Creative: Writing, Designing, Photography, Video

Simply put, you need people who can create good content. They may need strategic direction about what to do and for what reason, but with that guidance, they can write a great newsletter article or design a fabulous share graphic for Facebook.

Logistical: Editorial Planning and Publishing

You need someone to make sure the trains run on time and you have the right number of them on the right tracks. This person must be well organized, detail oriented, and capable of juggling lots of information and deadlines. You can't implement a strong multi-channel, integrated marketing strategy without someone in this role, making sure that content is planned, produced, and published on time.

Strategic: Listening, Weaving, and Forecasting

You can produce great content, and get it published on time, but that doesn't do you any good if it's not the right content for your organization to share with your community. You need someone who is constantly listening to your community, weaving what they hear both within your organization and outside of it, so that you will know what to create and publish not just now, but tomorrow and next week and next month.

But that approach can leave you wondering what you are missing, and if you are doing the right things at the right times.  So how can you take the time to create a real work plan without starting from scratch? How do you accept the reality that you will need to keep doing most of what you are doing now, while being more strategic and thoughtful moving forward?

I'm helping a client work through these questions right now, and we've come up with a basic framework that I thought might be helpful to others.

1.  Identify basic housekeeping or good habit building opportunities that you may have overlooked.

Start by figuring out what basic best practices for your communications channels you may have overlooked while you were growing organically and just doing it. For example, are your email newsletter sign-up forms everywhere they should be? How about links to your Facebook and Twitter profiles? When you update your website or blog, are you in the habit of tagging posts properly so your site is well organized and search engine optimized? Are you communicating regularly internally with your program and development offices? Double check that all those basics are really taken care of and that you have good habits in place to support the fundamentals.

2. Take what you are doing up a notch.

You've probably been plugging along just fine with various communications tactics like your newsletter, Facebook, direct mail appeals, etc. and likely working off your intuition about what works and what doesn't.  Now it's time to get more methodical about collecting data and integrating that into your thinking. You think certain kinds of posts generally do well on your Facebook Page? Go dig into your Insights and see what you find. Same thing for your website and email analytics. What do you see there that could help you take what you already do up a notch or two?

3. Plan to experiment

Now comes the really fun part. With your basic systems in place, and some improvements on what you are already doing, what can you experiment with to really learn something new? Maybe it's creating a whole different category of content, or the way you share certain types of content (e.g. being more opinionated or funny). Maybe it's exploring a new social media site, or A/B testing elements on your website landing pages. This is where you can plan to stretch a bit.

Think of it as buying an old house. You aren't going to tear it down. First, you make sure the basics are covered -- the lights, plumbing, heat, etc. all work. Then you spruce up the basic living space, maybe painting and replacing the carpet. Then you can be more creative and experiment with new home accessories or landscaping.

Instead, think a little more big picture first. What is it that you want that person to do, and what is the path that will take them to the place online where they do it?

So, to get people to sign up for your email list on their own (as opposed to you adding their name to it), it's all about getting them to a sign-up or opt-in form. Start by making sure the forms -- and yes there should be multiple forms -- are

• Easy to use (you don't ask for too much info),
• Encouraging (you tell me quickly what I get by signing up), and
• Visible (it's where I am already and I don't have to hunt for it, like in a prime spot in your website template or on your most popular pages).

Now, how do you get people to go to the forms, wherever they may be? What is the path that leads them to a form?

You can

• Create really great, share-worthy content that you put on social media with a link that comes back to a specific landing page on your website that has a sign-up form on it (i.e., if you like this article, sign up for our newsletter for more!)
• Offer them something else of value (like an event registration or a special download) and then ask them to opt-in to your newsletter too.
• Ask them to take another action (like signing a pledge) and then ask them to opt-in to your newsletter too.
• Send an email asking them to opt-in to a list controlled by someone else (e.g., a partner organization offers to send an email to their list on your behalf, with a link to a special landing page with the form).

This is how organic list building works. You create several places where you can collect names and then you create easy paths to those forms.

Many nonprofits -- maybe yours? -- have reached this conclusion about their communications. Your staff gets overwhelmed by the number of communications channels and creative possibilities. That leads to discussions about reviewing or auditing the current situation, and nonprofits will often turn to outside consultants like me to help them with these assessments.

My first questions back to the nonprofit in these cases are about understanding whether the organization needs a marketing audit or a communications audit. So what's the difference?

Marketing Audits

Marketing audits get at core strategic questions like:

• Are we approaching the right groups of people?
• Are we positioning the organization properly within this community?
• Do our messages resonate?
• Are we using the right mix of communications channels to reach these people with these messages?

If you can't easily describe your core groups of participants or supporters or if you aren't sure about what you should say to those people, then you need a marketing audit (likely followed by the creation of a marketing strategy).

If you can describe the people you are trying to reach and your messages to them, but you aren't getting the results you want, then you need a marketing audit (likely followed by an updated marketing strategy).

If your programs and services have grown or otherwise changed significantly, but you don't think your communications have adjusted accordingly, then you need a marketing audit (likely followed by an updated marketing strategy).

I do marketing audits and strategy updates as part of my consulting practice.

Communications Audits

Communications audits, on the other hand, are about reviewing how well you use communications tools. In other words, they focus on the implementation of the marketing strategy. During the course of a communications audit, you will be asked to identify your target audiences and messages, but a communications audit won't tell you whether you have the right audience or the right message.

When I do communications audits, I focus on these questions instead:

• Do your communications present a unified, professional, and consistent brand or personality to your supporters across communications channels?
• Do your communications present consistent messages and calls to action to your supporters across channels?
• Does the content of your communications feel relevant and meaningful to the people receiving them, or are they left asking, "So what and who cares?"
• How does the tactical implementation and use of each communications channel compare to nonprofit best practices and to other nonprofits in this field? I use criteria related to frequency, content mix, writing style and mechanics, design and visuals, branding, integration with other channels, and ease of production.

I also do communications audits as part of my consulting practice.

Do-It-Yourself Communications Audits

If you are interested in doing a communications audit in-house, I've created an e-book just for you called "How to Do Your Own Nonprofit Communications Audit." It's $40.

If you'd like some training to go along with it, I teach a nonprofit communications audit webinar by the same name at CharityHowTo.com, and those webinars include a free copy of the e-book. The webinar/e-book combo is $89. All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can attend for free.

Here are 14 lessons I've learned over the years in between daily blogging, writing a weekly e-newsletter, authoring two full-length books, and more.

Before You Write

Come up with a system for saving stuff you might use. I use a combination of Diigo and Evernote to save things I find online. I will forward some emails that I know I want to save for a particular use out of Gmail and into Evernote. I will take photographs of things offline, including handwritten notes, and save those to Evernote too (If I don't write too sloppily, Evernote can read my handwriting, which makes it searchable).

Sort and label as best you can as you go. I try to use a similar naming system for tagging across Diigo, Evernote, Gmail, etc. I tag based on topics, like Facebook or Writing Fast, as well as by where I might use the info, like in a Mixed Links blog post or a webinar.

Use an editorial calendar. We use a combination of a spreadsheet for the big picture and layered Google calendars for the day-to-day management.

Mind map or sketch or outline. Come up with some way to get your thoughts organized before you actually start to write. I prefer mind mapping over outlining because it helps me find the right angle or nut of the story better. Use whatever process gets you there fastest.

As You Write

Get comfortable. If you have writing traditions that get you in the mood, follow them! I always get a cup of hot tea and often a cookie. (I just ate two while writing this). I also like to be warm so I will grab a hoodie or even a blanket sometimes.

Picture whom you are writing it for in your mind. This idea (using a persona) helps you focus on the right message and choose the right words, right from the start.

Find your hook as fast as possible. I can't really get going with a piece until I know the hook. Sometimes that's the format (like this list) or sometimes it's an opinionated statement or lesson of some sort. But the faster I decide on what that is, the faster the rest of the writing goes.

Set a timer. If you get easily distracted like I do, or have a tendency to go off topic, set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes. That gives you a chance to course correct, and if you are doing great, just quickly reset it for another 15 minutes when it goes off.

Write drunk, edit sober. That's attributed to Ernest Hemingway. Self-editing as you go will really slow you down. Writing is one process, editing is another, and proofreading is yet another. Don't try to do them all at once. Give yourself the chance to write freely (since writing drunk at work isn't a great idea) before you start editing and proofreading.

Know where to find your creative genie. If you just aren't feeling it, go in search of your creative genie. I find mine most often in one of three places: when I am taking a shower, when I am walking/running, or when I am reading a book. Great ideas are more likely to come to me then compared to when I am at my desk.

After You Write

Prune it back in support of the hook. Before you start word-by-word or line editing, focus on the main point and ensuring that everything connects back to that. It doesn't make sense to start fine-tuning sentences that you may end up cutting entirely, so get the arguments or key points done first, before word smithing.

Edit what doesn't fit into a "Cut From" file. You wrote something you like, but it just doesn't work in this article. You do need to cut it, but you don't have to delete it forever. Paste it into a "Cut from" file, as in "Cut from Sally Profile." Save all that stuff in a folder so you can find it later. It's a great resource for times when you have writer's block and need somewhere to start.

Get to know your garbage. We all have bad writing habits: typos you always make, certain phrases that have become your own personal cliches. Understand that about your own writing so you can go edit it out and clean it up later.

Read it out loud and correct as you talk. Before I complete a piece, I like to read it out loud slowly -- often in a weird monotone voice that reminds me to say every single word on the screen --  with my hands on the keyboard so I can correct as I go. Reading out loud is great throughout the editing process, but I find it particularly helpful for the final proofread.

I hope you found these tips helpful -- go write faster!

Let's try to look at the big picture. Lumping hundreds of millions of people into categories always creates stereotypes. But for purposes of understanding some of the macro shifts that are taking place today, I have boiled down how each of the four generations approaches philanthropy into just one word.

Matures are more likely to give out of a sense of responsibility and duty. That's what good people do. Giving back is important. Giving to charity is what's right.

Boomers are more likely to give because it fits with their personal sense of identity, or who they are. They want to make a difference and believe that they are change makers, and they see themselves as having a role to play with the charities they support.

Generation Xers are more likely to give if they can see a problem being solved. In other words, they are entrepreneurial about their philanthropy. It's less personal, and more about getting things done.

Generation Yers are more likely to give if they feel like they are part of a community of change. They see themselves as connected global citizens who are confident that together they can correct injustices of the past and make the world a better place.

Of course, there is some overlap. Generation Y shares a sense of civic duty with the Matures, are politically savvy like the Boomers, and value work-life balance like Gen X.  And these trends that won't apply evenly, or at all, to many individuals (you can certainly find 20-year-olds who have more in common with their own great-grandmas than their college roommates).

But it's undeniable that the way people approach philanthropy is changing. Leaving aside the age groups for a moment, take a look again at just these four words, in order:

Duty

Identity

Entrepreneurial

Community

What kinds of change or progression do you see in these words? How might that affect your communications?

Here's one way to look at it. If people are giving primarily out of a sense of duty, then at some level, it really doesn't matter how good or bad your communications to them are. If you can present a need reasonably well, people will feel that sense of duty to respond to that need.

I've heard many a fundraiser with thirty years of experience or more talk about how much easier it used to be to raise money. Now those same fundraisers talk about how much more competition there is, both from other charities and for people's attention. They also talk about how donors' expectations have changed.

The rise of "donor-centered fundraising" -- a term coined by Penelope Burk  --  over the last decade is no coincidence when you look at the second word in the list: identity. Donors respond to communications that are about them, and their role in solving the problem. Donors also say, in numerous surveys, that they want to hear about results and success stories from the charities they support, which sounds like entrepreneurial thinking. And largely thanks to social media, we can feel like we are part of many different communities with whom we share our various passions, including the causes we believe in and the charities that we support.

Suddenly, those "way we've always done it" communications aren't enough anymore. That doesn't mean you need to drop everything you've always done and replace it with something new. But it does mean you need to take a hard look at what you are doing now, adjust what's worth keeping, get rid of what's not, and add in what's missing.

Some of you (I'd estimate about 20% of nonprofit marketers) work directly on development goals and feel responsible for raising money this year. I'd say about 30% do not have any real fundraising responsibilities. There is either a separate fundraising staff, or you are primarily funded via grants or fee for service.  In this case your success is usually defined more by recruiting program participants or volunteers rather than donors, or by more broadly engaging your community, which can lead to longer-term fundraising successes.

That leaves the other 50% of you who are at least partially responsible for fundraising results, in some way. You are the ones I worry most about, because your jobs are much more likely to be poorly defined, which means success is poorly defined, and therefore you are much more likely to burn out and hate your job. We need all the creative, dedicated people we can get in this work, so I don't want that to happen!

It's not that having fundraising goals as a communications director is a good thing or a bad thing. It's just that the extent of the overlap needs to be clear to everyone upfront. Short-term fundraising goals may have a big impact on the tactical choices you make about who you are trying to reach, your message to them, and the communications tools you use. And you are only human, so you can only do so much.

If you aren't sure about the extent to which you are really responsible for short-term fundraising results, you really need to discuss it as a staff.

These two pieces might help with the discussion . . .

• A blog post I wrote on how "fundraising" communicators approach communications differently from "community/brand building" communicators

• Some Venn diagrams (via a PDF on Slideshare, below) on how nonprofit communicators combine various marketing/fundraising goals. (Warning: This is pretty geeky stuff, but should be a good conversation starter about where you fit in).

Good luck with those discussions and let me know how they go!

Looks painful! Maybe we should't be "targeting" "audiences"?

"Target audience" is a common marketing term for the people you are trying to reach with your communications.  I've used it regularly since I started working in this field, but I’m using it much less often now. In fact, I just did a search/replace in the new book I am writing to eliminate it in the draft. The term "target audience" embodies the old way of looking at nonprofit marketing and communications, an approach that I hope you are working on moving away from.

While the concept of focusing on specific groups of people via segmenting is still valuable, thinking of it as “targeting” is troublesome because it conjures the image of you blasting your content toward the target, rather than creating content that naturally attracts them to you.  “Audience” creates a similar problem, because it implies people passively sitting there while you present to them.

Today, our goal is engagement. While some will still sit and passively consume what we produce, the goal is to get them to take some sort of action in response, even if it is as simple as standing up and being counted by clicking Like on Facebook or sharing a story they read in your newsletter over coffee with a friend.

That's why you'll see me use the terms participants, supporters, and influencers as much as I can, throughout our website, blog, and the new book -- at least until we come up with something better.

When I use participants, I am referring to the people your organization serves, as well those who have actively embraced your mission and are helping you directly implement your programming, like your regular volunteers and super-advocates. When I use supporters, I am talking about donors, those who more casually endorse your work, and those volunteers and advocates who help build your community without directly implementing programs and services. When I use influencers, I am talking about people who are typically more disinterested or objective about your particular organization, but who can still have a big impact on how others perceive you, such as journalists or elected officials.

There’s often overlap between these groups, especially participants and supporters, and supporters and influencers, and that’s fine. It’s less important who is a participant or a supporter or an influencer and more important that you view them as part of the community making good things happen, rather than passive bystanders in an audience who can be targeted against their will.

What do you think? Discuss this post with others on Facebook.

Target Your Customers by BigStock

If you want people to read your "broccoli" content, figure out what kind of "cheese sauce" they like!

"The customer is always right." – Marshall Fields

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs

You know that you are supposed to listen to your target audiences and give them what they want to hear from you. But you also have your own agenda full of information you want them to have. How do you bring the two together?

It reminds me of an email conversation I had this week with my daughter's guitar teacher. The child is not thrilled with the process of learning guitar by picking one string at a time and wants to quit lessons. What she really wants to do is strum along to "Pumped Up Kicks" and a bunch of other popular songs. But, of course, she doesn't have the skills to play any song at all right now. So I discussed this with her teacher, and he said he would try to combine more "instant gratification with responsible pedagogy." In other words, he will give her some of what she wants, so she stays engaged, while also continuing to teach her the fundamentals that she needs.

Here's another metaphor for you: Put some cheese sauce on that broccoli.

Let’s say you work for a national nonprofit that provides education and training to local nonprofits in your field. On one hand, you want to be responsive to what the local groups say they need because they are the "boots on the ground." On the other hand, you are the national expert, and you want the local organizations to focus on topics that you deem important -- and many of the locals do look to you to help them figure out what they should be learning.

I worked with one national organization earlier this year whose members are local nonprofits. The national group wanted to start a newsletter for board members of all these local groups. They wanted to talk about lots of "responsible" topics like board governance and financial accountability. I strongly encouraged them to include a healthy amount of "instant gratification" topics -- to put some cheese sauce on that broccoli -- to address the concerns that are front and center with board members. Those might include questions like, "How do I ask other people, including my friends, for money?" and "How do I tell our executive director that he's not doing a very good job in certain areas?" By soothing the pain points, the national group will build trust and open the door to equally important but less exciting conversations about bylaws and bookkeeping.

I'm currently working with another national organization in a similar situation, but they are focusing on the content strategy for their blog and e-newsletter, based on content on their website and in their webinar series. The problem is that there are literally hundreds of relevant topics to cover. So which do they focus on? What the locals ask most about, which tend to be more basic or mundane issues, or the what the national organization believes the locals need to know to be more effective long-term?

Which should drive the content strategy? The realistic answer is a combination of both. You can meet their needs for more basic information or for tips on the hotter topics du jour while also sharing the content that you feel is more essential or "stretching" for your target audiences.

Here’s one approach that I suggested to my client and that might work for you too . . .

On a quarterly basis, in conjunction with your program staff, come up with a list of topics that you want to cover in your educational programming or communications, whether that's new blog posts, website downloads, webinars or training videos. You’d pick the top five topics. This is the broccoli.

Next, you’d look at sources that give you clues about what the locals are interested in right now. You could look at recent keyword searches that brought traffic to your site, as well as searches within your site. You’d also look at comments on your blog and Facebook page. Since you regularly present webinars, you could look at the chat or evaluation surveys from those for comments. You’d compile this information into a separate top five list. Remember, this list is based on popularity with your target audience, not on what you want them to know. This is your cheese sauce.

Now you have two lists of five topics each. Combine them into one list, eliminating the overlap. Let’s say that leaves you with eight different topics.

To develop your content strategy for the coming quarter, ask these questions:

Can we – and do we want to -- provide a significant amount of NEW information on this topic in the coming quarter? If yes, sketch out what that editorial calendar might look like. Topics that were on both lists are prime candidates for this kind of attention.

If we don't want to provide new content, can we review and update our basic evergreen or older/outdated content on this topic? If yes, identify which existing content can be updated and/or repurposed.

If we don't want to work on this topic at all, can we at least create a landing page for that traffic with referrals to other organizations? If yes, spend an hour on it and be done with it.

You’d repeat this process quarterly. Over time, you’d build up a library of evergreen content and resource pages that meet the needs that your target audiences identify for you (because the customer is always right) while also allowing you to create new content on topics you think are most important (because people don't know what they want until you show it to them).

Whether you consider this article broccoli or cheese sauce, I hope you enjoyed it!

Broccoli with Cheese Sauce by BigStock

"Lack of time to produce quality content" was selected by half of the people taking the survey to date, from a list of more than a dozen challenges.

If you can relate, I encourage you to embrace two essential strategies for creating great content quickly: repurposing your own content and curating content by others.

We do a lot of both at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, so I thought I'd give you a back-stage glimpse at how we curate content. It's not all that glamorous or sophisticated, but it works for us. The core of the strategy consists of three parts: following, tagging, and intent.

Following

At the core of my strategy is following smart people, and letting them do the first cut. Curating is all about sifting or filtering, and there's no reason you can't use other smart people to help you do it! I follow people with a variety of different specialties that all circle back around to nonprofit marketing somehow. They sift through all the stuff they see on their issues, and share the best via their own blogs, social media, e-newsletters, etc. Then I watch what they say, do my own cut on that information, and decide what to share out through my own communications channels.

I follow those smart people in a few key ways:

I use a personal Alltop page to follow bloggers. You'll find people who specialize in nonprofit communications, fundraising, technology, social media, corporate marketing, creativity, and a few more random topics on my custom page. It's public, so you can use mine, or better yet, create your own. I love how Alltop gives me the five most recent blog titles from all of these sources, all on one page. It's easy to see not only what particular individuals are writing about, but also the at-a-glance trends in what this broader community that I follow is writing about. I also love that I can mouse over a headline and get the first paragraph or so of the post, so I can see if it's worth clicking to read the whole thing. I do wish there was a way to import other RSS feeds into Alltop as there are some bloggers who I want to follow who aren't in the Alltop database. So I make sure I follow them in other ways, like on Twitter.

I use a Must-Read List on Twitter.  I've created lots of Twitter lists, including a private Must-Read List on Twitter that I look at regularly via a Hootsuite tab. I follow thousands of people, but obviously can't read all of that, so I use lists to categorize different people in different ways, some by topic, some by my relationship with them. One of those relationships is how much I trust them to be a good curator. While that particular list is private, as it contains some people I follow for personal reasons, it does contain a lot of the same people on the Alltop page, along with some bloggers who aren't on Alltop.

I participate in a few social media groups. I'm a member of a few groups on Facebook and LinkedIn that I find helpful, because again, smart people congregate there, answer each other's questions and share good stuff.

Tagging

Following great people helps me find the good stuff. But I need a way to save and identify what I want to pass on to others. I also get information from other sources too, including my email inbox and random web surfing. I keep track of everything I want to keep for later curation in a couple of different ways that revolve around tagging. (I also curate instantly by retweeting and sharing on Facebook -- tagging is more for the longer content.)

I use both Diigo and Evernote to save and tag content. I use Diigo primarily as my "public" bookmarks and Evernote primarily for my "private" bookmarks. In other words, if I am collecting a list of examples or additional resources that I'd want to make available during a webinar, I would use a tag to create that list of links in Diigo. If I am saving something that I might want to quote in a blog post or a book, or incorporate into a training, I tend to save those with my own personal notes, in an Evernote notebook.

I've tried to get more consistent over time about the tags I use in both systems, but it's still definitely a work in progress. I also use some of the same tags in my Gmail account (where they are called labels), although I'm trying to get better about moving the stuff I really want to keep into Evernote (you can email things into Evernote notebooks directly, which is nice.)

I tag everything I save with at least one topic tag (e.g. Facebook, fundraising, etc.), but whenever possible, I also include a tag that reminds me of what I intend to use that content for, such as our Mixed Links round-up blog posts -- which brings us to the third part of my approach.

Intent

I find it very helpful to categorize content and ideas by how I intend to use them -- or at least how I think I'll use them the first time. For me, this breaks down into the primary communications channels where we do longer content (email newsletter, blog, and website) as well as training content (webinars, workshops, e-books) and paperback book chapters. This is especially true for Mixed Links on the blog, which is 90% curated content.

I've found that if I don't tag the content I save by intent that I often don't get back to it, or when I do, I don't remember exactly how I intended to use that particular piece. And that means it just sits there, saved but not really curated as content out to our community.

What's Next . . .

You may have noticed that I don't really talk about keyword searches here as a way to find content to curate,  which is another common strategy. That's mostly because I get plenty of content from what I am already doing. But I do occasionally check out some custom Twitter searches on keyword phrases that I have set up in Hootsuite. That sometimes leads to new voices that I (and the smarties I normally rely on) would have otherwise missed.

Here are some additional tips on sharing all that content you've save for curation.