Welcome to the first of three articles meant to move you from procrastination to productivity in doing what you know you should have been doing for years, blogging.
We’ve all heard that this simple practice will grow our businesses and enhance our lives. However, if you’re like me, writing has always been a struggle. Getting past the struggle is easier if your “why” is big enough. Today, I’ll share three reasons to blog with the remaining six coming in two follow-up articles. Although this series deals with the “why”, you’ll learn tips on the “what” and “how” in future posts. Here we go…
#1 Getting Noticed in the Search Engines
Google’s mission is (and always has been) to get visitors to the most relevant content for their search. The trick is determining relevancy. Google developed an algorithm (that they’re constantly refining) to rank pages of content by relevancy. In the past, to get noticed, businesses and nonprofit’s alike paid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies a lot of money to create poor content, stuffed with keywords, to distribute on their websites. This practice fooled the algorithm into thinking that site was relevant. Today, the algorithm is much smarter. It looks for great content that real people are spending time and engaging with. The more content you create that’s relevant to your customers or target audience, the greater your chance of appearing on the first page of Google will be. As an added bonus, sharing that content on social media can dramatically increase the visibility and relevance of the content on your site.
#2 Proving You’re the Expertxxxsexmoviesfree.comxxxsexmoviesfree.com
In a sea of competing fundraising pitches, how do you and your nonprofit stand out from the crowd? The answer is to share your knowledge with all of your past and current donors as well as future prospective givers. You can do this the hard way or the easy way. The hard way would be to schedule a one-to-one meeting with each of them. The easy way would be to get your ideas on paper and online, and share with them.
Now one article doesn’t necessarily prove to anyone that you’re an expert, but if you wrote an article a week for 12 months, you’d have 52 articles in a year – over 100 in two years. 100 articles on any subject will definitely prove that you know what you’re talking about. And as discussed above, the additional keyword-rich content that you’re adding to your nonprofit’s website will increase your organization’s chances of being found through organic search.
#3 Building a Following
In his book “Tribes”, Seth Godin discusses the importance of building a following, or tribe. This is an audience of like-minded people that believe in you, your writing, and your ability to answer their questions and make their lives better. They read, digest, and take action on your advice. And more importantly, they share it with their colleagues and friends–thus expanding your network, reach, and influence. There’s also a snowball effect here. Over time, it gets easier and easier to reach more and more people. You get momentum. The bad news, though, is much like working out, if you stop you’ll have to start from zero to regain that momentum.
Don’t Wait to Get Started
You might be saying to yourself, I’ll wait for the rest of these articles, educate and motivate myself, then get started toward a new habit of sharing my unique knowledge of my nonprofit through blogging. I encourage you not to wait. I’m not saying jump into the deep end, but let’s warm up in the kiddie pool by making your own list of reasons. Then come back and compare with my next 2 articles. Better yet, I’d love to hear some of your reasons in the comments below.