When you want someone to do something, you have to ask. And how you ask matters. Whether it’s clicking on a button or link to donate, volunteer, register or do anything else, when someone takes that action online, we call it a conversion. Conversion copywriting is one of the seven writing styles that all nonprofit…
News Writing is one of the seven writing styles that all nonprofit communicators should master. In the world of nonprofit comms superlatives, news writing wins for the “Writing Style Used Most Often When It Shouldn’t Be.” Too often, nonprofits write about their issues, programs, and events in a straight news style when they would be…
Writing for nonprofits is different than writing for other kinds of organizations. We are often trying to accomplish many different things with nonprofit content, and depending on the goal and the intended reader, the style of writing will change. In fact, we believe there are seven essential writing styles that nonprofit communicators should master. With…
You want others to get the word out about you and your cause. You want them to be talking about you. It’s the start of going viral – the holy grail of marketers everywhere. Everyone wants to know how to make that happen. There are lots of articles out there about upping your chances of…
For the last couple of weeks, I have shared tips and resources on nonprofit storytelling. Catch up: Why Stories Are Important for Nonprofits Storytelling for Nonprofits: The Challenge Plot Storytelling for Nonprofits: The Creativity Plot Storytelling for Nonprofits: The Connection Plot To wrap up this little series, I wanted to share a free resource we…
The quest is on to find the best nonprofit blogs. With apologies to amazing voices such as Vu Le and Beth Kanter (and the founder of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, Kivi Leroux Miller), this search doesn’t include those who write blogs about nonprofits. This is an effort to find great blogs produced by nonprofits themselves. Blogs…
We’re wrapping up our Storytelling Series based on the marketing book, Made to Stick (Amazon link) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath today. We have broken down the Challenge Plot and the Creativity Plot and how nonprofits can use them in their stories. Today we look at: The Connection Plot Of the three different story plots, this one is…
Welcome back to our Storytelling Series based on the marketing book, Made to Stick (Amazon link) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Last week we looked at the Challenge Plot which is similar to a lot of Hollywood movies – hero faces adversity and triumphs in the end! Today we look at: The Creativity Plot Creativity stories create…
A few weeks ago I shared Why Stories Are Important for Nonprofits and promised some more ideas on how to actually write those stories. In their marketing book, Made to Stick (Amazon link), Chip Heath and Dan Heath identify three different types of inspirational stories: the Challenge Plot, the Creativity Plot and the Connection Plot. They each have…
“A story is a fact, wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transforms our world.” – Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman in The Elements of Persuasion Starting in March, I will share more on how to write stories, but today we get down to the basics in case storytelling isn’t…
Using photos or graphics in your communications is an important strategy. But there are times and places where you have to rely on words alone to create a scene and engage your reader. Microcontent, as defined by Jakob Nielsen, is short content that needs to be immediately clear and inviting to a reader, and which still make sense…
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…
