Content marketing for non-profits and member based organisations
Does your organisation publish content on LinkedIn?
Do your members go to your website to lookup the latest article you created?
Did you recently post your organisation’s latest news on Facebook?
Is your organisation using Twitter or tumblr? Or Instagram?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, was there a strategy behind this content? Whilst it’s relatively simple to post links, publish a blog article and add new items for your organisation, ensuring that they all link to your goals can be easily forgotten.
Although this content might make you more visible is it bringing you new members, is it retaining your current members by answering their questions and giving them the support they need?
If the answer is no, you need to re-think your content marketing strategy. In building a strategy around your business goals, the needs/wants of your members should be driving your content marketing, and not content alone.
Here are some questions to think about:
- What are the needs of your members?
- What are your strategic goals?
- How do you add value to your members?
- How can you successfully deliver and address your members’ needs?
- How can you build trust and relationships with your members?
How can you ensure you evolve in line with their needs? Building your strategy around your business goals and members needs should be holistic and ensure your organisation is thinking ‘with one head’. Before you publish/post/add think about the following:
- How will this help your strategic progress?
- What value will this be to your members?
- Will this drive conversations?
- Is this aligned with your organisations goals?
Currently there is a buzz around social media becoming too congested with content marketing and we could be witnessing a bubble on the verge of collapse. This buzz could be helping to drive organisations to deliver more content, to be heard above the rest and adding to ‘the noise’, instead of focusing on what is important to the organisation.
What’s more, now that we’re all having to spend ever more of our working lives online, the risk of information overload is at an all-time high. The imperative is to stand out from the crowd and to be talking to your audiences about the topics they’re interested in, otherwise you’ll simply be ignored.
Creating a content strategy will help you to have a clear and consistent voice and also ensure you aren’t publishing content that is useless to your audiences and isn’t growth-driven.
A Content Strategy shouldn’t be complex; it centres on an overall model comprising:
- Having objectives you’re seeking to achieve
- Defining your key audiences
- Producing specific, tailored content for those key audiences
- Delivering that content on the channels and in the formats they prefer
- Monitoring performance and tuning accordingly
Lastly here are some tips for future content marketing:
- Ensure content is of the highest quality
- Be in sync with your organisation
- Be boring (as long as you are serving the needs of your members)
- Change is good (as long as it is progress)
- Listen to your members
- Be committed and consistent
If you’re ready to build out your strategy, we can help! Talk to us about our range of strategic development services including digital, social, business and technology.
