Steps to an Effective Content Strategy for Your Nonprofit

Many non-profit organizations underestimate the power and value of an effective content strategy. This is a document that outlines the planning, creation, delivery, and governance of content aimed at creating and sharing awareness about the nonprofit organization. It is like when you need homework help for college - you need to make a strategy.

A well thought out content strategy for nonprofit improves the image of the organization and overall level of engagement with its audience. However, coming up with an effective content strategy takes a lot of time and financial resources, which are usually scarce for most nonprofit organizations.

Here are five simple steps you can take to develop an effective content strategy for Your Non-profit.

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1. Content alignment

You should understand and be able to articulate what you are trying to achieve as an organization and then map it to your user-specific questions and problems. The end goal is to convince the consumers you understand them and their journey and that you want to meet their needs in every tailored way.  This is exactly the way that essay pro works too - you get the content that you need.

Luckily, nonprofit organizations have the unique advantage of strong missions that enable them to create a successful content marketing strategy.

To align your content with the consumer journey, needs, and problems, you need to have a deep understanding of how they navigate your site and social media. You also need to gauge their engagement level with the content marketing strategies previously used, such as email campaigns. 

Information can also be gathered through Google analytics, personal interviews, online consumer surveys or any other content marketing tools that are available online. Use the information to develop the topics, questions, and needs that will be addressed by your content. 

2. Content audit

A thorough assessment of all your content across all platforms is a great way to determine where you are and where you need to go. It is also great for showing you areas of improvement for your content such as where you need to optimize your content and where you need to engage with your audiences more. 

Once you audit your existing content, you should be able to determine whether it can be used as-is or it needs some editing. You will also find out whether you need to build new content from scratch. 

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3. Production plan

Every effective content strategy must have a production plan, also known as an editorial calendar. This part of the process includes determining which type of content to produce and who the content owner will be. You will also determine the subject experts that will contribute to the content, how the content will be pushed out and the production dates.  Similarly, when you think "I need to pay someone to do my assignment" you need a plan to produce the content.

The various small steps at this stage include: defining your content pillars (this is usually to empower and inform for most nonprofits), determining the genre and the format of each content piece, then coming up with the topics and methods to deliver the content.

At this stage, you can ask “write my capstone paper” and professionals can come up with the content material that you will need. It ranges from website content to flyers and guide books to research proposals. The writers working with online services are highly trained, so they will write and edit according to your specifications and deliver in a quick time.

4. Performance measures

Once you have developed your content topics and overall production calendar, it is important to determine what each content piece should accomplish so you can track and measure success. 

For example, a blog's measure of success may be to attract 25% of donations. Defining the aim of each piece of content and how performance will be measured will help you determine whether you have a successful content marketing strategy. 

The performance metrics should be well laid-out and clearly communicated to all the teams involved in the process lifecycle so that they are well aware of their jobs.

5. Distribution plan

The last step of an effective content strategy for nonprofit is finding out which distribution channels to use that will optimize your time, resources, and engagement with your audience. Identify short-term and long-term strategies that incorporate over one channel. 

For example, your strategy can have online channels such as social media and offline channels such as direct mail. The channels used should be able to get your content to donors or members.

Conclusion

A content strategy helps you to figure out which content is doing poorly, which is doing well, how you can create better content, and how to coordinate better with other groups. An effective strategy enables the organization to have multiple ways to promote their content and tools to help them analyze their efforts. 

However, it is good to note that content strategy is a continuous process. Your strategy will require constant updating to make sure that the voice and needs of your audience are reflected. You always need to prepare yourself to plan, create, publish, analyze, and repeat the process.

The Tree of Life – Mexico’s Evolving Art Form

Everything must change, so the saying goes.  Art is no exception and folk art has always been particularly in tune with cultural shifts being, by its nature, by the people for the people.  So it is with the Mexican sculptural tradition of the Tree of Life or Árbol de la vida.  It has gone from an instructional tool of religious imposition to, contemporarily, something quite different. Yet it wasn’t itself an art form which sprang spontaneously in to being with the arrival of people from the Old World: its roots are much older.

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A Biblical story is now considered traditional, but Árbol de la vida originates with the Olmec culture, which arrived in central Mexico around 800 AD. This, together with the huge cultural influence of the pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan (which at its height in the first centuries AD was at least the sixth most populated city in the world) brought about an age of intricate, sophisticated ceramics.  The Tree of Life embodied the four cardinal directions (north, east, south and west) for these ancient cultures as well as connecting the realms of the underworld and sky with the dominions of the Earth.

The Turning Point

Imagine the destruction of the environment from a different perspective where it is not the human race paving the way to species extinction but rather all those usually at the receiving end of what we think is a satisfactory duty of care to planet Earth.  Steve Cutts, an animator not unknown for the bleak messages contained in his work – here presents humanity as the species at risk in The Turning Point.  There are too many memorable moments in this short animation to mention but one that particularly resonated with me was the site of the orangutans destroying the rain forest: very Planet of the Apes gone completely psycho.  Yes, bleak this may be, but the message is incredibly powerful. Mr Cutts does it again.

TS: Terminators - The Sequel You Always Secretly Really Wanted

Are you fed up with Terminator sequels that don’t quite “cut the mustard”.  Well, fear not as Fabrice Mathieu is here with his own – and it turns out to be quite the tribute to Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger into the bargain.  The plot?  In the future John Connor scrambles Skynet’s mainframe meaning that all the T-800s are given a new target – the other T-800s.  As well as using footage from all of the Terminator maovies, Mathieu also mashes it up with bits of Hellboy, Jurassic Park and Zombieland – to name but a few.  The result is pretty seamless – can you see where a clip from one film ends and another begins?  Good luck – but enjoy too!