Developing, hosting and maintaining a website is a costly
process that most NGOs simply cannot afford. However, there is a great
alternative that can drum up just as much publicity as a website would, but for free.
By Cassy van Eeden
When used effectively, blogs are fantastic tools for
fundraising, marketing, eliciting calls to action, sharing best practices or
even influencing policy makers. So what makes an effective NGO blog?
Target a community,
not an audience
As with any marketing strategy, it is important to remain cognisant
of who your audience is and how your efforts are being perceived by them.
However, as Jennifer Lentfer, founder of how-matters.org and senior writer for
Oxfam America,
points out, when it comes to blogging as an NGO, you need to think differently
about your audience than any other brand would. “So that NGOs don’t turn people off, blogging requires a
much more keen consciousness of audience segmentation,” she says.
“NGOs often need to be much more specific about the purpose
of blogging and relate this to differing key audiences,” says Lentfer. Identifying why you want people to read your blog
should come before identifying who
you want to read your blog, she adds.
The goal when developing a blog for your NGO is to create a
community rather than speak to an audience. Lentfer says, “A successful blog has a built readership of people
who come back again and again.”
Breathe life into
your content
Roger Burks, manager of the notoriously successful NGO blog
for Mercy Corps, says that blogs are an opportunity to add colour, depth and a
human touch to marketing material.
Burks says that more often than not, NGO blogs use the “same
exact words and sentiments that fill reports and brochures buried in dusty
drawers, often transcribed verbatim onto websites – and your readers know it”.
“A blog is an opportunity not only
to change static into dynamic, but also discover and share voices from your
organisation,” he says. “There are increadible possibilities of finding stories
[within your organisation] that will make it onto your website, strengthen your
brand, power your social media, and give your communications the authenticity
they’ve lacked since, probably, forever.”
Lentfer adds that NGOs need to broaden their
understanding of the kinds of content that can be published on a blog. “Authors can share brief snippets of text, quick thoughts or anecdotes, photographs,
infographics, video or audio conversations, interviews, Q&As, reviews,
how-to’s, or round-ups of articles, links or quotes you find interesting from
the week.”
“Expanding your notion of what a blog is, helps to vary the
content that will keep readers, and your community of bloggers, engaged,” she
says.
Tell meanigful stories
One of the unique things that you have access to as an NGO
is stories. A blog that tells the story of the people that the NGO caters to is
more likely to attract positive attention than one that simply disseminates
basic information about the organisation.
“It’s all about telling the human impact – how it affects
real people,” says Andy Shipley, news editor of Plan UK. Shipley explains that, “The sheer scale of many of the
crises affecting the world today seem insurmountable and incomprehensible.”
This may make readers feel helpless and as if any contribution that they may
make would make no difference.
The solution here, says Shipley, is to “relay the stories of
individuals and how we can help them help themselves”.
Burks adds that the most powerful content you can have on
your blog is stories that “opt for humanity of high concept; those that draw
parallels between people and explore kinship.”
Have we left anything out? Is there anything else that NGOs
need to consider when blogging? Let us know in the comments below.