Unlocking the full potential of your blog

If used to the fullest of its potential a blog can be a great tool for a charity. It can assist with the growth of a donor following, offer a human element to a website, raise exposure of events or campaigns and offer significant SEO benefits.

With a view to aiding charities with their blogging strategy, we’ll look at the benefits of writing regular blog posts.

Firstly, a blog system equips you with the tools needed to establish a voice for your charity. You may post about changes within the sector, industry knowledge, good news stories, recent successes, etc. Over time you will build a following of supporters that will use your blog as a valuable and respected resource for keeping in touch with the development of the charity.

SEO benefits

The regular stream of new content being uploaded to the site is something that Google and other search engines favour as they look for websites which are using regularly updated content. When Google crawl your website and blog, they’ll see the regularly updated content being added, which will in turn benefit you in the search engine results pages.

If, after carrying out keyword analysis, you find that you’re not doing so well in certain keywords or search terms, you can target those keywords or terms by writing a blog post around that subject, incorporating some of the keywords within the articles. What may then happen is that the blog article would start to rank, so, in effect, you’ve got your website rankings here, which will result in a rise in website traffic.

Social promotion

As your blog following increases and people start to look to the blog as a resource for charity updates, etc., they may start to reference you or link back to your site through social media and their own personal blogs, which will mean more traffic. We’ll use the example that, you’ve just posted about a recent skydive event and that the charity has raised £XX amount. If 10 people share this on Facebook, 10 retweet on Twitter and then 10 people decide to link to this within their blog posts, you’re going to get traffic back from that.

As well as being great for search engines that crawl your website for new content, blogging will also offer plenty of content to post on the various social networks that your charity may be present on. Some charities may not have the best idea of how to communicate on social networks and resources may be an issue, as managing these effectively does take time, however, by blogging, you’ll already have content ready to post, and promote on the social networks.

Show your personality

One thing that can’t be underestimated is the public perception of the charities personality. A blog is an important tool in imparting the tone and friendly nature of the individuals working for the charity, and therefore the charity on the whole. If the public perceive your charity as friendly, there is a strong probability that you’re more likely to receive support from them as opposed to them visiting the website, and not seeing anything in the way of human interaction. The blog enables you to share with your website visitors and really start developing a charity profile and character besides that supports the brand identity and any external communications that you may or may not have.

Publish your news and responses

The blog is a great place for you showcase any new services that your charity may now be offering. In the past, we’ve experienced clients that through acquisitions or mergers now have to promote additional sites, services or are servicing a whole new area. Obviously, should this occur, you need a quick update for website visitors or supporters and your blog post is a quick way of doing this with a view to following up with more information on the website in the future.

Finally, the management of your reputation is incredibly important. Blogging offers you a place on the website to react positively to any positive or negative PR received over social or any other media. A blog would give you the opportunity to post a positive reply to any Comms that required it.

If you have any questions about how you could utilise a blog on your website, do feel free to drop us an email at hello@adeptdesign.co.uk or give us a call on 01603 340 750.