Hubspot, an inbound marketing company, has been researching for a couple of years how blogging helps increase website traffic, email subscribers and the ability to be found in search engines.
Their most recent study found that blogging frequency influences the rate of customer acquisition (see graph below). This also applies if the “customers” you seek are social fundraisers.
Hubspot also found that blogs posting daily get four times as many leads as blogs posting weekly (see graph below).
Blogging is not just for companies and brands
You might be thinking blogs are for brands and corporations, but not so much for nonprofits.
But interestingly enough, out of all of the industries they analyzed, the best performer was a nonprofit one (Higher Education).
Why don’t more nonprofits blog?
You’d think that with all the evidence supporting the value of blogging, more nonprofits would be doing it!
The reasons why most nonprofits still aren’t blogging is probably due to several factors:
- Late adoption. Even with all the research, blogging is not widely accepted as a proven method to increase visibility, subscribers and donors.
- Education. Many orgs aren’t aware of how easy blogging it, and how to do it effectively.
- Resource allocation. Many small orgs are barely able to manage a Facebook page, much less create content for a blog. In some ways, this is really an educational issue because blogging can be as easy as sending an email.
- Messaging. Blogs are the strongest “content statements” on the Internet, which makes orgs hesitate—particularly if they don’t have a strong message to begin with.
Next week, I’ll begin a step-by-step series on how your organization can start blogging. For now, though, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section about why you are (or aren’t) blogging for your nonprofit.