Make Your Organization’s Blog Sizzle

A blog can be an amazing way for an organization to communicate and engage with the people it serves – as well as to get their feedback. But a blog can also drop to the bottom of the to do list quickly if no one’s passionate about it.

What if instead of slogging through the usual written post, you ditched it for something a little different? Writing a post up in interview format, shooting a video, or creating an infographic can be a great way to breath some new life into a tired organizational blog. (And I’ve included some content brainstorming ideas at the end of this post, too.)

Interviews

Give your blog a human face by interviewing interesting people. The format could be as simple as a set of questions sent over email, or it could be written up profile-style. Possible candidates for your cub reporting skills could be:

• A community leader with a fascinating story
• The employee of the month on what she likes about working for your organization
• An intern about what his experience has been so far
• Someone who has been helped by one of the organization’s initiatives

Blog interviews with people outside the organization can do double duty as mini case studies to promote your organization’s good results.

Video

Instead of announcing your next fundraising event or public forum with a standard post, get behind the camera to spice things up. Video can be a clever way to get the message out – particularly if the video is funny or sweet.

Video is also a great way to explain tough concepts or new regulations. Shoot how-to videos to answer frequently asked questions, or to help people understand how new policy changes will affect them. Along with being a great way to engage your readers, videos can help you reach a wider audience. (Be sure to include a transcript for Deaf and hard of hearing readers.)

Infographics

Did your organization just publish an interesting report? Most people won’t wade through pages of data to get to the juicy tidbits, and blog posts packed with statistics will put most of your audience to sleep.

Unless those statistics are put into a fun, graphical form! Infographics are a great way to inform, and people really love sharing them. Don’t worry of you’re not a designer – there are dozens of websites out there to help beginners create infographics. Here’s a nice roundup of ten favorites from Creative Bloq.

Creating inspiring content on a regular schedule

The best way to build a blog audience is to provide them with interesting content on a regular schedule. If you’re bored writing a blog post, chances are that your blog readers will be nodding off, too – but some days it can be hard to find the passion to come up with something new.

Here are a few quick ideas to help get those wheels turning:

• Answer a frequently asked question
• Survey your readers to see what they’d like to read about
• Review relevant books, courses, and other resources
• Create how-tos and tutorials
• Invite a “guest blogger” from another department to submit something
• Answer questions from blog comments or social media
• Curate content from other sites (with proper citation, of course)
• Check industry forums and social media for trending topics
• Write about lessons learned from a recent project

What are your favorite unusual ways to come up with blog content? Leave your answer in the comments.