Tag Archives: seo

Content Strategy Recommendations for Charities and other Nonprofits

content strategy session for charities
I was recently asked to deliver a content strategy workshop for a gathering of small charities to help them ‘Create Amazing Content’ with limited resource. Building the workshop required quite a bit of research and was a fantastic opportunity to explore some of the challenges faced by the sector in, not only creating effective websites, but also persuading audiences to take a specific action. I thought I’d highlight some of the articles I’d read to build the workshop – there really is some brilliant work being done out there by various charity digital teams. I salute you all.
 
My research into the charity sector soon became a study of the art of persuasion, how we can use content to influence and activate a passive audience. There are loads of great articles online about persuasion but I found the article by CopyBlogger and Hillary Skeffington of particular interest.
 
I also found the notion of demonstrating impact pretty central to your purpose as a charity. This might sound obvious, but I found many charity websites ‘explained the need’ (i.e. why you should donate) but then forgot to spell out the impact they were making. I must then absolutely recommend this article by Paull Young from Charity:Water. Read the article and then explore their website – loads of great examples of best practice there.
 
Staying with Charity:Water there was also this article looking at how Charity:Water value trust – an important commodity in our world of FAKE NEWS. 
 
Lastly, here’s some useful resources for any nonprofit organisation looking to make improvements to their digital offering. From SEO to various case studies, I hope these help anyone researching into this sector.
 

So there you have it, a brief skim through some of the charity content strategy articles I found over the past few weeks. Let me know if you have other resources you’d like to share in the comments below!

Friday #Content Reads: 13.5.16

Here’s a selection of my best content strategy reads over the last week. Enjoy!

Announcing Keyword Explorer: Moz’s New Keyword Research Tool
Interesting new tool from Moz.com. I’m not entirely sure if this does anything over and above a basic understanding of Google’s Keyword Planner but it’s a nice introduction to keyword research if you’ve never done this before.

One month in: Four things The New York Times has learned using Facebook Live
I thought this was a fantastic insight into what NYT has been doing with Facebook Live. P.S, here’s what we’ve been up to on LBC and We The Unicorns…


Internet Video Views Is A 100 Percent Bullshit Metric
The validity of Facebook’s success metric is up for debate again this week. A useful reminder I think, of what makes true video engagement – otherwise we’re all going to end up exploding watermelons.

Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
I‘m sure you all read this story which resulted in Facebook publishing their editorial guidelines for their Trending module. As someone who has advised on editorial Code of Conducts in the past, I’ve found the whole issue fascinating. It looks like Facebook is recognising the need for more publisher transparency – although I’m sure it would deny it was a publisher.

3 charts that show the very different news audiences for mobile web and apps
Read this to understand the different kind of engagement across mobile web and app.

And lastly, thanks to Classic FM for unearthing this video of Prince this week. I’ve had the tune in my head all week…

Friday #Content Reads: 28.04.16

joe haldeman debut novel

Hi Gang! I’ve just spent a delightful couple of weeks restoring my blog after meddling with the database too often. Lesson learnt. Moving forward I’ll aim to curate a list of my most interesting content strategy reads this week.

Here goes….

Your Media Business Will Not Be SavedJoshua Topolsky
Interesting to see how the industry is now revisiting the monetisation vs quality debate…
“So over time, we built up scale in digital to replace user value. We thought we could solve with numbers (the new, seemingly infinite numbers the internet and social media provides) what we couldn’t solve with attention. And with every new set of eyeballs (or clicks, or views) we added, we diminished the merit of what we made. And advertisers asked for more, because those eyes were worth less. And we made more. And it was less valuable.”

Things I learned working on SerialKristen Taylor
Some interesting tips here for how to social your audio and engage your community between episodes. And if you haven’t read about that NPR audio experiment here you are.

What Networks Does BuzzFeed Actually Use? Zack Liscio
Nice infographic here of the Buzzed distribution strategy. Now presented in a million strategy presentations around the world.

2016 guide to free online SEO training courses
I thought this was a really good resource for journalists. From beginner to intermediate level.

Although I do have to admit that my most interesting read has been this bad boy. Probably the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read.

Boom!

forever_war