 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are thrilled you're here with Anne McCauley Lopez, SEO content writer at Agency Content Writer. She's back with a thought leader episode to talk to us about what it's like to create a content strategy. So stay with us because Anne, as always, has a lot of really good insight to share. Hello to you, Julia, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. As of you watching and listening, that's Julia Patrick. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and honored to serve as co-host day in and day out as we have these conversations. And that bright, bold yellow means it's a thought leader episode. So it's an extra special episode for today. We wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for our amazing presenting sponsors. So thank you so very much. We extend our gratitude to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Do us a favor, but do them a favor and really yourself a favor. Check them out because these companies, every single one of them, they're here to help you elevate your mission and to do more good. So they are a part of your team just as well as Julia and I are as well. I like that, Jarrett. That's a cool way to put it. Hey, we have the latest and greatest download the app, the nonprofit show app. Thank you, Vanna White. Julia likes to show her phone at that queue, but you can absolutely scan the QR code right now on the screen and it will pull up the app in just a few hours after our conversation with Ann. You will get the notification that the broadcast is now uploaded in live and we're still on podcast and we're still on broadcast. So you can find us pretty much anywhere you like to gather your entertainment. So I still like to say we're working on that hologram, but who knows, that might be here before we know it. Very soon, very soon, my friend. So Ann, we are so thrilled to have you back. Ann McCauley-Lopez for those of you watching and listening. Again, Ann serves as SEO content writer at Agency Content Writer. Welcome back, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. I haven't had both of you on in quite a while for one of my episodes, so it's great to see you both. I know. That's right. We are here for it. We've got a lot of great insight to share and really looking forward to learning more from you. So let's dive in because there is a lot to cover when it comes to creating content strategy and one of the things that I think about immediately, Ann, is there is so much noise out there, right? There is so much content, right? There's emails, there's texts, there's phone calls, there's the web addresses. So I love that you have here. Let's identify categories. So take it away and share with us what it's like and those best practices. That's a really good point, Jared. There is a lot happening and I think when we talk about creating content, we're talking about creating content for all of those. So you've got, if you have a podcast, we've got podcast content, blog content, newsletter content, social media content. A lot of times it really should over arch, right? So today we're talking about content strategy. I'll be writing a blog post to share what we talked about and that sort of thing. So that's really what we want is to create a sometimes or mostly cohesive plan that we can follow. So I would say start out with the knowns. What do we know? We know we want to send a newsletter. We want to have a podcast or we want to have a blog. We know our audiences, like think about your audiences throughout the year. We might not be writing to all four because that would be really hard, right? Like donors and volunteers and, and, and so that's why I said kind of pick those audiences that you want to talk to and then that way we don't forget, right? Because there is so much out there. Then we don't forget who we are, who we're talking to. So for volunteers and non-social media, you might find an article that talks about the health and well-being of people who volunteer, right? Does it make us a little healthier, make us smile or make us feel like we're giving back? Maybe that's something you post on social. And along with that kind of volunteer spotlight week or month, we can include that article as well as a spotlight of a volunteer or a group of volunteers and like corporate volunteers or something like that. So we begin to tell the story of what the nonprofit is doing and what the mission is, but really be strategic. Like, okay, this, we know we have an event coming up and we'll have volunteers. So maybe we kind of have a, hey, we're looking for a volunteer, you know, like leading up to that event. So we're not talking to everyone. That's so confusing, right? If we hit all four of those every single day, I'd be exhausted by the end of the week. You know, and I'm fascinated because I think of content strategy as coming up with what are the stories you want to tell first and then trying to plug them in. But I like this a lot more. I think this is so much smarter to figure out who you're going to talk to first. I love this approach. I really do. I think it's a really good idea. And it seems to me, it's almost, you know, Jared and I talked about this from the beginning, like, and I think you've helped us understand this, you know, the avatars, who is it that you're trying to talk to? And then navigating in that direction is very, very interesting. I like color coding on a spreadsheet. So one of my projects this week is to do my own social media, kind of put a calendar together for myself. I'll be honest. I'm behind on that. But you can start at any time, right? It's meeting in June. So let's just start it in June. Like I want to get in the habit. I do have a spreadsheet. I like color coding. My last corporate job, we worked off spreadsheets and used color coding. So I still kind of stick to it. Whatever works for you and your team, do that to be organized. Like you said, Julia, and then start kind of backfilling. Like, what will we need for the gala? Well, we'll need to do a volunteer call out. We'll need whatever it is, kind of back things up for what you'll need and track it and make sure someone's managing that. Right? I was just talking about the HOA before we came on and we have a spreadsheet where we track everything we're working on and it makes it a lot easier because everybody has access and I'm kind of the manager of that sheet. So it's the same for your content strategy. Content strategy, she's going to have more colors though, right? It's going to be way more fun than an HOA spreadsheet. So are you kind of giving us permission to start something literally just on a spreadsheet that we don't have to be investing in additional content management software that it can be as simple as kind of starting that way? Yeah, I'm all about keeping it simple. Now, if you're on a platform like a HubSpot or another platform, maybe that's non-profit specific, if what you're using has that functionality, give that a try. There's other things like air table, which can interact with other spreadsheets. So maybe the marketing department has something you want to pull in or whatever it is, work with what you have and who you have. So if they've already got something laid out or they're working on their calendar, pop onto that and grab some ideas, maybe connect your sheets together or whatever works for you. But I really think like I think in 90-day sprints. So my year is I do like a 90-day year. So I track how far have I gone in the last 90 days. So I think for non-profits, we look at the whole year, but when we're really getting down to the nitty-gritty, let's maybe look at 90 days. Or July, this is the last month of the year for a lot of folks, right? Yes. Yeah. So now, so June might be a really good time because then you start July is your new year and start the habit of having it. It doesn't have to be a lot. Like I go on LinkedIn a couple of times a week. I go on Instagram kind of as I travel really as I have photos or when I post new content, we go on there when I'm a guest, I reshare, that sort of a thing. So it doesn't have to be over complicated. If you're doing, you know, if you're putting blog posts and newsletters, you know, share those and ask people to share them on their profiles, like your volunteers. And if you have a staff, have your staff share it out. The more eyes we can get on it, you know, the bigger it makes our community. It's kind of like online networking or as you're out networking too. But I think if we, I'm going to do this myself. So I'm going to let you know how it goes. I'm going to take a deep breath, not going to freak you out. I'm going to create a template and I'm going to throw, start throwing in what I know and the content that I want to be creating or I've already created so that I can start sharing that out. And then from there, I feel like you kind of have a skeleton, a plan. And I've always said, Julie and I, you and I have always said, like, kind of keep space on there for other things that happen. That was going to be my question. Yeah. Because like, I know Jared and I've talked about this in the past. I mean, you have emergencies, which I, you know, I believe that that old adage, you know, never waste bad news. Meaning you can always, when there's some bad news, you can always make it to your advantage or run to the fire, basically, you know. So what does that look like? How do we give ourselves just grace or do we like leave open spots or how do we identify that? Sure. So I think of it if I were managing a food bank, for example, typically what happens is the shelves kind of empty out in the summer months, right? Everybody gives over Christmas and Thanksgiving. So you might kind of put a tentative. Do we need food for the food bank? Do we need donations of a certain kind of food? Do we need, you know, we're collecting things for back to school? Well, what does that look like? Do we want to kick off our year with a back to school kind of, you know, if it fits your nonprofit? Obviously. But what's kind of a maybe? What do we think is going to trend put that on there? If the shelves are full, fantastic. But if they're not, and typically they're not right for food banks in particular, then let's do a call out and let's say, hey, we need this. If not, then put a thank you out there in all like bad news or good news. I think things like, you know, I just heard a report that because of the drought in Arizona, Yuma, Arizona is the highest producer of leafy greens for the country over winter. So what does that mean? If we don't have those leafy greens for your food kind of based nonprofit, I must be hungry because I keep talking about food. But that's kind of what I think, like, do we need, yeah. Yeah, I have a question about this. So for a lot of organizations, right, they might be creating this from scratch, but others, I'm curious if we can rinse and repeat the same like content calendar year over year by making some changes, right? So like if the Gala has moved from November to September, we obviously need to change those dates. How are you leveraging, you know, this this system that you're tracking it so that you're creating processes in the process? Yeah, great question. Yeah, very good. I'll tell you a big secret. I have a friend who basically kind of serves as my accountability coach. She told me her secret and I'm totally stealing this idea. She has evergreen content and that's content we can post over and over. So if it's articles about volunteering or articles from our own blogs or from the media, we get some media attention. Post those again, right, over and over. I watch her content and I didn't even know she was doing this. That's how good it is. So build in like every second Tuesday and fourth Tuesday. We post about this for mine. Be on the lookout. My dog is the employee of the month. So I'm just going to drop posts in every month for him. Love it. It'll be a similar graphic. We'll change it from May to June. Definitely, definitely leverage what you have, especially like, you know, doing things like driving traffic to the website, which I know for nonprofits isn't the goal, right? We're all about the mission, but the more eyes we can get on that again, it grows that online community for us and it saves you time, right? If we can rinse and repeat, as you said, and post the same content or move that column of October gala over to September and then say, OK, we've just got to clean it up and change the dates, but use the same messages. That's where I think I think we've got we wanted to touch on chat GPT today. I had done an experiment. I talked about the last time I was here and I pulled up. I said, how did I say it? Social media posts for nonprofit gala. And it gave us blanks to put the date in the mission. You could add who it benefits with the hashtags already there. And so you take that this year, use it again next year. I mean, double check the hashtags, maybe adjust a couple of things like the date. But if it's to benefit the Boys and Girls Club, let's, you know, put that in there and use, I think, to use the tools that we have. Like we already have some content built out. Let's do it. Let's see on the technical side, go to your web person or you know, if you've got a marketing person, somebody that looks at those Google analytics, what is, what do people really like to read about? And it might be content that's not really search engine, you know, SEO, optimized search engine, optimized, optimized, excuse me. But it might be it just performed well, right? Jared, we had a grant station article, you know, what to do when the grant maker says no, that did really well over there. We know that. So we repost it, right? We share it. We say, you know, we refer to it. And our new blog posts, I do write for Jared. We all know that. We admit that every time I'm here, it's out every time I know. And I think it's out. Well, we know that post performs well. We know what posts on your website perform well. And so we want to maybe write more content like that. So take what you know and what you've already created and absolutely definitely adjust for the new year, the new quarter. I'm telling you, I stalk my friend. I didn't even know she was doing this. I love I have a question about this. And that's it's more a little bit more technical. And are you saying should we like write new headlines and decks for that content? Or should we be like, oh, we've talked about this. I'm going to repost an article from last March. I mean, how how do we do this? I mean, do we do we quote ourselves in essence? Or do we repost it as it looks like something new, but it's not really posted as new? Yes. OK. And now that I know my friend's secret, I go back and look and it's the exact same post. There are just some types of content you can just post again. We need volunteers this weekend. We need whatever it is, your backpack posts to fill the backpacks. Use the same ones. Maybe if it's a date oriented thing, change the date, obviously. But there's some content that just just grab it, copy, paste. OK, I totally agree. And I'm I'm working with a client and we have very little capacity, as I know, a lot of development teams across the nation do for nonprofits. And I, you know, and I told her, I said, go to the email blast that was sent out in July of last year. See what was on that newsletter. See what social media was posted, right? Because they didn't have a calendar created. So they they didn't have this system to track, right? And I'm like, I'm all about this, right? Like repurpose, reuse, recycle, because a lot of it is evergreen and it's seasonal, right? To, ironically, a food bank that does in the summer. So I'm right there with you. One of the questions, though, as we talk about capacity, who is responsible for this? Because I love that you talk about engaging your team and engaging volunteers. But how how do we best do that? I think one of the things actually I was inspired by one of your posts, Jared, and I know we refer to it quite a lot. It was how do you engage your board and the idea was make a list of of things you need done or would like them to do and have them pick and hopefully you've got somebody in there who's a writer or who wants some writing experience, maybe, you know, volunteers. Maybe they want some writing experience so they can take to their job or so they can write their community newsletter, you know, their H.O.A. newsletter, whatever, give them the opportunity to write, give them some guidelines, perhaps, so that you've got maybe it's raw information, but you can take that and do a quick edit and use that for a newsletter or quote them or if they're able to write that full content, have them have them do that. Who on your team? Like maybe there's maybe there's somebody on your team that you think, oh, well, she works in finance or she's are, you know, in accounting, but maybe they have something they'd like to share. You know, if they're in accounting for nonprofits, maybe there's an article they'd like to share. Like, do you have something related that we can post? We're getting our calendar ready for the coming quarter. That is so good. And I'm going to, like, totally out myself. I never, never would have thought to ask the finance director, right? But transparency of financials is so critical in the nonprofit sector. Yes, thank you, Anne. This was a huge aha for me. It was like, of course, you also ask the finance team. Yeah, and I bet to to Jared's point, I bet that never happens. Never happens. Oh, go to programming, go to fundraising. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I mean, you never know. I was thinking about it, like from a corporate perspective, they talk about like shuffling teams and, you know, you have a good employee on this team, but they actually have an interest in marketing. Well, instead of laying them off, bring them over to marketing because you have a spot open there, you know? And so I kind of, I think you can apply the same in a nonprofit. I'm sure there's volunteers or there's like a journalism student from a local university or a high school journalism student who you could engage to do some work on as a volunteer or if you've got the budget to pay them a little bit, do that. But yeah, I mean, I think you never know. You may end up maybe with a little bank. So I had written for a cancer nonprofit and focused on patients, primarily. And so we had a little bank of patient stories and all we had to do is, you know, make sure we had their sign off that we could post their story. Usually we only use their first name just for privacy. This is a crazy world out there. Some of the names changed, but it was a nice way to dive in and say, oh, yeah, let's post a patient story. Like what better way to do fundraising than tell how what we do impacts. So it's a fundraising story. It's a story for the donors. So if you send out a donor newsletter, here's so and so story to make an impact. And we have a little bank of those. We have a little bank from it was patients and research. So we had a little bank of research, letters and updates. We'd ask them annually so we could go back and maybe do a video interview or something like that to get content knowing that that was in the news. You can post a news article and refer them to that article on your website and just kind of tie it all together. I think if we think about it in terms of like, what's our January newsletter? What's our quarter one newsletter or our like for nonprofits? The summer newsletter, right July, August, September for the new year. What do we want to focus on and then focus there? We don't have to focus everywhere because it gets like even just saying that focus everywhere, I have a little bit of anxiety, right? Like that's a lot too much. Yeah, like we know the mission and the vision. We know the voice or the brand. So if we have different writers, they should be familiar with the organization and maybe read through some newsletters kind of just come up with a quick little. Here's what we ask for our writers to do or our contributors. And that way, you know, like you could put a Google alert like I could be in your finance department and put a Google alert up for whatever the focus of the nonprofit is. And if I see a newsworthy article, oh, now I know. Oh, I send it to Jarrett because she's managing that spreadsheet. Right. And then when you get that email, drop it somewhere in. If it's appropriate, drop it somewhere in. I tell people, I'm like, you don't always have to have original content. You can use other people's content, but use the best of. So it's telling a story that relates to your organization, drop it in. And that could be one of those evergreen posts. Like food banks are always short in the summer. Like our our shelves are historically empty. Here's how to give and that can be an evergreen post. Absolutely. One of the things and we don't have much time left, but I want to make sure that I get you to talk to us about generating hashtags and headlines because we can do all this work. But we've learned from you and Macaulay Lopez that if we don't work on this hashtag and the issue of SEO and the headlines, no one's going to see it or not. You say no, but fewer people are going to see it. Help us understand this. Sure. So the headline should contain a key word if you are a keyword phrase. If you're doing some focused content, telling the story of somebody with who has benefited from your organization, for example, who's volunteered with the organization, that's storytelling. And I think that's more organic SEO where we want people to know that that happened. If it's kind of more, you know, how to donate to or benefits of or something like that, the headline should have a key word. And we we might think in terms of having some of that type of content as well. And then when we put it out, we want to have some hashtags. I use chat GPT for hashtags. And I literally said hashtags for I think I use travel blogger just to see what it what it put out when I did it. I did that social media gala post. And within that social post, it actually had some hashtags and it had some suggestions. So like if it's a gala in Phoenix, in Minnesota, in Texas, you know, Houston, Texas, with the name of the city, Houston gala, Houston fundraiser, things like that. And chat to B.T. showed me that and and suggested that. Now, does it know everything? No. And there's other websites and the name of them is absolutely escaping me. I put in for headlines, I say headline analyzer, freed headline analyzer to kind of test out my headline. If it's something that, you know, it's kind of newsworthy or we want to let me do it for some search engine searchability. We might do that. But those are ways, I think, to to kind of safely use chat GPT and what we're doing and also lighten the load like everybody's tax, which you have those resources like I keep a running spreadsheet of my own or a bookmark them and make that available to your key people. But have somebody who manages it as well so that if maybe there's a better tool or a different way to track, they can make those changes. I think a free for all is going to create a big fat mess. So maybe lock down the tracker, but have a place where people can kind of drop their resources, something like that. Love that. I love that. And I feel like the tracker also creates a content inventory, right? Like what have we done? And again, outing myself since I started my business in 2009, 14 years ago, I have a lot of content out there. And so how can we be smarter by using that system that we're using to track the headlines that have, you know, like really knocked it out of the park? So getting, you know, these systems into a place again where it's just building systems and maturing the systems that we have. So you might be updating one of those old articles, too, and posting it as a new article and referring the articles to each other. Oh, interesting. Not hard. Yeah. Yeah, referring, yeah, referring them back. You know, I want to refer our viewers and listeners to agencycontentwriter.com's blog. There are amazing, amazing articles so that a lot of them will have something. There'll be topics that we've touched on here on the nonprofit show with Anne. And in some cases, lessons, things that she's learned or she's doing, it's wonderful, wonderful information. And you can access it for free. Go to agencycontentwriter.com. And Anne, you're so obviously this is your business, but you're so beautiful at getting these things updated and current and it's just an amazing amount of information. Anne has also written a book. It's really moving. We don't get to wring the bell. My CML story. Check it out. It's really a cool thing to see and to to know a little bit more about the journey of somebody who you work with or you're familiar. Sometimes you think you know them, but you don't always. Anne McCauley Lopez, you are a goddess. I learn something every time from you. Every time. And it's really cool. Thank you. Yeah, it's really amazing. And I think the biggest thing, Jared, for me, is that she reduces the fear and the stress. She makes it seem approachable and something we can do. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I do need to make an apology to all the finance directors I've ever worked with. But I think I can do that. And then now you just incorporate it, right? When you know better, you do better. I love it. I think you're right. When you know better, you do better. Hey, if you don't know us, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared R. Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, we are here because we have the amazing support of folks like Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, where I hope you were with us, Jared, broadcasted from there twice last week, which was super cool. Also, our friends at Staffing Boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. Again, these are the folks that allow us to have these conversations day in and day out. And content is queen as we have learned from Anne McCauley Lopez. Anne, thank you so much. Thank you for having me again. It's always fun and the time always flies. It does. It does, even for us. And as much we do this every day, even we are surprised at how fast it goes. So it's been amazing. Hey, everybody, as we end every episode of the nonprofit show, we want to remind everyone to stay well. So you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone. Thank you, ladies.