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Blogs have grown in popularity over the past 10 years, creating the “blogosphere” – an ever-growing collection of online content, full of opportunities for nonprofit organizations to improve their communication strategies.
Unlike traditional mass media, websites, and private email conversations – blogs are interactive media channels that can be used for communicating directly with highly specific, niche constituent groups. Interactive blogs that include feedback options, in the form of reader comments and hyperlinks, improve the likelihood that individual voices can be heard and create real-time dialogues, social networks, and global conversations. Blogs can create opportunities for nonprofit originations to generate awareness, community education, inform funders of needs, and recruit volunteers and staff.
The most salient and unique benefit to nonprofit organizations is that blogs give organizations transparency. Generally, nonprofit organizations are more transparent than their commercial counterparts; therefore blogs are a natural fit. Blogs are an open door to organizations that allow constituents the opportunity to learn more about the culture, mission, and management of an organization. The transparency offered by blogs also builds loyalty and adds a human quality to online communications.
A blog can be used as a space to collect and filter ideas or valuable information that organizations want to share with constituents. Unlike expensive traditional marketing techniques, blogs are virtually free opportunities to distribute messages. The blogging environment affords contributors the opportunity to post diverse perspectives on crucial events, highlight newsworthy importance of issues, provide valuable critical scrutiny, and foster discussion surrounding issues. Blogs therefore, benefit the online democratic forum by offering alternative content and raising levels of accuracy and balance.
Blogs can be a fundraisers dream come true! Imagine a real-time, and easily updatable, portal to share nonprofit success stories. Blogs can be this public forum, proclaiming the importance of the donated dollar due to provided services and received donations. The result would be a constantly growing testimony that shows the responsibility that the organization holds to be good stewards of the donations received and the need for continued funding.
Want more eyes on your website? A well-written blog can bring attention to a website if it inspires online word-of-mouth buzz, meaning others post links to your blog on their website or blog. Also, as more outside websites or blogs link to your site, your organization website will gain increased “link popularity” which raise the placement or ranking of your website on search engines (the process is due to complicated algorithms that this article will not attempt to describe).
Blogs written by others contain valuable information and data that can be harvested as market research. Nonprofit organizations can learn about the needs and opinions of their constituents from blogs that contain reviews, praise, criticism, endorsements, and personal experiences about a diverse range of topics – probably including your cause or service, and maybe your organization or staff. This data can be used to assist with future developments and suggest changes for management, services, and policies. Even criticism in blogs can be beneficial, if the organization responds and learns from the feedback. In necessary cases, nonprofit organizations can use reactive blog posts to publicly refute any unintentional or malicious misstatements made by others.
There is a growing need for all organizations to start participating in the blogosphere - whether by writing blog posts or by searching for and gleaning market research data. Organizations can start by creating blog monitoring plans, blogging policies, and gathering information in order to find the online converstations to join.
Article written by Elizabeth Marlow, Media Graduate Student & Volunteer
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