Blogging for Nonprofits: Framing Expectations

blogging for nonprofits framing expectationsBlogging is about more than merely sharing opinions and delivering helpful information. One of the benefits of blogging for nonprofit organizations is that it can help your organization be proactive in setting, or framing expectations with your constituents. How?

Blogs are a wonderful way to address frequently asked questions—without having to call them that. Every nonprofit organization fields certain questions on a regular basis. For the most part, these are legitimate questions that your constituents have about what you do and how you operate. But sometimes people ask these questions in what seems to be confrontational ways (whether it’s intended or not). So instead of waiting for someone to ask a potentially awkward question, you can take the initiative and address that question in a blog.

Because you are taking the initiative, you can frame the topic in a way that allows you to answer “objections” before they arise. You can steer the discussion away from tangential and distracting issues. You can make sure that the things that are truly important are what get talked about. And if you need to deal with sensitive topics, the fact that you are the one taking the initiative reduces the chance of being perceived as “defensive.”

One of the cardinal rules of blogging is to make sure that you cover topics that are of interest to the audience reading the blog. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are things that people genuinely want to know. By building your blog topics around FAQs, you’re effectively allowing your constituents to determine what content they want to hear.

And here’s an added bonus. Some organizations struggle to come up with good blog content on a regular basis. Let’s say you’ve decided that your organization should be blogging once a week. If you take your top 25 most frequently asked questions, and build blogs around them, you’ve got a half a year’s worth of blogs all ready to go!

Beyond your frequently asked questions, what other organization expectations do you need to frame?