‘There isn’t time’
‘I’m not a specialist’
‘People won’t be interested in us’
These are some of the things that people at small charities think (and that I struggled with myself when I worked for a small charity) about making and sharing good content.
In this post I want to show you how I think many of these fears are unfounded and how in this area smaller charities can really punch above their weight.
Small charities really are pressed for time, they really do often have staff who are generalists by necessity and they sometimes focus on niche areas that are not easy to explain to the general public.
However, if they want to make a difference for their beneficiaries, they do need to find a way to get their messages out there and I believe creating and widely sharing content is one of the best ways to do it.
One of the biggest problems that I see with a lot of smaller charities (indeed, a lot of charities in general) is that they spend the majority of their time creating content and very little time sharing it with people. So for example they spend time and money on a website but then find they get very few hits. My opinion is that they should flip their efforts on their head and spend roughly 20% of the time making the content compared to 80% sharing it.
If the public content your charity produces is not being seen by a decent amount of people, it probably is not worth the effort. You need to do everything you can to get it out there: via social media, your email list, trying to get links to your website on the website of others, creating a promotion or event that gets some attention, collaborating with other small charities to enhance your impact.
I would actually argue that in some ways smaller charities have an advantage over bigger ones in certain ways. They can take more risks, be more nimble and can respond quicker to certain opportunities. I explain an example of this at the Media Trust’s Content Conference at Channel 4 – see the video below:
So, finally, what happens if you get it right? If you manage to create decent content and share it successfully, you can expect, over time to get more donors, volunteers, campaign wins, press attention, online followers, advocates and ultimately make a bigger difference to the lives of those that you are there to serve. It won’t happen overnight and I am not saying it is easy, but if you use the 80/20 rule I think it will make a difference. If you would like to learn more on this topic, visit my website at www.alexswallow.com and enter your email to download a free report called ‘How To Make Your Content Work Harder For You’.
