4 reasons your charity should consider group blogging

Over at FAIT ICI we’ve been running a group blog for close to a year now. It’s a core piece of our content marketing.

The experience has made me realize that group blogging holds mega-promise for non-profits. Some, like USA for UNHCR, have already caught on (their Blue Key blog is a textbook illustration of how non-profits should run group blogs).

Your non-profit, or non-profit clients, should consider this tactic VERY seriously.

Here are 4 reasons:

1. A story from multiple perspectives: Charities are in the business of doing good, but that does not mean they’re all great at storytelling. There is a tendency to think that everyone’s perspective on, and interactions with, a cause are the same. This is patently untrue. In fact, “the different angles of a cause” hold real possibility if brought to light. A group blog featuring all segments of a community (from your staff, to those you help, to those who donate to your cause, to those whose work is funded by the money you raise, etc) is a great way to tell the world about all that is you and your mission. Most important, it prevents your story from being one-dimensional.
2. Content marketing…outsourced (kinda): Non-profits often gripe about how they lack the resources for effective content marketing. A group blog with regular scheduled postings overcomes this problem to some extent. By outsourcing the creation of content to passionate members of your community you get material for low output. There will still need to someone on your team who curates, edits and promotes the content, but this need not be an onerous task.
3. Give a community a platform and it comes together. If you’re doing good in the world, people WANT to interact with you. By creating a group blog you give your community (and those you would like to be in it) a place to interact and come together. This is VERY powerful as a way to solidify relations, begin more business-centric discussions unobtrusively, and grow your following.
4. Group blogging is a great media relations tactic. Most notably (and I have seen this writ large) a group blog allows you to invite influencers into your space and give them a platform. It is an excellent way to carry out media relations; someone comes – invited by you – to YOUR owned media property and you begin to build a relationship where you can later go to them and ask for coverage.

Has your charity, or charity client, run a group blog? How did it go? Do you have items to add to the above post?