As a connoisseur of charity websites, I have to say how surprised I am that so few have blogs on them. It’s one of the easiest ways to engage your community, keep fresh content flowing on your site to attract new supporters, show your personality, and also gain the attention of the search engines. Here’s how to get going on adding a blog to your website and also how to promote it.
Blogging is one of the first social media technologies, dating back to the 90’s, and it remains one of the simplest and most effective ways engage an audience. Most of our content on TechSoup is now from our blog.
Getting Started
If this sounds intriguing, I’d recommend our TechSoup Canada’s Tierney Smith’s #1 tip for starting a blog: read other blogs! This will give you a feel for what works, what you like, and what is possible. She recommends a list of good nonprofit blogs to get you started. Two I’d recommend first are Beth Kanter’s Blog and NTEN’s Amy Sample Ward's personal blog.
My web developer colleague and enthusiastic blogger, Bob McDiarmid, told me that a majority of the charity nonprofit websites that he has seen are on either the Drupal or WordPress nonprofit open source platforms. That’s good news because if your website is on either platform, blog functionality is built in and is reasonably simple to turn on.
WordPress
WordPress is the most commonly used blog platform. It is essentially a content management system (CMS) and useable by non-technical people. More than two thirds of the top million websites are now on it. It doesn’t require any coding experience because it allows users to type in your content and upload your images without any HTML or other programming.
One of the easiest ways to get going with a blog is to sign up for a free WordPress blog account and host the link on your website and also link back to your website from your blog. If you want your own domain name for your blog you can pay an extra $15 per year. Blogger is another easy to use and also widely used platform as well.
To get going with WordPress, first check out the Getting Started support page and also perhaps look at the WordPress Lessons. Even if your website is not on WordPress it’s reasonably easy to import your website into WordPress. If you’d like some help to do this, WordPress hosts a list of freelancers who can do that for you, The Taproot Foundation, NPower, and VolunteerMatch can all be good places to find WordPress experienced volunteers. Grassroots.org matches also nonprofits with web designers, graphic designers, project managers, and others with web-related expertise. Grassroots also offers free web hosting to qualifying 501(c)3 organizations.
WordPress Resources
WordPress All-in-One For Dummies is a typically fun and easy-to-read guide to setting up your WordPress account, and then on to publishing your site. It’s quite comprehensive and goes in to doing fancier things like customizing the look of your site and far beyond. Well worth the $20 investment.
How to add a WordPress blog to your website on YouTube provides a glimpse at what that process looks like.
Motivational speaker Michael Hyatt’s Launch a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in 20 Minutes or Less is surprisingly good.
How to Publish a Blogger Blog to a Website provides some basics on getting going on the Blogger platform.
Promoting Your Blog
Having a nice blog where you express the character and brilliance of your work is of course not that useful unless people see it. Nielsen calculates that there are something over 180 million blogs out there now. Aine Creedon recently did an excellent piece in Nonprofit Quarterly on a Launch Grow Joy Infographic: Tips on Promoting Blogs for Content Creators. It covers basic techniques like networking with your existing social media contacts to fancier techniques like using syndication tools like IFTT.com.
TechSoup Resources
A Few Good Blogging Tools
A Nonprofit's Guide to Building Simple, Low-Cost Websites
5 Tips for Visually Enticing Nonprofit Websites
Digital Storytelling 101: Blogs (TechSoup Canada)
Resources From Around The Web
5 Tips to Start a Nonprofit Blog from Britt Bravo’s Have Fun, Do Good blog
Importance of Having a Blog on Your Website
Blogging is More Important Today than Ever Before
How to Start a Blog - A Complete Guide to Setting up a Blog
Idealware guide, Comparing Open-Source Content Management Systems
Images: Compliments of Shutterstock, and Launch Grow Joy