If you don’t have time for content marketing, you haven’t tried this
Who hasn’t gotten tired of constantly seeing promotional emails in your inbox? There’s a reason Gmail puts those in a completely separate tab so you can ignore them. But what if you’re that person on the other end of it—sending nothing but promotions to your email list or social media followers? Without a content marketing strategy that’s what we become.
There’s good news: you don’t have to be that person.
Last month I wrote about conducting a brand audit because it helps education nonprofit organizations have a clear direction on continuing innovation and staying top-of-mind to their community. The brand audit helps focus on the “why” of your organization and is the foundation for a content marketing strategy.
65% of the most effective nonprofits say content marketing is an essential or high priority but only 47% of the less effective nonprofits do.*
Sometimes it’s hard to spend time on content marketing because you may not big results right away. Even if people clicked links in your email or shared an article, but sometimes that doesn’t feel like enough. It is more than enough, though, because this is a long-term strategy to engage people and provide them with valuable and interesting reading. When you do ask them for something, it’s OK because you’ve been doing something for them, too.
I’ll help you do this with a quick and easy editorial plan to help you stay on track and make the time for content marketing.
Five Quick Steps to a Content Marketing Plan
1. Keep topic ideas on whatever works best for you—Trello, post it notes, Google docs. Include the good and not-so-good ideas. If you are out of ideas, keep reading anything and everything, whether it’s relevant to your work or not. Or get outside. Both will help.
2. Look at each idea in more detail. Does it ideas fit with your brand and is it relevant? Keep the brand audit handy for referral. Why are you in the work that you do? Maybe it’s equity or educating youth about the environment. Whatever it is, keep laser-focused on that subject.
3. Who is this for? I like it when organizations have a few “buyer personas” or specific examples of people they target. It makes it easier to write to that “person” than it is to write to a general audience.
4. Keep a list of sources bookmarked so you can share good articles with your followers.
5. Timeline—how often can you publish?
Last, but not least, document this plan. The segments of your plan are topic ideas, target reader, source list, and timeline. I hope that this is helpful and that you have some fun with it.
Need help? See another blog on using content marketing to grow commitment to your cause or please email me.
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