An editorial calendar is an essential tool for all nonprofit communications directors. We know that the most effective nonprofits use one consistently and that 80% of nonprofits use some sort of editorial calendar. If you aren’t using an editorial calendar or not using one as effectively as you could, odds are you are hung up on which…
The 2019 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report found that the most successful nonprofit communicators were putting significantly more emphasis on content marketing than less effective organizations. For the most effective nonprofits, 24% consider content marketing an essential strategy, with only 5% saying it’s a low priority. That compares to a mere 11% of the less effective…
For the ninth edition of the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, I wanted to go deeper into the communications goals and strategies nonprofits were using. I assumed that organizations with fewer high priority goals and strategies would be more effective. My educated guess was wrong. The most effective organizations reported what I originally thought was a…
We want to add a new member to the Nonprofit Marketing Guide crew. Please share this with your freelance graphic designer friends! Nonprofit Marketing Guide LLC is seeking a graphic designer for a variety of projects, including Graphics for email promotions, landing pages, and online advertising Iconography for sections of our website and various training…
It’s a management maxim: We measure what we care about, and we care about what we measure. So if you want your executive management team and/or board to care more about marketing and communications, are you doing your part by suggesting how they measure your communications work? Odds are extremely low that they will come…
Most nonprofit communicators consider themselves to be good writers. But what really sets apart the great writers in the nonprofit world is mastery of seven distinct types of copywriting. 1. Microcontent Microcontent refers to the short but powerful pieces of copy you find in headlines, subject lines, captions, and tweets. 2. Storytelling Nonprofit storytelling refers…
In previous posts, we’ve shared the most common marketing and communications goals, strategies, and objectives for nonprofits. Today, let’s complete the list by talking about tactics. Tactics are the tools you use to pursue the objectives associated with your strategy. Tactics include both communications channels like email, PR and social media, as well as specific types…
“There’s no there there.” ~ Gertrude Stein The same is true with many nonprofit communications strategies. There’s no strategy in the strategy! Watch today’s Facebook video for an explanation and some next steps. Is Your Nonprofit Communications Strategy Missing the Actual Strategy? You have a lot of goals and tactics in your communications plan, but where's…
We’ve rebooted the CALM not BUSY Book Club this week, and I would love for more people to join us! Instead of treating the book club like a traditional reading club, we are focusing on how you apply #CALMnotBUSY in the real world. Each week, I’m posting a challenging scenario based on real stories from…
In previous posts, I’ve shared with you the twelve most common nonprofit marketing and communications goals and the twelve most common nonprofit marketing and communications strategies. Today let’s talk about the types of objectives you should have in your communications plan. Objectives are the SMART steps you take to achieve a strategy, and at Nonprofit Marketing…
If you are on Instagram or Pinterest at all, you can’t help but run into a lot of hygge-inspired photography. (The photo at the top of this post isn’t mine, but the smaller ones below are.) Hygge is the Danish concept of coziness, comfort, warmth, and charm that gets Danes through the long, cold, dark winters. It’s…
Here’s another quick peek at the data coming in for the 2019 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report (take the survey here). This data could change, so if you are reading this after mid-January 2019, download the full report. For the first time, we asked about specific communications strategies. Not goals, not tactics, but strategies. Of our…
