Hi friends 👋🏻

This week, a question about a super-common website feature that is usually one of two very different things. Or more confusing, a mixture of the two.

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What is your blog?

Lots of websites include a "blog".

When I'm working on a content audit, or the structure for a new website, it's common to see a "blog" on the list of requirements. And that blog contains a series of "posts," presented in reverse date order.

Our website platforms reinforce this language. Squarespace offers a "blog" as a default content collection. WordPress grew up as a blogging platform, and still includes "posts" as one of the two default content types.

However, on nonprofit organization websites, "blogs" often house two very different types of content:

1. Organizational updates, or news updates: this is relatively easy content to produce, and orgs often produce it anyway to feed an email newsletter. It's natural to also post it to the website. Moreover, there's often a strong drive from leadership to include organizational news content on the website, since as an organizational insider, you want to shout to the rooftops about all the important work your org is doing, the event you have coming up, or the fundraising drive you just kicked off.
   But remember, it's likely that these news updates will only attract the attention of visitors that are already engaged with your organization.
2. Search-optimized, informational posts: these are different from news posts. These posts are designed to answer questions about the field your organization works in, and might attract an audience that is not yet familiar with your organization.

Both of these content types have their place on an organizational website. Yet nonprofit communications staff are often simply tasked with producing a certain number of "blog posts" per month, without a clear distinction between these two categories.

IMO it's an important distinction.

From a content strategy point of view, these two types of blog post serve totally different objectives.

• Search-optimized, informational posts are designed to attract new audience members. They take time to research and write. They're for folks at the very beginning of your audience journey​
• Organizational news update posts are for your existing audience. They know and care about your organization, they might be familiar with members of your staff, and they are following your progress. These posts typically aren't aimed at attracting a new audience. They're aimed at keeping your existing audience engaged and enthusiastic.

And because they serve different purposes, you might consider organizing them separately on your website, providing visitors with a clear link for organizational news, separate from educational content about your field.

As a closing thought, take a look at this graphic from the good folks at Orbit Media. It illustrates the different places in the audience journey (or funnel if you subscribe to that metaphor) occupied by different types of content.

This graphic isn't designed for the nonprofit context, but we can make the translation. You'll see "Search-Optimized Blog Posts" are right at the top. And down closer to the bottom there are a series of content types that are closer to the general "organizational news" category we discussed above:

• "Sales enablement articles" – in the nonprofit context these are likely posts about your programs or service work
• "Your story" — posts telling your organization's story, or markers of significant events
• "Case Stories / Customer Stories" — for a nonprofit org these might be profiles of program/service users

That's all for this week. Questions/thoughts/feedback welcome!

Until next time ✨

— Ed Harris (your digital strategy guide)

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