Ep 269 | Content 101

Let's go on a journey through the essentials of blogging and content creation. If you're at the starting line or aiming to refine your current process, there's something valuable here for you. You'll learn why content is so important, why your whole team should be involved, and how to make it craveable so your audience wants more.

What you'll learn:

→ Why creating regular content is crucial for nonprofits
→ How to build a collaborative content marketing strategy
→ Tips for creating effective, repurposable content
→ Tools and resources to make the content creation process faster and easier

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[01:36] The importance of driving new content value to your website on a regular basis. Regular updates not only keep your audience engaged but also improve your site's SEO, making it easier for potential supporters to find you online.
[03:36] How blogs can be a valuable asset for your Google Ad Grant efforts. By creating content that aligns with your ad keywords, you can drive more targeted traffic to your site and maximize the impact of your grant.
[07:41] The need for cross-team collaboration to generate relevant content ideas. By leveraging diverse perspectives and expertise, you can generate a wealth of relevant and engaging content ideas that resonate with different segments of your audience.
[09:21] Strategies for repurposing existing content like podcasts and videos as blog posts. Whether it's turning podcast episodes into blog posts or creating articles from video transcripts, repurposing allows you to maximize the value of your content and reach a broader audience.

Resources

EP 259 | Setting Up Your Website to Maximize the Google Ad Grant

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
It's August, and we're talking all things blogging and content creation. And I'm so excited for this month, we have some great topics coming at you. And this is something we've talked about a lot on this podcast. But today, I'm going to be giving you kind of a little blogging content one on one, why are we creating this content? How can we kind of streamline it with our teams? You know, how do we come up with ideas, just kind of a big overview on a lot of different things around blogging, specifically, or long form content creation. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. And if you're kind of just getting started out, or you know, this is something you should be doing, but you're not doing it yet. Or if you have new team members, your team is growing, and you just want to kind of know how to beef it up a little bit. This is a great episode for you. So I'm super excited about it. But before we get into it, new month, new freebie and today, or I should say this month, I'm excited that we have a guide for you to help you make writing content faster. So I have 11 tools that I'll be sharing with you, to help you with your editing with your creation with your project management. So you can download this guide at thefirstclick.net/resources packed with tools that are great, we're all parts of the process when it comes to developing content. So I really hope that you enjoy it. And if that's not the one for you, that's fine. We have new freebies that have been coming out every single month. So still head on over to thefirstclick.net/resources to snag the one that's gonna be most helpful for where you're at with your digital fundraising. Let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Okay, so first things first, why would we want to even blog in the first place? Right, blogging is dead, you hear this, and it could be whatever. So this doesn't have to be blogging, I'm going to use that as an example. But it could be long form, video content videos, you're publishing on YouTube, it could be podcasts and show notes that you're putting on your website. So it doesn't really matter. But what we want to do is be driving new content value, add content to your website on a regular basis. So what does that look like, I do things weekly, not something you have to do, especially if you're just getting started. It can be monthly, but I would definitely recommend monthly at a minimum. And this is so that people that are coming to your website have new information and content to consume. It builds you as a trusted, trusted resource, a thought leader, somebody who knows about what you're doing, why you were the one to solve the problem that you're solving, all of that good stuff. It also tells search engines a little bit more about you and what you do, and allows them to be able to index those pages and show you in search organically, right? Especially if you're doing your keyword research. And you're talking about topics that you know people are looking for. It's really going to help you with your development team. And as you're doing outreach, to have these resources ready to go where somebody has an objection, then they can just send them the hey, we've got this great article that we wrote, why don't you take a look at it, all of those great things. And it's really good for the Google Ad grant.

So we just did a brief episode about the Google Ad Grant, like pull it up, I just had it up and I lost it. But that is episode 259. And in that episode, we talked about getting your website ready for the Google Ad grant. So you definitely want to check that out. But blogs are a great resource for that, specifically. So your $10,000 in ad spend with Google, pushing people to your blog is a great way to get them engaged with your organization and understanding who you are, what you do, and diving deeper into what you do. So we'll link up episode 259 in the show notes for you. So that you can check that out as well if you're interested in that, but it's really just a great opportunity for you to be present top of mind. And it really builds your the rest of your digital marketing kind of platform. Now you can pull your social media posts from it. You can create your email newsletters from it, you can build out your text campaigns. If you're doing that. You have more reasons to reach out to individuals you've been networking with. If you write on a topic that you know that you've discussed with them, hey, you know, we were talking about this a month or two ago, we just created this great article. I'd love for you to see it. So it just gives you more reasons for touchpoints. So when you're online and offline marketing, and communications, these can be great opera Unity's for you have something to talk about and share your expertise. So that is the why from all sides.

But then the next question that we get is, it's just too hard to get it done. We can't do it consistently. And even if you don't have a dedicated marketing person, or even if you do, or if you don't, a lot of times, what I hear from organizations is, well, that's not my job. So what I recommend is really having a person who is in charge of the actual completion of the project management, responsible for the timelines, the deadlines, coming up with some topic ideas, putting the whole thing together, the approval process, kind of how all that flows. But then really, it's the whole team's job to help with creation of the content and the and the ideas. And I say this to a lot of organizations, and they'll end your program and your services, people will say, No, no, I'm out in the field, I'm doing the work, it is not my responsibility, or the development, people say, Well, I'm the one who's talking to the donors all the time, I'm responsible for raising funds, this isn't my responsibility. And so here's my challenge to you that if you have one person dedicated to the actual creation of the content, I highly recommend that you build a culture in your organization of collaboration when it comes to ideas for what you're talking about. And here's why. If you're with donors, and you're talking to the community on a regular basis, or you're on the programmatic side, and you're seeing what's happening on a regular basis, you're seeing the impact, you're seeing the growth, that needs to be shared with the person who's in charge of kind of coming up with the ideas, because as a marketer, I can come up with ideas all day long. But if you're the development person, you're hearing specific objections on the regular right, you're hearing. If people are saying no, and you're asking why. And it will maybe you don't do this, or we don't think that this is a program that we support. And then they say, Well, no, but we do that. Well, we didn't know that you did that. Right. So those are great things to add as blog posts and things for you to promote, right, you're hearing the same things over and over again, those are great topics to write about. And so while the development person doesn't need to write it, the marketing person is never going to know because they're not having those types of conversations. Same on the programmatic and services side, if you're out in the community, and you're doing this great work, you're getting this great feedback, you hear people are super excited about X, or they've experienced this kind of transformation, or they love this part of the program the most, your marketing person isn't necessarily going to know that unless you tell them.

And so that's really kind of the framework that we need to the mindset that we need to bring our teams in together on is, yes, the marketing person, or whoever that is, whatever that title is, is responsible for it. But by coming together on a regular and brainstorming some of these topics, by the marketing person asking specific questions like hey, did you have a great experience? What's going on with this? And just kind of, you don't have to be the marketer in your brain to say, okay, how am I going to twist this? Or is this a good piece, but just share what's going on with them so that they can say, Okay, that's great. That matches up with some of the other things that we're working on with the campaigns, yada, yada, yada, let's pull that together, I think that would be a great topic, and then they can run with it from there. And so that's really the mindset thing. And the culture thing that I see in a lot of organizations where the marketing person works in a silo. And so it's really hard for them to develop and create some of the things that are really going to be impactful. I feel like my job when I'm working with nonprofits, is really to make the development director's job easier. And I can do that by making sure that we have materials and content on the website on social media that's backing up, what they've got going on the campaigns that they're doing, the programs that they're running, the way that they're kind of building relationships with their donors. But I can't do that without that collaborative effort from the team, kind of sharing that that process. And so as you go, you'll get better at asking questions. The thing that I hate the most is when marketers show up and say, I gotta write a blog next week, somebody tell me,

You're gonna get crickets. But if you can come with some ideas and say, Hey, we've got some blog posts that are coming up in the next few weeks, I would love to have a donor story. I would love to have impact statement, I would love to have some new updates or stats about the work we're doing whatever that might be, be specific, and you'll get better quality feedback from the team. And as the leader of your organization, I really think that it's up to you to build that culture of collaboration with regards to how the marketers are able to promote the organization through blog content, through the social media posts and content creation, all the things that you're going to hear this week. This month are going to be really fantastic as far as helping you get more visibility. But that visibility doesn't matter if it's really not the stuff that's going to make the biggest impact for your organization, the messaging isn't correct, if the topics aren't leading to the bigger picture. Okay, so that's really kind of what I wanted to make sure to talk about today. Because I think with all things marketing, if we're not working as a team, and we don't understand the purpose behind it, then it doesn't really make sense. And I love long form content from the standpoint of it can drive the rest of your digital marketing, if you start to focus on consistency there, it can really drive the rest of your marketing for a long time. So if you have a blog, that's easy, put it up, we want to see you know, 750 to 1500 words, of great content formatted so it's easy to skim food images, make it a good experience, a fun experience, always include a strong call to action, whatever that makes sense, whatever makes the most sense, for that piece of content, it might be the donation page, likely it's going to be an opt in to get on the email list, which is what I would recommend, because then you can continue to update them on things that are happening. If you've got a podcast like I do, shownotes, go on the website, I have my audio files, I have my transcripts, all of that is on there, which creates a nice, nice meaty post for me. I also repurpose my podcasts into blog posts with additional information, which is also great. If you have a YouTube video. Again, similar is how you would do it with podcast, create some key takeaways and timestamps and like a summary, include the transcript, put it on your website. So whatever type of content you're creating already, you don't need to create new, put it on your website, use it as a blog post, and then push it out through all of the channels that you're doing with your digital marketing work as a team to come up with the ideas that are going to most benefit the people that are out in the community, supporting organization and increasing your impact. So I hope that this short episode was helpful that it kind of got you back in the groove and excited about creating content and utilizing it across platforms. And I really hope that you enjoy the rest of these episodes this month, as you kind of build out your content strategy. Okay. And don't forget to go check out the freebie with 11 tools to help you streamline this process and make it faster and easier and more effective. For now, I hope that you will check out the show notes. At thefirstclick.net/help you think I'd be ready /269. Thefirstclick.net/269. That's where you can find all the information, additional resources and podcast episodes from this episode. Please hit that subscribe button wherever you listen and leave us a review. Comment on the video. If you found something to be super helpful. I'd love to chat and connect with you. But thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you spending time with me every week and I will see you in the next one.