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G’day! A Nonprofit Tale of Two Nations

December 12, 2013 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Does your nonprofit organization want to be known and respected?  Why, and by whom?

The answer may vary by country–and how you answer determines how you should communicate with your supporters.

I recently spoke with Chris Gandy, a colleague and the founder of the Australian consulting firm Cause and Effective.  In Australia, it is common for not-for-profits to compete to receive funding from the government.  Few of these organizations obtain a significant portion of their budget by fundraising from the public.

That means that content marketing in Australia is aimed at a very specific audience.  The people that our friends Down Under want to impress with their organizations’ expertise are what we in the U.S. would call bureaucrats.  This audience expects subject-matter knowledge, well-substantiated claims, and detailed evidence that taxpayer money will be spent appropriately.

In the U.S., government is still the biggest source of funds for nonprofits, but its share is declining.  Over the last dozen years, I have seen nonprofits increasingly market themselves to donors, community-minded businesses, and philanthropic foundations.

These givers ask first, “What difference do you make?”, and only then, “How much do you know?”  And the rule of thumb in the U.S. is to win hearts first.  Once people want to support you, they will look for reasons to do it–and by providing those reasons, you clinch the deal.

Of course, bureaucrats have hearts, and donors have heads.  But getting the balance between the two right is crucial.

At your nonprofit organization, are you more American or Australian?  Which is more important to you: your prestige in your field, or your brand loyalty among your supporters?

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Should You Worry about SEO?

December 5, 2013 by Dennis Fischman 1 Comment

You get them by email.  You see them as comments on your blog.  You read them through the Contact Us section of your website.  And they want you to worry.

They’re the SEO fearmongers.

My wife Rona Fischman opened an email that began politely, “I thought you might like to know some of the reasons why you are not  getting enough search engine & social media traffic on your website.”  It went on–mostly in bold blue font that screamed from the page–to list the same useless advice that she and I have both seen from search engine optimizers over and over again.

Why useless?  Because it’s generic.  The fearmongers don’t know you and they don’t know your audience.  Here are three reasons not to worry about SEO:

  • You might not need to be found.  If you’re a nonprofit, these days you may already be serving more clients than you can handle!  If you’re a referral-based business, random searches are the equivalent of cold calls.  They’re low-percentage sources.  Why attract people who may never do business with you when you can spend the time and money attracting people who already want your services?
  • Social media may do better for you than search.  If you do need to be found, wouldn’t you rather be found in good company? People are not just Googling “realtor” (for instance) and calling the first on the list.  Instead, they’re asking their friends to recommend someone.   Facebook or Yelp may be more important to you than Google or Bing.
  • What do they find when they get there?  Improving the content on your website may get you better results for less money than increasing the number of people who ever happen to take a look at it.  Spend your resources on content creation and content marketing.

You shouldn’t worry about SEO–but paying just a little bit of attention to it might be worth your while.  Here’s a piece I wrote about “How To Get Found: SEO and the Small Nonprofit.”  It includes ten tips on getting more eyeballs to your site.  But most of them are not SEO.

Don’t worry, be effective!

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Can Your Nonprofit Learn from Coca-Cola?

November 5, 2013 by Dennis Fischman 2 Comments

Running a nonprofit is harder than running a business.  Still, nonprofits can learn lessons for free that corporations have spent a lot of money to learn.

Coca-Cola ad

Coke can give your nonprofit ideas

Take Coca-Cola, for example.  If your nonprofit were as widely known as Coke, you’d have a lot easier time attracting “customers” (clients, donors, and funders). How do they do it, and can you do the same?

Things Go Better with Content Marketing

Jeff Bullas reports that Coke now sees content marketing as the key to its outreach.  Content marketing means you don’t push your message out so much as attract your audience in.  Give people information that matters to them and you will draw supporters closer to your cause.

Coke is betting the farm that they can

develop content that makes a commitment to making the world a better place and to develop value and significance in people’s lives…while at the same time driving business objectives for Coca-Cola.

If Coke can do well by doing good, why not you?

Content Marketing Lessons You Can Bottle

Here are five lessons we can learn from Coke.  Jeff Bullas listed, and I translated them into nonprofit.

  1. Create “liquid content.”  No, you’re not going into the soft drink business!  “Liquid content” means stuff that people love and can’t wait to share.  Whether you create an article, a video, a graphic, or an online game, make people glad they saw it.  (That means you have to know your audience.)
  2. Ensure your content is linked to your mission, goals, and values.  It’s not enough that they love it.  It has to fit what you do as an organization.  People may love that cat video, but what does it have to do with your homeless shelter?
  3. Create conversations.  Don’t just publish. Interact with your audience. They’re asking questions online: do you have answers? They’re commenting on a topic you care about too. Reply.  And let what they say give you ideas for more content.
  4. Move on to dynamic storytelling.  This means you allow the story to evolve as you interact with your supporters. If you are truly engaged with them, they will care more about you.
  5. Be brave and creative with your content creation.  Sure, 70% of what you put out may be tried and true.  20% of it may be new but based on what has already worked.  But 10% of your time, experiment.  Try a new form–video or radio instead of writing–or a new medium–what is this thing called Google+–or an idea that’s a little off the wall.

Be prepared to fail sometimes.  Remember New Coke?  Not that many people do.  If you try something that doesn’t work, people will forget…and you will learn.  And you will come up with the real thing.

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