5 Content Ideas for Nonprofits and Businesses

Most content creators for nonprofits and businesses tend to focus solely on their organisation. They talk about the usual news, announcements, and reports.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it can make for pretty bland reading. Also, when nothing new is happening, you might end up stuck for things to write or to blog about.

That’s why it’s good to consider different types of content to create and/or curate for your organisation’s website or blog. Here are just some content creation ideas to consider:

1. Stories about your clients or stakeholders. This may take the form of interviews, profiles, or features. You can talk about your staff members, volunteers, board members, clients, or anyone else who might be connected to your organisation. Highlight their personal stories and show why you’re excited that they’re part of your organisation.

2. Useful tips and resources around your organisation’s areas of expertise. If you’re a nonprofit that deal with the environment, you might want to consider featuring tips on how to protect the environment at home or at work. Perhaps, even feature books, websites, blogs, and apps that are relevant to your cause. If you’re a business, you can also highlight similar tips and resources around the type of business that you run. For example, if you’re a technology company dealing with finance software, you can talk about finance tips, books, magazines, blogs and websites in your area.

3. Behind the scenes stories. If your organisation is working on a project or an event, you can talk about some of the things that are happening during the project or event preparation. Build excitement by showing things that people can look forward to. For example, one nonprofit who put together an event started taking photos of the swag that they’re going to give away. You can also share site visits and even trips to the caterers.

4. Tutorials or how tos in your speciality, or as shared by your community. If your organisation has anything to do with food or drinks, you might consider sharing recipes. If your organisation has something to do with fashion, you might want to share some step-by-step articles that people can use as DIY guides. If you’ve got ways to teach people how to get something done, these types of articles can be invaluable to your readers.

5. Q and As. When you receive a question from a reader or a connection, you can try to use them as inspiration for your next article or blog post. You can ask permission from the person who asked the question if you want to use their name. Otherwise, you can simply ask the question and share your response accordingly.

These content ideas may be created or curated using text, images, videos, slide decks, or a combination of any of these content types.

You can record and track down your content ideas using a format that you like, or you can use our content ideas dashboard. This dashboard is a template in spreadsheet format. Access to this template will be available in our May 2013 newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber and you would like to be, just sign-up now. It’s free.

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Also see: Content Calendar 101 – Tips and Tools

Photo source: sxc.hu