picture of the vision, the importance of streamlining content resources and overall strategic impact of executing a new content strategy well. In any season of change, employees should feel that they have the ability to communicate feedback to leadership, and that there’s always room to test and iterate an approach that will work best for your team.
Plan ahead.
Before kicking off each quarter or year, develop daily, weekly or monthly content recommendations—a topical strategy that will then serve as a guide for content development and execution across social media, e-communications, podcasts, web content, etc., throughout a set period of time. Building out an editorial calendar will help align resources and content produced.
Start long, customize short.
Once you’ve determined a topic and theme for a certain week, month or quarter, begin by drafting the longest-form piece of content available. If that’s an article for the website, be sure to craft the content with search and digital best practices in mind. Or if it’s a podcast, you can transcribe key sound bites that can be leveraged for other mediums. From there, you can begin tailoring unique, personalized captions and content in alignment with your channel strategies for various audience segments. No two pieces of content should be the same!
Consider multi-media assets.
Once the content is set, consider whether engaging graphics, animations, photography, gifs or videos will best support the topic and further engage your users. Again, these assets should be tailored by channel and audience segment.
Leverage content management tools.
In today’s digital age, tools like SproutSocial, Canva, Airtable, Later, Trello, Hootsuite and others can allow you to upload content and schedule posts well in advance, streamlining the efforts of your internal resources.
When executed intentionally, your strategic content can delight your loyal users, nurture leads, build trust and increase engagement. Need help with all this? Guardian is happy to serve you.