Content Marketing & Non-Profits : Tell Your Story, Tell Your Outcomes.
Attention all non-profit organizations! Have you ever considered the power of content marketing in achieving your mission and goals? Content marketing is a highly effective strategy for reaching and engaging with your target audience, and it can make a significant impact on your organization's success.
By creating valuable and informative content, such as blog posts, social media updates, and videos, you can establish your organization as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with your audience. This trust can then translate into increased support, donations, and volunteerism.
Content marketing also allows non-profits to tell their stories in a compelling way, showcasing the impact they have on their communities and the world. This storytelling approach can help build emotional connections with supporters and help them understand the importance of your work.
Furthermore, content marketing can be a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. With social media and email marketing, non-profits can distribute their content to a wide range of people without the need for expensive advertising.
So, if you're looking for a powerful way to increase awareness and support for your non-profit organization, consider incorporating content marketing into your strategy. With its ability to build trust, tell your story, and reach a broad audience, content marketing can be a game-changer for non-profits. #nonprofitmarketing #contentmarketing #socialimpact
Nag, Nag, Nag.
“Instead of interrupting, work on attracting.” — Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Co-Founder, HubSpot
How to interrupt:
- Send crappy emails to people you don't know.
- Connect with them on LinkedIn and then instantly message them a sales pitch.
- Send copious text messages to people you don't know with HUGE savings and all kinds of other obnoxious sales messaging.
- Spam neighborhood apps with your sales pitch and cross your fingers.
How to attract:
- Inspire.
- Don't sell.
- Be remarkable.
- Elevate your team.
- Be kind.
- Be human.
- Create something different.
- Be authentic.
- Be a giver.
No one loves to be interrupted. At work, school, sleep, play, wherever, interrupting people while they are doing them is just plain rude, so why would anyone employ interruption as a marketing tactic?
Which brand are you more likely to buy from? The one that nags you or the one that makes you smile and stands out?
How Do I Get Started In Content Marketing?
Get Off Your Ass.
I get asked this question EVERY damn day. Tom, how do I get started with my content marketing? Do you REALLY want the answer? Are you sure? Sit your ass down in a coffee shop with a laptop and write. Put your ear buds in as you drive and record your voice. Turn that iPhone camera on your face while you're out for your morning walk and tell the world your stuff. Honestly. It's THAT easy.
Many become paralyzed at the thought of having to talk about themselves, or what they care about, or even what they know. I'm here to tell you this. If you're going to make it in this digital day and age, if you're looking to build your personal brand or get the world to know about your new business, you're going to have to drop the paralysis and get to the grind.
What If My Content Sucks?
You know what? It may suck. It may suck in the beginning which is why I encourage you to NOT try to force content out. Content should be about your journey, your ride, your daily grind and how you're making shit happen, NOT forced out 'stuff.' When you share your enthusiasm, charisma, passion, disdain, whatever, you light up and become animated. That's what people want online. They want to see the HUMAN in you and not the corporate bullshit speak. Be a freaking human and stand out, that's what changes everything
Youtube? Facebook Live? Medium? Podcast?
With so many channels available online it can be a real pain in the ass to determine where in the hell your content should live. Focus. Focus on who your intended audience is. Are they young? Are they older? Are they tech savvy? It's mission critical that you DO know who in the hell you need to be talking to, and then once you've got that figured out, find out what channels those folks are hanging out at and BE THERE. One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin says we need to build Tribes and be the leader. That's your mission, build a tribe of followers on these channels, feed them, nurture them, challenge them, inspire them and LEAD them.
How Do I Make Money Doing This?
And there it is. This, is the real question, and here's the real answer. Your content should NOT be intended to add dollar bills to your bank account. The whole point behind putting yourself out there is to be known, NOT to generate quick, fast cash. So, why bother? Because marketing today is about attention. It's about getting someone's attention, inspiring them, keeping them engaged and feeding them. Once you've built a following and put in the time, people want to work with you. They see the value in you. They see the fire in you. They want to work with people who inspire them. Your mission, be that inspiration.
Give To Live
If you're not willing to invest some time feeding people with your passion, stop reading this. The only way that you'll get attention online today is by being real. The only way you can be real is to simply want to give and contribute to the digital world. You do that by sharing the talents you have, by sharing your journey and by being a human being who is trying to help lift others up. Plain and simple. Give and you will receive.
Parting Advice
You may hate the sound of your own voice. You may not think you look good on camera. You may not think that you can write. Let go of all of that shit. I've been on TV over 350 times. I hardly EVER watch myself on the playback. My podcast, nope, I never listen to myself after the fact. This is where confidence comes in to play. You have to get over your self doubt and just GO. Like I said earlier, it MAY suck, but over time, you'll get comfortable in your own skin and be the rockstar that you were meant to be.
Follow Me
If you're hungry for some more advice, please follow me : Twitter: , Facebook: YouTube, LinkedIn, SmartAss Marketer Podcast
Thanks for reading, now get your ass to work.
Tom
Hey, B2B Marketers, Stop Marketing Products & Start Marketing To Humans
As I was PARKED in traffic this morning, I got to thinking about B2B Marketing (as one does...) I'm always asked by B2B marketers, "Tom, how can I create content around such a boring product." My answer will always be, stop creating content around your product. Start creating content for the humans that will use the product.
Start telling stories about how your product happened to change someone's life. Tell a story about how your company was created in a garage. Tell a story about a team member who innovated and created a new process. Tell a story about the impact that your product has had on a company's bottom line. When we stop focusing on the facts and start focusing on the humans, EVERYTHING changes. Make it a great day today.
Staying On Top Of Your Content Marketing Game
Armies don’t go into combat without a strategy. Sports teams don’t take the field without a playbook. And content marketers shouldn’t be publishing or executing marketing campaigns without a plan. So how do you develop a content marketing plan? Here are some simple steps:
Find the goalpost. Make sure you understand your customers, their goals and objectives, and their pain points. You can’t reach new business unless you thoroughly understand what your customers need and how your product benefits your target market.
What’s your content marketing game plan? To reach that target market, you need to establish your content themes and topics, and establish your publishing frequency. In short, you need an editorial calendar, with titles, topics, and publishing dates. Plan ahead — a quarterly calendar gives you time to jot down topics as they occur to you, research those ideas, and create outlines and drafts. Remember, content can be repurposed across a variety of channels. Press releases can become blog articles, then whitepapers, case studies, and more. Remember, though, rewriting the content for different formats is essential. Google doesn’t look kindly on copy and paste.
Scout the other team. Let your competitors motivate you. Look at what your competitors are doing on social media, in their search engine results, and in traditional media. You can see what content does well on their websites, how they’re ranking on search engines, and where they’re thriving. Then use that information to adjust your content marketing strategies.
Bring in some MVPs. Contact external experts and ask them if they’ll produce content for your site. These industry influencers give you greater visibility and often will share the content with their own audiences, boosting your reach. Yes, there may be a cost involved, but it can be well worth it. MVPs are valuable — it’s right there in the name.
Connect with the fans. It’s called “social” media for a reason. You can connect with your customers on a personal level. Nurture their needs and interests, answer their questions, and engage with them. In turn, they’ll talk about you and recommend you to others.
Rewrite the playbook. No team sticks with strategies that don’t work, and neither should you. Review your content marketing strategy regularly and figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Don’t be afraid to abandon strategies that aren’t getting results and try something new. Just keep monitoring the new strategy, too.
The pros always make things look easy, but there’s a lot going on beneath the surface of good content marketing. It takes careful strategy, time, effort, and, yes, money. Many small business owners don’t have the time to generate content and engage customers and potential customers on social media, and that’s where my company On Target can help. We’ll customize a content marketing plan for your business that reaches your target market and meets your needs.
The Content Marketing experts at On Target Digital Marketing can help your brand strategize and execute a solid content marketing campaign. Give us a call today: 407-830-4550.
Thanks for reading and sharing! @TomJelneck
https://ontargetwebsolutions.com
Publish Or Perish : Winning At SEO
Some very good friends of mine are college and / or grad school professors. You’ll often hear them say, Publish or Perish. Simply put, if a college professor isn’t churning out intelligent content in the form of papers, studies, white papers, findings, etc., they are typically DONE within the institution. Institutes of higher education thrive on content creation and if you’re a new professor, the best way to prove yourself is to publish and defend your brilliance, CONSTANTLY.
SEO has seen an overabundance of changes in terms of alogorithms with cute names such as penguins, pandas, tarantulas, anteaters, (I made the last two up…) etc.. The almighty Google has strived to keep its search engine results pages squeeky clean, but unscrupulous SEO types have always managed to find a way to game the results. This manipulation has caused Google to constantly refine it’s formulas in order to provide clean, relevant results to users.
So, now that I’ve painted a gloom and doom scenario, how do you truly win at SEO? You take a lesson from those professors. You publish. You publish amazing works of your brilliance that let your hungry audience know and admire your expertise. People / customers want to buy from experts, from leaders in the industry. Your mission is to not only feed your audience, but to alert Google know that your web presence has it going on. You simply do this by publishing.
Some publishing keys to SEO success:
- Create with purpose.
Build an editorial calendar based around your brands sales cycle. You know what products are hot when, you know when your audience needs one service over the other, so develop a calendar that fleshes out content ideas around those cycles.
- Create with meaning.
Be inspired. If you’re not inspired, get inspired. Visit blogs in your industry, read, listen to music, go to the gym, weave a basket underwater, whatever sparks your plugs, but write with purpose. Don’t simply write to write.
- Create with your audience in mind.
It’s not about you. The Internet belongs to the people, give it to them. Know what your audience looks like in terms of demographics and feed them what they want. If you don’t know what they want, simply ask them.
- Create it to be shared.
True SEO gold is when your content gets shared and talked about around the Internet. Make your content shareable, make it easy to be shared, make it so juicy that it begs to be shared. Include photos, videos, commentaries, styling, make it amazing.
- Create it to be engaged with.
Make it easy and lead people to interact with your content. Make sure that your blog is easy to post comments on, make sure that you ask your readers to engage, lead them and respond to them.
- Create it to be talked about.
I’m not a fan of creating controversy for controversy sake, BUT, make your titles and content remarkable / sexy / enticing. We need people to want to click, read, share & engage.
Most importantly, keep your eye on the prize. Keep writing for your users, not just for SEO. The more you put your users first, the more Google will reward you. Google, in its webmaster guidelines spells out the following and tells us exactly what they are looking for:
Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”
- Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Thanks for reading / sharing. Now, get to work. Your users are hungry for your wisdom, Google is anxious to get your brilliance found.