By Rebecca Primis, Director of Marketing at State Policy Network

Nonprofits don’t sell widgets. We don’t have profit goals.

We deal in ideas rooted in visions and missions that focus on changing lives. A major part of our work is to give these ideas life — to put them in a concrete form that the right people can access and act on at the right time.

And that, my friends, is the purpose of content.

From website posts to social media cartoons to longform reports and publications, content is what makes a tangible product of your ideas. It is the fruit of your innovation, ideation, and research that policymakers, influencers, and the public can consume and act on.

As in any industry, your product must create value for your target audience if you want it to have a fighting chance of gaining their attention. After all, you aren’t just competing with other information online and in print. You’re competing with soccer practice, dinner time, day jobs, committee meetings, and more. If your content is self-serving, it won’t cut through the competition to advance your mission among the people you need to reach.

If we think about content as products that create value for our audiences, then quality matters even more. Anyone who sees a website post, infographic, or report with your organization’s name on it will automatically equate their impressions or that product with your brand. That’s human tendency whether we like it or not.

One of the surest ways to compromise the quality and value of your content is to produce it without a plan. Having a content strategy that aligns with your organization’s objectives and overall communications strategy is an essential step if you want your content to not only reach people but to resonate with them, changing their hearts and minds in the process.

5 Benefits of a Content Strategy

“So, I need to find time to create another strategy?”

I hear you. We are all busy and are trying to balance the important with someone else’s urgent. The good news is that a content strategy can be simple, and if you’ve invested time in developing a communications strategy, much of the heavy lifting will already be done. It’s also worth it when you consider the payoff:

1. You get to decide what your organization is known for before anyone else does. A content strategy defines the priority issues and ideas that your organization wants to be a known and trusted expert in. It also articulates what you want specific audiences to know, think, and feel about your organization as a result of consuming your content. In today’s highly connected world, if you don’t define yourself, someone else will do that work for you—and probably not to your liking. A content strategy enables you to strengthen the position you want to have in your audiences’ minds with every piece of content you produce.

2. You can increase the impact of your organization’s content. Developing a content strategy is partly an exercise in understanding what’s happening outside of your organization. A content strategy (and its accompanying editorial calendar) will account for holidays, key legislative dates, and other cultural or community-based events or topics that your audiences will care about. With these dates in mind, you can produce content that’s more likely to get traction because it’s timely and relevant to the topics on people’s minds. As one state think tank communications leader recently pointed out, “If everyone is talking about the polar vortex and you’re talking about pensions, you’re going to look out-of-touch.” Your content strategy can help you identify ways your organization can relate more to your audience’s daily realities.

3. You can create margin. When it’s done well, a content strategy gives you some breathing room because it focuses your time and resources on the topics and types of content that will best achieve your communications goals. Your organization doesn’t have to be an expert voice on everything; instead, your content will be more valuable and higher quality if it, too, hones in on a few organizational priorities.

That being said, a content strategy should also leave margin for opportunities. Let’s say a big media opportunity comes up or your state experiences its own polar vortex. Space in your content strategy and editorial calendar makes it possible for you to publish a blog post, post a social media graphic, or send an email to connect your work to time-sensitive opportunities.  

4. You can avoid having to do everything. In addition to setting priorities, a content strategy will zero in on the types of content that are most important to produce and how often you will publish them. This is where you get to decide what’s realistic. If you’re a communications shop of one, you don’t have to start out by producing daily blog posts. Instead, write down the key pieces of research and/or commentary for the year. Then, identify 1-2 key pieces of content that you will need to produce in addition to the research report itself.

The target audience should inform and narrow your choices. If your report is a guide for lawmakers, your priority content pieces might be a website post and a one-pager. If your research is a legislative scorecard, you might want to prioritize getting the content on your website and sending an email to your list to make supporters and followers aware of the information. Regardless of specifics, keep it simple at first and grow from there. Ultimately, the most important thing is to be consistent. Just remember that consistent doesn’t have to mean “everything” or “every day.”

5. You can create better alignment with your colleagues. Producing content is rarely a solo activity. Even in small organizations, there can be at least a couple of people contributing content. A content strategy gives you a tool for learning about your colleagues’ work and helping them know when and how to contribute content that increases the organization’s credibility and impact.

When developing your annual content strategy, include time to meet with key stakeholders—colleagues who write or will have a say in what’s written. Treat these conversations as opportunities to learn the ins-and-outs of a policy issue, what to expect in the legislative session, and when there might be movement on an issue. Once you have listened, you can work with your colleagues to help them create and schedule content that’s appropriate and timely for the intended audience. Share the main points of the organization’s content strategy with them so that they understand how their work fits into the big picture. And share results with them over time (analytics, audience feedback, etc.) so that they can use real data, not just instinct, to improve their future content contributions.

Resources on creating and implementing a content strategy are available for SPN members on SPN’s Member Portal. If you have questions regarding SPN’s communications training program, please contact Meredith Turney at turney@spn.org.