How To Create A Nonprofit Content Calendar

We all know how important great content marketing is. But sometimes, just creating content for your nonprofit isn’t enough. For the biggest return on your investment, it’s essential to have a nonprofit content calendar.

In this post, we discuss a few reasons a content calendar is so important. We also give you five steps to creating one for your nonprofit. Follow the advice in this post, and the content marketing at your organization will be more effective as a result. 

Why A Content Calendar Is Important for Nonprofits

Quality content marketing isn’t about randomly creating content for the sake of it. Rather, it’s about aligning your content creation with your nonprofit’s mission. And if you want to do this, a content calendar is essential. Here are five reason a content calendar is so important for nonprofits:

• Consistency in messaging: By planning your content in advance, you keep your brand voice steady and recognizable. This strengthens trust with your audience.
• Improved efficiency: Nonprofits often have limited resources and small teams. This makes proper planning crucial. A well-executed content calendar gives you the benefits of good content marketing without some of the costs. This leads to better marketing for your nonprofit as a whole.
• Strategic planning: Content helps you achieve your goals. Simple as that. By having a content calendar in place, you are able to align the content you create with any goals or events your organization is focusing on. This gives you the chance to have maximum impact.
• Better audience engagement: An engaged and informed audience is an audience that’s more valuable to your nonprofit. That’s because great content provides your audience with value. As a result, they are more likely to share your message, volunteer, and donate during your fundraisers.
• Performance tracking: If you want maximum impact with your content marketing, you need to track everything. A content calendar makes this much easier to do. By planning ahead of time, you are able to prioritize insight from the content you do create, which creates a positive feedback loop.

Now that we know why a nonprofit content calendar is so useful, let’s discuss how you actually set one up.

5 Steps To Creating A Nonprofit Content Calendar

The specifics of a content calendar will vary between each nonprofit. What exactly you create content about is up to you. However, the general foundations of success remain consistent. Here are the five most important steps to creating a content calendar for a nonprofit.

1) Set Clear Objectives

Your main goals should always be front and center when considering a content plan. What does your organization want to achieve with content marketing? Do you want to increase awareness? Do you want to grow your volunteer base? Or maybe your main goal with content is simple: boost donations. Whatever it is, setting clear objectives straight from the start gives you a framework for your content. Each piece that you create should be in service to these goals. Here are just a few example objectives:

• Increase overall monthly donations by 10%
• Boost social media engagement by 20%
• Raise awareness around a specific cause or campaign

Regardless of what your main content goals are, make sure your entire team knows about them.

2) Identify Key Dates And Events

Once you have objectives in place, it’s helpful to have important dates in mind. This makes it much easier to fill in your content calendar around meaningful events. These might be events or holidays that somehow align with your overall mission. However, internal events are important, as well. This can be anything from campaigns your nonprofit is planning to important dates that are only applicable to your organization. These key dates and events give you a general idea of the times when content creation will be especially important. This helps you plan things out with more precision.

3) Choose Your Content Themes

It’s now time to get specific. What is your nonprofit’s mission, or the end goals you are trying to achieve? For example, if you’re an environmental organization, you might be trying to promote practices related to conservation. Another area of focus might be addressing the impacts of climate change. Thinking about this question naturally leads you to the main themes of your content. Choose just a few of these specific content topics. This will keep your messaging consistent and makes it much easier to create a coherent content calendar. 

4) Select Your Content Types

Now that you have your content topics, it’s important to gain clarity on the content type. Here are just a few content types or formats you might consider creating: 

• Consistent and informative blog posts
• In-depth infographics that cover specific topics
• Social media posts packed with actionable information
• Videos or live streams that build relationships
• Value-packed newsletters sent to your audience

These are just a few of the content types you might consider. “Content marketing” is a very broad term. The exact kind of content you create should be unique to your nonprofit. Don’t just follow what other organizations do. Consider what you are good at, as well as what your audience wants. This should give you an idea of your main content types. It’s also important not to stick to just one. By varying the format of your content creation, you are able to reach more people across different platforms.

5) Use Tools To Organize Your Calendar

At this point you should be deep in the creation process. This is great, but it’s important to remember how quickly things can become unorganized. If you want the most effective content calendar for your nonprofit, you need to stay on top of things. That’s where the right tools come in handy. Some organizations use spreadsheets, while others prefer project management tools like Trello, Asana, or CoSchedule. Pick a system that works for you and stick with it. This ensures not only that you are meeting your publication deadlines, but that everybody on your team is aware of what they need to do. 

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