 As we break into a brand new week it is Monday or as I like to say Monday because Friday gets all the fun and Monday gets all the sadness where it's like we have to go back to work but like why don't we have the same spirit and energy when we start the week as we end a week so today I am excited to have my dear friend on although I haven't seen and connected with you in quite some time but I feel like we have that connection so and Macaulay Lopez content writer with black blogging badass I was just so excited to say the badass that I mispronounced the blogging. So I mean that tells you a lot about and already and is known as the blogging badass so today's episode we are talking with her about blogging in particular for your organization so hang tight let us get there a couple of these other introductions and we will hear more from you soon. We start every episode as you know by saying thank you thank you thank you to all of our presenting sponsors. You can see their logos right in front of you on the screen and of course you can find all of them on the interwebs. Just do find them give them a like some love thumbs up. They are here with the sole purpose to help and support you to do more good in your community and for those that you serve so thank you to our presenting sponsors that continue this conversation. Thank you of course to Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy, and thanks to Julia for allowing me to continue to stay on air with you. It's been such a fun ride. I'm Jared ransom, also known as the nonprofit nerd CEO of the Raven group. And again, and I'm so excited to have you on as we talked to you today, and I'll just learn from you so welcome. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here today. You know, it's really an amazing thing to talk to you and get your professional opinion. We talk about the storytelling aspect of the nonprofit sector. We got to tell a story, we got to tell a story. But how do we administrate that. I feel like we know that we have to tell stories and we know that we have so many things. And I want to talk to you about this value of blogging and, and how we can really communicate those things that we might tell somebody, we might share it in a tour, we're doing fundraising. But we just seem to fall down when it comes to really, really going forward with that. So we're delighted to have you here to talk to us and get us encouraged. The first thing I want to ask you about is audience and understanding what that even means. Yes, so when we talk to businesses, right in the for profits sector, we talk about a target clients. And I think for nonprofits, it may be more of a, what kind of a donor do we want, who do we want to be serving, who do we want to tell those stories to. And it's really kind of the same formula. It's about creating value for the audience. So when we talk about telling the stories for me as a person who supports nonprofits, for example, I want to hear stories about the people that we've helped. Who are we helping where those successes. So if we're, we're building a house for family for an organization tell us about the family what's what's their story. The beauty of creating that written content for the blog is that we can really use it in a number of different ways. We can use it for a for blog we can move that blog to a newsletter. We can do a podcast on the topic like we're doing today we could do a video and really use that same story in a number of different ways. So it's really, I think from nonprofits, it's who, who are we trying to reach with a particular piece of content or on a particular strategy. I love this and this is in particular, you know something that I can also see and I know we're going to talk about this later is how you might repurpose content, but just as you stated and there are so many ways to use the elements of the blog to help tell the story right and also to the different, you know donor segmentations be it volunteers be it financial supporters. You know, I want to say like recipient families or those that are impacted by the benefit of the organization, and I think that's really important. I wrote an article about an individual that made a planned gift to an organization because I find that talking about plan giving is often quite difficult right I mean we're talking about what happens after your life here. You know it's really not easy and that is where I find it's it's such a beautiful story to tell about the impact and the success of someone choosing X, Y and Z organization right now, so that the organization is left still as one of their top priorities so that is a way in which I personally have used you know blogging as an opportunity because to be honest I didn't really know what other like best way and vehicle to tell that story. Yes, I think that makes a huge, makes a huge impact because you're right people don't want to talk about what happens after right where does all the stuff go where does my money go. There's a story behind why you choose what you choose and which organization you might choose to leave that ongoing legacy. My husband and I for example there's a scholarship program at ASU that we are highly involved into this day. And so part of our plan was really to sit down and talk and say how do we continue this legacy and telling those types of stories and saying hey we did it so can you. I think from, you know, kind of a Google love kind of perspective of being conscious of SEO search engine optimization, just a little bit on the more technical side, but it's how people find your website. So from that perspective, maybe there's opportunity on key words that have to do with that planned giving and so there's real opportunity get your website ahead of the others, or in on a first page or second page where people will notice. People who are looking for those ideas and say oh gosh this is a great organization and we're just thinking about maybe doing some planned giving. One piece of it as well as as you're looking at the strategy what where their opportunities on the more technical side to. So are you saying that you as a content developer, you know, you and writer you bring in some of these SEO elements into the article and into the blog itself. Yes. Yeah, we can do some keyword research. We can there's some great tools out there that are either free or almost free where we can really see how does that website rank and where do we have opportunity. It may be and for nonprofits. You know sometimes there maybe isn't a budget for a new website every year or two. You don't necessarily need that we can play with some of the content that's already on there, and add some of those keyword elements. Yeah, that's one of my favorite projects to do because you see you guys just it up and you make it prettier than it already is. I love that word, just it up. Those different opportunities for key words so not only are you telling the stories but there's this other kind of behind the scenes aspect to it of this is how our website is being found. You know, I appreciate you saying that because I think that's one of the things that with this vast opportunity to connect with people. You have to start with the word vast and you have to understand, there's just so much out there and so what is it that we're going to do that we can actually make sure that people are seeing. Not just responding, but seeing the work that we do and it's really a huge, huge challenge that I think that you need to address, and you talk about consistent content and then repurposed content and I'd love for you to kind of share that what that means like, you know, I'm guilty of going to the website and looking and saying, well they haven't posted anything for so long, whether or not that's good information. I tend to make a value judgment of whether or not it's good, and I automatically say oh it's old. It's not going to be any good. And that's not great. No, and there are some things like turning off the dates that can make it, you know, maybe it's a little more current than maybe it is. I think about consistent content and as I talked to my clients and we say what does that mean for you I say okay well we could post twice a week we could write two articles a week one article a week. The consistency of how often is good for you and your organization. How often, you know, if you're hiring someone, what can you afford to pay them maybe I don't know. How easy it is, is it to get in touch with their clients and get all of the sign offs to use maybe their name and their, their picture and their tell their story. There's different elements to it. So maybe consistent is once a month and you write one article for the blog that goes in the newsletter that we talk about on a podcast or on a YouTube channel maybe we get a tour of that house to built for that family whatever it is. We're really using the same thing over and over and over. And that's repurposing what we're doing. If there's, as we look at the impact then of those particular stories and we look at okay there's a fundraising season for our organization. We're not to talk about, you know, some other, you know, ways to give type of host or, you know, things like that that are consistent with whatever the season is. So the plan might be a quarterly plan of topics, or a monthly plan of topics. It's really about what can your organization do. And as a member of a board now. There's a lot going on at nonprofits, a lot behind the scenes that we don't know there's, you know, the wish list of things you'd always want to have and how do we create content around that how do we say we want folks in the East Valley to volunteer in addition to our West Valley team and we want to celebrate the West Valley, while building the East Valley well that takes a lot of people. We need people so how do we create content around that idea maybe and use that content on social media and in all the different places that we've talked about today. And actually as and I know in particular more so during COVID, you know, our depth and breadth has really expanded so as we cast our net it just goes so, so far beyond our local community and we've heard from so many of our national viewers and people talk about how they have attracted donors supporters, board members, even volunteers from other regions of the nation and just you know even international. So I can imagine bringing that element of a complete geographic scope right it's like it's all in there plus the kitchen sink when it comes to opportunities of engagement. And as you're saying, you know, in your particular community we're talking of, you know, one side of the town from the other but now we're working with organizations that are literally become global. When it comes to their reach and their scope and that I'm assuming and has a much, you know, I don't know more more creative way to really bring that into blogs and writing and and how you repurpose that information. Have you seen that trend as well. Yes, yes, there's, you know, on the for profit side they're networking groups that have been hybrid or on video for so long that we're now have like I have friends around the globe now, which we have before coven to your point. So, in terms of nonprofits I would imagine, as you're saying it's, it's similar so how do we create content when we can't say the local area we want to create more kind of worldly content really. There's some different things that we can do and I think it goes back to the technical you know how good is the content and how optimized is it for that Google love that I call it just where do you fall and that was Google results and getting creative with it and so I could, we could write about, you know, generic nonprofit terms or we could write more specifically about what is your nonprofit doing and who, who are you needing or who are you serving, we're serving the underserved and seven different countries or whatever it is you know across the United States. So yeah it's a little bit more of a challenge but it's possible to do for sure. Go ahead, Julia. I got a question about this in terms of you've got your, you know your content and your understanding the process that you need to follow your keywords. What about imagery how important is that to have some sort of video file or still photography with all of those posts. I think the more important for getting found is to make sure those videos are SEO optimized search engine optimized with keywords as well as the pictures, like the idea of, you know, your, your nonprofit has a brand, right, like business. So why not have photos that are all similar in terms of their aesthetic because it makes it more pleasant for folks to come to you and if you're searching for those, you know, and who isn't right a higher end type of donor. We want to make sure that when they visit your website it's, it looks good, in addition to being found by Google and everything so it's very very important. Interesting because you know, we talk about blogging and to me, it just seems that it's all verbal, and that we are, we're kind of omit the visual aspect of it. You know, which is not good. Jared, I interrupted you. No, I mean I wanted to ask that when I think of a blog and I, I always think of it like housed on our website, you know it is housed on our dot org for an organization website or calm or dot whatever these days right there's so after what comes after the dot really you know it is up in the air. How might you bring blogging in and I know this isn't really a point of conversation but I feel like you already know where I'm going into like LinkedIn and some of these other social media platforms because to Julius point my personal website my business website rather. I've kind of stopped blogging there and I publish articles on LinkedIn. How does that work for nonprofits. That will, we call that backlinks. What that means is we're, we're writing, not on our own blog and linking it back to our own website. Google loves that it shows them that there's value to what's being written. If you link it to a few articles on your website, say, or within you know on your own blog linking it within there. That's super valuable as well. I think to it shows it reflects authority. You know hey I'm writing here I'm writing on LinkedIn I'm writing on Grant station I'm linking back to my own website and I have some authority that they've invited me or allowed me to publish elsewhere. It's super it's super important. And I think to as, as the nonprofit grows and as you know becomes more well known that becomes even more important right like we want to have the that whether it's PR in a newspaper or on a grant station or on LinkedIn. The beauty of it is, you know, you could write an article and a number of different ways and change the words but the idea is the same so if you're like oh my gosh I really need to write about this. Let's write about it on a number of different websites and that's your, your authority that's your expertise there. So it's super important. So is there an equation and I want to say that you might have told me it was like 20%, 20% of the original content needs to be changed for it to be. I don't know, seen as a new article, reeducate me on that. It's about 30% of the article changing about 30% of the article so if you're, they get 500 words, it's what a paragraph, you know, change your intro and outro that kind of a thing would work. The other thing that I've learned because I've been studying up on all of this because it's always changing right like you know the rules today I didn't know that the rules changed last week and so I sat in on a webinar about SEO and getting found. There's a website called medium and I don't know if you've explored this at all, but there's a way to import a link like from your own website to medium. And it will say originally published but because it's a link it doesn't affect it's called a duplicate content on Google. It doesn't affect your duplicate content because medium then knows because you imported the link. It knows that the original contents on your website so you don't get dinged for it. It's super simple right you don't even have to rewrite anything just import the link and figure it out on medium. So I got that was really interesting and I just learned that and I'm, you know, I do this all the time so I think there's opportunity there for sure. Well it's constantly changing but like you said so 30% so I'm going to fess up I have absolutely used and our paths have crossed probably a decade now ago, gosh, maybe close to a decade. And, and so I've pulled an in for some of my own business needs, she referenced Grand Station and we yes together we were on like their top. I want to say seven or 10 list on couple of years in a row so and did just that where I was like you know what I have so much content from 20, you know years of being in the sector 10 years of being a business owner. How can I use what I have to my better good and and repurpose this so yes you definitely helped me with that and it's been so phenomenal. And so I would love for you now if you would and share a little bit about how we as you know nonprofit bloggers might engage with a blogger or content writer, because oftentimes I feel like we're, we add it to our list will will do it, our way to that right but we engage other people to help us in our blogging world. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, my best clients are the ones that are that are busy and understand the value of content for profit nonprofit, whatever. I remember sitting with you Jared you're like I have all these ideas. And what happens right everybody's got a list I have a client, and she will bring up in the middle of the night and say here's what I came up with I was up in the middle of the night make it pretty, and that's I signal to you know go and do my thing. And I think that's it for nonprofits connect with a writer and say here's what we have in mind or we don't know where to begin. I had a client come to me she goes I have all the words but I don't know where to put them. Wow. So in essence, if you like have, let's say you're a food bank and you want to talk about what are the foods that you need for particular time of year. Are you saying like write it and you'll clean it up or are you saying the best way to go is to outline like what are some steps that somebody can take to move themselves towards a finished product. And I think it's if you're hiring somebody connect with someone who can, who has a process in place so I do, I did a couple of different ways. I can take those emails, I could interview you if you're like listen I just like to talk. Now that we've all been on video that that's pretty common these days we could talk about what we do and where we want to project to go. So that might be the easiest way is hey let's get on let's have a conversation and typically from there, there are keywords that you're saying that you don't know you're saying. It's really like for your food pantry it it maybe it's quarterly that they have different needs quarterly or monthly, or it's back time so we need pencils and pens but we don't need them all year or whatever. To understand that and then come up with a schedule. I think you could do it yourself as well. There's a little bit of organization I typically just keep a spreadsheet. There's other tools out there there's air table and. Oh gosh one with the cards Trello, which not my jam at all, but that's nice. Hey, I haven't tried it but I've heard good things about it so it's it's important to know your jam. Yeah, yeah I agree I agree so there's different tools for different learning styles out there where you can organize and not only that but share it with your team and say what are you talking about over in donors or fundraising or marketing like where are we all going with this and really organize it. One of the other things that I do, and it really seems like it's like the 2021 thing is to take a podcast or video transcripts and make those Google friendly. And that is, I've been doing a ton of that I wrote some scripts last summer out of my comfort zone, you know I hate it out there Jared but I did it. And they said oh no edits I was like what because they sent me basically like a recipe card I call it like it's the outline. And I wrote those scripts exactly what they wanted delivered them and they were like oh my gosh this is great thank you so much, I know I do what I'm doing. And it's an interesting thing is like one of the words I keep your keywords I keep hearing you say and we don't have a lot of time left, but I keep hearing you slide in the word plan. And I find this is a really interesting thing. Talk to us a little bit about that because so often in our sector we are a reactionary, you know, structure I mean we deal often. To fall to fall, we are wired to like oh my gosh this is a problem okay let's go this is a crisis. But I love that you've kind of slipped in this concept that you can forecast what it is you should be doing. Well, since yes, I think, if you have your list your plan of what you want to publish you say okay we're going to publish once a month and then one of those opportunities comes up. Let's do a second article this month let's do another podcast or another video and allow for that don't be rigid in in that plan or in those keywords we know where we want to target but we also recognize because it's it's a moving target the industry is moving the nonprofit sector moves fast that we have to allow for that space so maybe we say hey and we're going to do one a month. Sometimes we'll do to I had a client who they were they placed traveled nurses and other medical professionals. And so we allowed space for that she's like listen, we're flying by the seat of our pants I might just throw you an idea and let you run with it. It might be more it might be less and I check in with her and we just ran with it we knew we had our to a month. And then some months we did three or four we wrote three or four articles because people wanted the information what do you do when you're on the road as a nurse during that period. I didn't get these contracts if you want to get out of it what do you have to do. And so we, we operated like that. So I think, I think my word this year is grace give yourself grace. I think as an organization right we can all give ourselves grace and you can plan, but also plan for those times when something happens and you want to get the word out. Right. That sounds familiar Julia. I know. I mean, personal grace, give yourself grace give our you know my own self grace all of us, we just you know we've been navigating really hard times and as I say plural pandemics right we had the global virus we had social injustice and interest we had the global climate which has, you know, clearly been a huge divide in our communities. And then you know the environmental crisis that we're all really enduring or maybe enduring at this time. So just so much but you're right like and so what I heard you say and is as much as we can create a plan, realize that sometimes we are a fly by the seat. It doesn't happen right we all have to course correct at some point in our life, either personally professionally. I have used and on a couple several occasions actually, and sometimes I'm like look, my brain does not have like a conscious stream of thoughts it is like there are squirrels and shiny objects, all in my brain. It's really good at you know, creating this really single file parade that it makes sense and it's like, here's a I got it. Here's a squirrel here's a shiny object here's three more squirrels like and is really good at that, which is why she's the blogging badass. And so yes if you're interested in talking to and she is phenomenal. I've read so many of your works and from financial articles to nonprofit articles to you name it the housing market a little bit of everything so you are very versed and I think you're phenomenal and if those of you that want to reach out to Ann, want to see how it might you know look and work for your organization to create a blogging plan and how that can give you some Google love and you can also repurpose some of that content for the betterment of you and your community. Please do reach out to Ann. Absolutely. Yes, it was phenomenal. Everyone should be on the show. You know, and I wrote a couple down I was like, oh, here's an article and here's an article so I had squirrels flying from my brain just during this, you know, quick 30 minute episode so I will certainly be in touch but I love the idea of blogs and how we can integrate them into a higher marketing communication strategy, as we continue to tell the good works that we do out in the world so thanks for sharing this this information with us it was very rich. Amazing. You know, I, I love so many things what you said it kind of puts together a lot of pieces. And so I think that you might be my new best friend, I'm definitely going to think about some of these things you said and chat with you a little bit more in depth. Again, I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself Jared Ransom CEO of the Raven group. We want to make sure that we do thank all of our sponsors that you we would not be here, having this amazing discussion like we have with Ann. It is remarkable that every day, we get to share with you the great minds of this sector, and that happens because of these sponsors so we want to make sure that we express our gratitude. Ann's TV is a new program that we're doing check us out a lot of fun, talking about how you can maximize events for your nonprofit. Our host is Jason champion and he's a lot of fun. Hey, Jared, love the way we kicked off this week. Thank you to I told you it was going to be a money a because Friday gets all the fun. And so this was a great week. We've got so many amazing guests lined up this week as well we have one Kingsbury Mary Gleason. So many amazing conversations to talk about for the organizations in which you serve so thanks for joining us I hope you'll join us again tomorrow until then as we end every episode, please stay well so you can do well. I'll see you back here tomorrow.