Helping you win loyal friends through your communications
Novelists hate the question, but bloggers have to face it: where do your ideas come from? When you’re blogging anywhere from once a week to once a day, coming up with inspiration is hard work.
Here are the best places you can find ideas for your blog, courtesy of our friends at Bloomerang.
I’ll be talking more about how to get ideas—and readers—for your blog on December 10, when I give a webinar for Bloomerang: The No-Nonsense Guide to Blogging. Register now!
Is your nonprofit’s blog mostly about your nonprofit organization? Then there’s a reason your audience is so small!
I know. You’re proud that you made the effort to create a blog at all. You work really hard at posting something every week. But who’s reading anything you post?
Take this advice from Jayson DeMers, a Forbes magazine contributor:
Ask yourself a few questions: What are your favorite types of blogs? Which ones do you subscribe to and look forward to reading? Which ones do you consider a good use of your valuable time?
Although I can’t guess which specific blogs are your favorites, I think I can predict, with a good deal of accuracy, which types of blogs aren’t on your list:
- Those that are exclusively about products or services
- Those that are constantly and explicitly trying to sell you something
- Those that are essentially a platform for the business or blogger to broadcast their marketing message
Let’s translate that into nonprofit.
No one has to read your blog. Your board members may read it just to see what you’re doing. Your most loyal friends may read it because they care. But most people have too many other things competing for their time. Unless they can see right away what’s in it for them, they will go elsewhere for their fun.Continue Reading
Your writing can deliver the sun!
All right, I’m taking a poll here. You receive a newsletter in the mail from someone with whom you do business. Which of these opening paragraphs makes you want to read the rest of the newsletter?
Choice #1:
We are constantly striving to improve our service to our customers and our referral partners. This is a tough industry and it is hard to define good customer service when providing an extremely regulated, highly technical and complicated service.
Choice #2:
Recently, some of us were lucky enough to be sent on an award trip to the Four Seasons in Palm Beach by our parent company. One of my coworkers was teasing one of the pool folks that it was their job to deliver the sun–moments before a sudden shower drove her back to her room. Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at her door and she was presented with oranges sliced into sun shapes and lemon cookies with a note that said, “I told you, you could count on me to deliver the sun” signed, Chris, assistant pool and beach manager.
I’ll bet I know which one you chose.
Choice #2 wins hands down, right? But why?
So why do so many of us go with Choice #1? Look at your own newsletter, or appeal letter, or even the last email you wrote. Be honest. Are you bringing them oranges and lemon cookies sliced into sun shapes, or are you making them trudge through a long stretch of shifting sand before getting to the point?
Someone once said that the key to writing a good book is to write what comes to mind and then throw away the first two pages. When you are writing for your organization, consider throwing away the first two paragraphs.
Do whatever it takes to bring them the sun.