To Communicate Better, Think Like a Donor and Be Smart About Twitter

Too many nonprofit organizations fail to keep donors because they don’t do a good job of making their work interesting, says Kivi Leroux Miller, a marketing consultant for charities. Ms. Miller discusses her new book, Content Marketing for Nonprofits, with The Chronicle:

What is content marketing and how does it differ from traditional marketing?

Content marketing is about using your communications to attract people to you instead of thrusting your stuff in front of them and interrupting them.

A lot of nonprofits publish newsletters that are just about the nonprofit’s work. It ends up being a narrative of the staff’s to-do list for the last month.

With a content-marketing approach to a newsletter, you would know what the readers of your newsletter are interested in and write content that they’re going to be excited to read. Grist does a great job sharing lots of stories on a variety of topics with its e-newsletter readers, while keeping the newsletter very skimmable and easy to act on.

You have to listen to the people who are on your newsletter list or fans of your Facebook page and pay attention to what’s important and relevant to them and make that central to the communications strategy, instead of what your nonprofit wants the world to know. That’s a pretty big shift for most organizations.

How can content marketing bolster fundraising?

We all know there is a donor-retention crisis in this country. The donor attrition rate is between 55 and 65 percent. We have people who are giving and then leaving.

Why is that? I would argue that nonprofits are doing a lousy job at communicating with their first-time donors. A content-marketing strategy is a way to increase your donor-retention rate by proving to those new donors that you do understand why they care about your cause.

How can content marketing appeal to younger donors?

Donors of all ages don’t want to be treated like ATMs—that’s especially true with people who are in Gen Y and Gen X and even some of the younger boomers. Philanthropy is an expression of their values, and people express their values in lots of different ways, not just writing a check.

You need to give people many ways to participate in the good work of your cause. Younger donors tend to be more interested in community and solving problems quickly. They want to see progress. It’s really incumbent upon all of us to show that progress, even if it’s just baby steps forward. They want to be more actively included in making change than older donors were traditionally.

It can be overwhelming to put together a media strategy. What do you think is the best approach?

Read the book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims. Instead of trying to pretend you can plan two years into the future, what you do is make a series of educated guesses, or little bets, about something that might work. You try it for a week or two and see what happens, learn from that, adjust as you go, and make another little bet. You have a long-term goal, but you take it step by step.

What is the most misunderstood marketing tool?

People are still very confused about the best approach to Twitter. It’s very simple—140 characters. And yet because it’s so simple, it’s difficult to create a strategy for how to use it effectively. They use it as a one-way dumping ground, sending out random information without thinking about what kind of content works best for their followers. Some big nonprofits use Twitter as a press-release distribution service and it’s much, much more than that.

The American Red Cross, the Humane Society of the United States, and the National Wildlife Federation have all figured out how to use Twitter well. They each share a good mix of timely, helpful updates on their issues, combined with responsiveness to their followers.

How can charities begin carrying out their own marketing campaigns?

I like to focus on the ultimate call to action—the thing you want people to do—and then work backwards. If you need more volunteers, talk to your current volunteers, find out why they’re motivated to participate, and how you can do more of that to get more people.