 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you may be welcome to another episode of the nonprofit show But this isn't any episode. This is the nonprofit thought leader episode We don't do these very often. They're very specialized. It's where we get a leader in the field of Whatever it is that they're doing for the nonprofit sector and so today We're really excited to have back with us and Macaulay Lopez one of the great thought leaders in the country about all things Digital content wise and we need this help in our nonprofit sector in a big way so and welcome back Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be back and a happy belated new year. I haven't seen you in the new year yet I know I know well, it's it's crazy You know how fast already it's turned and and I'm really excited to join Get that mind melt with you to figure out what we need to be doing when it comes to the power of Guest blogging, you know, we talked about doing this episode and I swear to you I can't believe like all of a sudden how I'm seeing this phrase guest blog You know guest blogging guest bloggers So it's gonna be fun to get into this with you today and really learn something again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy Jared Ransom the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group is a little under the weather today. So we said Stay away IRL and digitally get better and and we'll rejoin But we are joined today with our amazing partners And I want to make sure that we give a strong and hearty shout-out to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy Your part-time controller staffing boutique fundraising Academy at National University Nonprofit nerd and the nonprofit thought leader. These are the folks that keep us going and growing. We're well past 725 episodes and finishing up our third year starting our fourth year and the exciting part of that is that our Executive producer Kevin Pace has done this miraculous thing He has taken all of these produced episodes and put them on our channels that you can find us on Roku YouTube Vimeo and Amazon fire TV And if you'd like to consume us through a podcast format, we're here for you as well This last year we started doing that and we've already surpassed 10,000 downloads in less than a year So we're really excited about that, but more importantly, we're excited to have Anne McCauley Lopez back with us agency content writer Welcome my friend. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I hope Jared feels better. It's always wonderful to see you Julia Hey, you told us in the green room chatter that you are coming to us from where? New Orleans, Louisiana, I believe they say it no offense here. I'm trying trying not New Orleans And I tagged along my husband's on a business trip. So I'm doing a little work doing a little play I had a work day yesterday was play. So I'm back here doing a little work. I'm excited to be here You know, I love it and and I think that this is one of the cool things about You and your business and your sector is that you can be anywhere around the world And I've got to ask you this before we get going Do you find that when you do leave your enclave of where you work and play and live? And you get out that it tweaks something or it makes your writing more richer or messes you up Do you have a sense of that? I Think it goes into kind of before I leave I have a mindset of this is how this is going to go and that really helps me Stay in the zone when I need to be in the zone and I do come up with new ideas on the road And I think that's always did even if it's just leaving your your home office or your office office Really, it does something to your mind to be in a different place for sure. Yeah, it's it's really I think an interesting thing we were talking about that a little bit before we went live about the power of Travel and the power of seeing how other people live and I think even just in the concept of philanthropy How nonprofits work in different parts of our country and we are such a vast country And so it's kind of an interesting aspect I think just because you write a certain way or work a certain way in one part of the country You might not fly in another part of the country And so this is what I'm so interested about hearing from you about this concept of guest blogging And what it means I got to say I've been a writer all my life been in publishing for more than 30 years Scares the hell out of me to think I would bring somebody in outside of my staff to write I just got a Nana. Just got to say it. I know I know What are they gonna say and and it might not fit and you know it so Calm me down and explain to me why this is so powerful Well guest blogging is when we write on Another website, so it would be me writing on the American nonprofit website or on For me, it's another marketing website for example, and that's really all it is. What's good about it is that it And what we would want and we can dive into this a little bit You know, I just love talking about search engine optimization SEO The biggest thing about this is to make sure we get a link back to our own website Google loves when we do that. It gives us some authority for nonprofits. I think guest blogging on Maybe a corporate partners website or if you've got a relationship Maybe with like an estate planning attorney writing about planned giving Things like that that are related to the nonprofit that can bring attention to the nonprofit That are on someone else's website to get that additional traffic and really build your audience You know me being on here is is a great opportunity for both of us to share our knowledge and also for me to Be giving the fortune of being in front of your audience as well in addition to my audience So that's that's what we want to do in a written form with gas blogs So it's really just writing on someone else's website One of the things that we want to do is make sure that we're giving guidelines or we're giving guidelines That's definitely So when you say you're nervous, I'm like, it's okay. We can you and I if you want to have guest bloggers We'll come up with some guidelines Nothing gets published till it's approved, you know But I one part of me says and I'd love to get your feedback on this one part of me says is that It's okay, and it's powerful to have different voices that might not agree that might share a different view point We don't you know, we need to be rowing in the same direction But we don't need to all be cookie-cutters. Is that true? Or do you want to make sure that anything coming in on the guest blog position is Using the same phrase ology and I mean really cloned almost I Think it has to stay it would have to stay within some branding guidelines for the website and Maybe focusing on a particular keyword but taking that I Always think of like freelance writing. I don't tend to call myself that you know We've talked about that here quite a bit. It's more of a content writer But people know the word freelance writer. So maybe on a marketing website. I would say what's the difference between the two So we get that Different take on what it is But we also remember to mention the keyword or for nonprofit maybe the the program or the fundraising You know, whatever it is Keep something central to it an idea. So in your guidelines, would that be the place where you'd say? This is how we use our name. This is how we use the program name. I mean, is that what you're talking about? Yes, yes, I actually have an opportunity myself on a So website that lists different like if you're looking for different types of professionals So they actually have some ideas for us And I know what's behind that is SEO search engine optimization for their website, right? So you could even do that as a nonprofit and say hey, we're looking for articles on these topics as a call out So if you're interested, you know, Jared likes to look at numbers the nonprofit nerd is going to be featured And she's going to talk about looking at your data those sorts of things just to kind of guide the content in a direction that you want But also I think to your point is leaving it open to different Different opinions different frames of of mind or of reference like we were talking about in the green room You know exposing yourself to a different culture or outside your own neighborhood even Yeah, of course different ideas. Yeah So, you know, you we've talked us through kind of the process of what I should say what the concept is and Let's talk about the benefits of guest blogging because I'm really curious like is that is is it like front and center This is a guest blogger and then the content or do you do you always? Identify that or do you keep it in an arm's length like how do you intersect those viewpoints and people to the organization? I would Put a little something at the beginning and then typically guest bloggers get a bio at the end. So say hey, we've got our Finance guru or our whatever thought leader, you know nonprofit accounting thought leader here giving us her take on this topic The paragraph and then a bio That way it kind of distinguishes it from your staff writers or your, you know, however, you've got doing creating that content. I Like that as a distinguisher. There's not really rules, but I think it's it's a good idea, especially if there may be Taking it in a different direction then People might normally see on your website not that it's completely off center, but like, okay, we'll think of it this way You know, you are the queen of SEO and for anyone watching or listening to us I'm gonna witness to you that when we go back Through our metrics your content whenever you're on our show You rank as some of the highest watched Pieces that we've done over three years and I always think that it's because of your content and that it's great content But more importantly, I think it's because you've worked your SEO magic on the back end because we give you your those files I mean as a we don't pay our guests and so what we do We we recompense them in essence with giving them the fully edited files They can put them up on their website they can put it into their social media and You my friend and I've said this to you privately you have been able to take these these pieces turn them into blog posts and Maximize the hell out of it. And so it's such a fascinating thing to be able to talk to you about this because I See how you can move forward with these concepts Looping in more people in essence, right? Yes. Yes, bringing the audiences together bringing them to Kind of to see what your business is and I just love and appreciate them The time you take to create those marketing graphics for me. I put them up. I use them as thumbnails I recently launched my very small audience YouTube channel myself and Yes, I'm excited. So what I'm able to do with these wonderful recordings is put those on my YouTube So that you know if you put my name in it brings up my appearances on your show It also brings up me brings up my channel and yours Which makes it just a wonderful partnership and then you can use those You know, I use the marketing images on social media I create written content from what we've talked about this time. I feel like a superhero I created the content first. So now what I need to do is I'll have my website folks embed the recording into that blog post so they can so it's on my website We'll put it on the YouTube channel and really utilize it the way that we would Utilize our own my own content that we've created. It's kind of a feel like it's a cheat So now this is like me this might seem like a super basic question But and maybe this is just this is my own, you know bias for my career But when I hear the word blogging, I think written word, but what you just like hit that thing and it's it's really Content of video content. It can be graphics, right? I mean it could be Data viz, right? At least for now At least for now I say Google doesn't read your videos Like you can't do a video of all your keywords and get a Google love from it now. I imagine it's coming soon Um, yes, it's Google and AI and I think maybe we want to talk about that artificially a little today But it so we need to have that written content so one of the ideas I'll be sharing actually on YouTube But we'll share it here too And I think we've talked about it is taking the podcast whether it's your own or you have appearances like this on other podcasts and taking that transcript and Making it search engine friendly, which is something that I do offer Um, I will I've got updates and services on my website But yes, I help with that because I think it's really important and it drives that we know you and I know it drives that traffic I think also what we do is we title The topics that I talk about There's some strategy behind that as well so For future guests upcoming guests, I encourage you to kind of think about what's searchable. How do you want to be found and Create your podcast appearances on those topics and that shores up when someone says can you speak? What are your topics you speak about? Then you've got your short list of five or six topics and you say these are this is what I speak to Mixing it up with some, you know some other topics, but really the main focus are these five So let's talk about the AI issue. Oh my gosh AI is like I'm a devotee of the New York Times I cannot even believe how even in the New York Times They talk about AI every single day in many places throughout their publication in all formats It used to be we would talk about, you know AI with artificial intelligence within like the landscape of the computer world Now we're even talking about it as it connects to you know cooking and travel and I mean it is just going forward How does this impact? Guest blogging blogging building content because this is the here and the now and it is accessible for people Like you and I It is it is I will be perfectly honest and say that I called my 19 year old stepson and said Can you please talk to me about this chat GPT? My my friend and colleague asked me about it and I need to learn more about it and then I tried it myself So I tried it with a client that we don't necessarily tell stories They say here's your keyword create an article. That's this long that has this keyword this many times and that sort of thing Okay, so I put in I did it twice for two and the first time was I was a mishmash I cut out half of what the AI put into it The second time so it was me learning along with the software, which was wild to me I'm like I'm learning with a computer like it was this crazy crazy experience so I was able to Edit it down that first article and it probably took me as long to learn Then it would have been to write the article the next article I was able to do very fast because I had learned pretty quickly. Okay. I get it It's kind of like me writing for key words only I'm Giving the AI some clues and the better clues I gave the better the result was So what I took was this, you know five tips about X And I call it judging right we put some branding and we mentioned the client's name We mentioned their keyword we add the appropriate links that we want to add and things like that I ran it through. I was worried about duplicate content. Google doesn't like when we have the exact same content on different websites I was worried about plagiarism getting tagged for that that right. I'm a writer like not only is it bad for a website But as a writer, you don't want to get cat. Exactly in it through It was original content. Nothing else on the internet. I Was able to feed it some links to content on the client's website, which I wrote so I was like Oh, that's my writing like I I I didn't even plagiarize myself Right, right. That just sounds weird, but I write a lot And I'm like, I wonder if I put this phrasing somewhere else No, yeah, I've run that on all my content and there was nothing and it was branded It was a beautiful article and it worked what it wasn't It wasn't storytelling. It wasn't tell me about the work that you've done on this project I don't think that I'm going to go out of business with chat GPT and AI. I Think nonprofits could use it. I was telling Julia I had a return to do on Amazon and I was chatting and the thought came to me am I talking to a computer and am I talking to a person And as soon as it got to a point in the questions where it didn't know kind of what to do with me That hold on. Let me get you a Customer service representative and then I knew I'd been talking to AI And then they were sending me to a person and so I chatted with the person It's just like, oh, I see the problem here. Let me help you with it And that was really interesting. It was very efficient And I feel like I don't know Julia What do you think that that nonprofits might be able to use this like for donors looking for the donor link? Which should be obvious, but we'll get to that or asking about a certain project or program. I mean And things like that that it could be kind of a customer service desk in some sense Like I used with Amazon and then it would get you to someone A real person Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think if you can Think through and you have good advice and get support. It could be the sort of thing that allows you to Find, you know, scholarly information. It allows you you mentioned in the green room chatter, you know Volunteer opportunities how to recognize the the problem. So for example, if you're a domestic violence shelter You know, how do you recognize somebody that's in an abusive situation or you yourself or how do you get safe? I mean, there are a lot of different things that can help. I think if we can figure out how to Deliver and manage the content, right and how that looks and because let's face it Who can who can afford? Um on in the 1.8 million nonprofits registered in this country of ours How many can afford to have somebody sitting there answering questions? Right do right real in real time iRL. So you You have to say What are some of these tools going to do to impact us and I feel and I can't wait to get your opinion on this I feel like a lot of organizations are understanding the power of their blogs But then their blogs are becoming dare I say bloated There's so much content that if they don't have a good search function or they haven't categorized it It's a mess. It gets lost. It gets lost. So I mean I can see this is kind of a refinement to what we're doing And in his part and parcel of that, I'm really interested to know If we're engaging guest bloggers and again, you blew my mind because it could be video. It could be graphs I mean data is it's pretty crazy What should this nonprofit be giving are you paying people? I mean, what what does this look like? What's what's the transaction? I guess The nonprofit provides their expertise So if we're talking about Planned giving it would be The importance of plan giving and the nonprofits writing it for an estate planning attorney They probably want a conversation with the attorney. I've I've one that I've worked with and I think what she would want is what is planned giving which AI could probably come up with some nice words for that But also what's the impact to the nonprofit? So we could have part of it actually generated But also what's the impact to the specific nonprofit? So it's almost like a starter with AI and then the nonprofit gives their expertise in that area or The impact to the nonprofit in that particular area So that really the the estate planning attorney just as an example could then use that on their social media Point their clients to that article and say listen This is how it impacted my my nonprofit partner or my friend at this nonprofit What it does for them to have that type of giving just as an example So it's really and you don't you don't give away everything no blog posts We we shouldn't give away everything and I was speaking to somebody the other days Like it's just enough so they pick up her phone and call us or email us or whatever the call to action is You know we're talking about giving so we say okay, you know donors volunteer Okay, we want volunteers to call or contact us So I think that's what it is. It's really what what you already do I think if you have content on your website already In videos and you've talked about it. You could easily Um Send that to a writer or send that to someone on your staff who who is a writer or likes to write We've talked about that like how can you utilize your team or your volunteers in a way that? Highlights their skills and expertise and Gets the nonprofit some some help in whatever way that is so You could take um That give that information and you may not even have to do an interview if you've already got some content out there It's just a matter of hey, we have this request for a guest blog on so-and-so's website Can you kind of figure it out and pull down and? We'll approve the article, you know, we'll we'll go in and take a look and make sure it's It's really what we want to say Um, but really utilizing the people on your team again. So you're not Having that expense of a writer necessarily You know, I love the idea of the Volunteership because that could be somebody who I'm like thinking retired English school teacher or you know, whatever where somebody could be like Yeah, I love to edit. I love to catch spelling mistakes and you know, it can be done You know Be an email somebody can send that off and then you're going to be more confident about Whatever, you know that pieces that's going up. Um, again, this is the publisher pat that I'm wearing because I'm like Oh, you know somebody coming from the outside, you know, but yeah I love that you said that because I bet You could find that talent out there wanting to volunteer and then use them in other ways Yes, yes, and really capitalize on it and it's I remember Jared posted something uh posted on linkedin and she said how do you engage a board and it's give them some ideas And I think it's this this is kind of in that same realm Where we're we're saying, okay, what do you do you want to be the person that sends the letters counts the money writes an article contacts the press gets an editor Finds an editor for us. Whatever it is Yeah, I mean utilize who you have for sure in your community. So Uh, I have a networking group. I've gotten involved with since we last spoke right in charlotte because I wanted to meet some people in charlotte And I have an opportunity to blog on their blog To talk about and they're all smaller like kind of solopreneur smaller business people And I have the opportunity and I was like, well, we have this portal and I didn't want my content To be locked behind the portal just for members because I do want to write for seo So that's something to think about as well. You don't want it locked behind any sort of like a paywall Um and make sure it's out there in the public and it is it's a public blog and you'll see me post something I don't know what I have so many ideas But that's another opportunity for me to be able to guest post So if you're in a networking group or you're part of a chamber Is there is part of the membership being able to write on the website and if it's not asked They're probably looking for some content And if they're redoing their website or they're mentioning that then that's a real opportunity To to get that wider audience and share what you do and who you help and an area of expertise too So we don't have a lot of time left, but I'm I want I want to ask this question How often should you be doing this and should you plan this out like every Tuesday? We're going to have a guest blogger or is it just a little bit more free? Free for all. I mean how how structured should we make this? I think it goes along with Talking about your content calendar or kind of planning your marketing for the year And leaving spots open a guest blogger would be one of those spots monthly quarterly Someone said let them do it more often It doesn't have to be a lot because you probably have your own content going up But it's it's a great way to connect Oh, another idea would be if you're working with another nonprofit right on each other's websites Smart. Oh my gosh, of course. That's a job And you know, I gotta say I love that idea because so many funders are pushing For collaboration and that's just another way to support this whole effort to say, yeah We play well in the sandbox, you know So very interesting. Well, I want to make sure that everybody knows That you can get to Ann's work through agency content writer comm She has amazing amazing content. Of course beautifully done because she's a content writer, but um, this is a really really interesting post that she has Quick guide to guest blogging She's covered a lot of things that we talked about here today But she in this particular piece gets into Kind of the mechanics of it as well And I found it to be really really helpful So go ahead and take a look at that again agency content writer comm And navigate your way over to her blog post. Um, you'll find some amazing things the website is beautifully done I have website envy Just gotta say it's really really well Thank you. Yeah. No, it's really really well done. And then in addition to all the other things, um, you are an Published author and in the title is just gut-wrenching. We don't get to ring the bell My cml story by Ann Macaulay Lopez. Check it out. It's an amazing amazing Journey that you get to share in a very private and profound way And so I just wanted to make sure that we could Highlight that thank you. I appreciate that. It's really an amazing thing again, Ann Macaulay Lopez. You're a rock star I never ever leave my time with you without learning something new With having a hair on fire moment and at the same time my friend you make it very achievable Thank you. Yeah, I don't think it has to be complicated well There's so much complication in the nonprofit sector to have somebody say if this doesn't have to be complicated It's a major thing. I just gotta say But check out Ann at agency content writer calm an amazing Amazing leader within our sector and somebody who can give you some really Great information. Again. I'm jillia patrick CEO of the american nonprofit academy jaret ransom CEO of the raven group will be joining us back shortly Also, we want to make sure that we thank all of our amazing sponsors from bloom orang american nonprofit academy To our friends at your part-time controller staffing boutique Fundraising academy at national university the nonprofit nerd herself and nonprofit thought leader These are the folks that join us day in and day out and okay as we end today I'm gonna go back to my desk go back to my office I'm gonna get going on some writing and you've really spurned me on my friend. Thank you wonderful It's always wonderful to see you jillia. Thank you so much. It's been great Hey, everybody is we like to remind everyone ourselves or viewers our listeners our guests and of course our co-host jaret ransom Just stay well So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow everyone