How to Avoid Being a Bust: Tips on Blogging for Nonprofits

With so many nonprofit blogs circulating the web, it's hard to know what the best practices may be. As a nonprofit, you may already know how vital it is to have a blog at all. But how can you ensure that it does it's job in getting you the visibility you seek from donors, volunteer's, etc? Here are the top 5 best practices for making sure your nonprofit blog reaches its full potential:

• Engaging Content: It is essential that your blogs are filled with valuable content such as stories, photos, videos, etc. Your readers should feel as though they're traveling through a different page of your organizations' story through each post."
  
  
• Relevant, Useful Information: The information your organization provides should position you as a thought leader in your respective space. This can be done by adding statistics from your own case studies and research or providing content that no other source may have at that point in time, and providing valuable resources.
  
  
• Consistent Vibe: The aesthetic of your blog should remain uniform across each post. There should be some common theme or voice linking your blogs together. It turns people away to find inconsistency and unfamiliar voices from post to post. This should sync up with the voice of your brand as well.
  
  
• Reader Engagement: People enjoy nothing more than to have their voice be heard and to share their thoughts and feelings. Let your blog become an outlet to do that. Open questions up to your readers and always provide a call to action. Think about next steps, and what actions your constituents would want to take after reading your post.
  
  
• Regular Posting: Consistency is key! As you build out your blog, it's important to come up with a planned out schedule for releasing your blog posts. Your constituents will get into a routine of expecting posts from your organization on certain days and at a certain frequency.

If you continue to implement these tips, there's no doubt your blog will be among the best in no time. Just keep in mind ways your blog can become a resource for your readers and a way in which your blog can yield solutions to the problems your constituents regularly face. What are some blogging techniques that have worked for you?