1993 was a strange year for me. I was the most awkward freshman on St. Joseph’s University’s campus in Philadelphia. Or any college campus throughout history. Perhaps even the history of dorkiness.
As a high school half-miler, but not a successful one, I looked up to the runners who got up at 5 am to race for the Division 1 cross-country and track teams. Jeff Long was one of our top stars.
Jeff and Scott Ely, his VP for Operations, explained the challenge of scaling the phenomenal growth they had seen from word-of-mouth referrals to scalable and predictable success. They faced marketing.
Content marketing drives growth for non-profits.
Sharing your stories is the first step. Real people. Amazing things.
Healthy Kids boosted their blog with employee perspectives, profiles of successful community coordinators, partnerships with organizations that shared healthy smoothie recipes for children from Mom Junction, and curated content from the CDC about how to keep kids’ health running.
But how about the results?
Scott Ely, VP of Operations at Healthy Kids, stated that their website referral traffic increased from 5% to 48%. In less than a year, they saw a nearly 10X increase in website referrals!
Even though they have made minor website adjustments to emphasize the blog content, most of the content is provided by volunteers, partners, and coordinators.
9 Steps To Develop Your Non-Profit Content Marketing Plan
How can content marketing be used to achieve similar results?
Non-profit organizations often face budget challenges. How can you maximize your marketing budget to increase awareness and gain support for your non-profit?
As we have seen, Content marketing is a cost-effective and efficient way to promote your initiative and build meaningful connections with the audience. It also helps to drive desired actions by creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to key stakeholders such as your members, supporters, and donors.
How do you start? These nine tips will help you create a successful content marketing program for your non-profit without spending a lot of money.
Document Your Content Marketing Strategy
A documented content marketing strategy is key to distinguishing successful non-profits from those less effective in content marketing.
According to the Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks. Budgets and Trends report by Content Marketing Institute, 42% have a documented content strategy and an editorial mission statement.
Your editorial mission statement should identify your target audience, what your content will do for them, and finally, what the desired outcome is.
Your content marketing strategy is your content roadmap which helps you plan, implement and measure your efforts. These should include your key objectives and target audience. Content topics and types are essential. Publishing schedules, promotion plans, and measurement metrics are also necessary. We’ll be discussing some of these in the following tips.