Non-profit organizations are tasked with generating awareness and action every day. It’s so easy right now to target audiences online with physical product ads and drive conversions (well, relatively). But most nonprofits are trying to drive real change and education. That’s a tall order and often a long term advertising play trying to reach broad audiences and stay top of mind.
Social content has replaced the old TV PSA. Nonprofits are pumping out content cheaper and faster than ever before to build awareness and drive results by always staying top of mind. Some are doing it really well and some are not. Make it Work Campaign, a national group bent on finding solutions to strike a true work/life balance for every American, is doing it right. Make it Work is all about abolishing the wage gap between sexes, paid time off, maternity and paternity leave, etcetera. And they are experts at getting the public on board with online content. Make it Work is lucky to be riding a wave right now with some of these issues being hot topics in the presidential election, but they also do a lot of awesome things in the microcontent game following these three strategies.
Cause based agencies have so much opportunity for content creation and fresh ideas. Other media (the press, specifically) are already creating content around your causes that you can pull from and expand upon. Make it Work hit a gold mine this year with the election between Trump and Clinton. Childcare and the wage gap have both been heated issues where the press have captured amazing (and horrible) quotes from both candidates. Make it Work’s content team jumps on these fast and churns out their own branded content with a spin.
This social microcontent is simple, fast, effective, and shareable. If you’re creating one-off microcontent for shareability then always package it in your own branding. Don’t re-publish someone else’s original content. Build off quotes, stats, and articles with graphics, videos, or GIFs.
Truly impactful content is never one-off or stand alone. You should always have a big idea behind everything and have supporting material that educates and interacts with the audience. Make it Work has been super successful with launching integrated campaigns around their causes. The organization’s site is home to unique landing pages for each specific campaign where viewers can stop, learn, and get involved. From there they build strings of content out through social channels that draw viewers back to the landing pages.
Our team at StoryCraft worked with Make it Work on several successful social video campaigns. We concepted, wrote, and produced three different video campaign series around childcare and wage gap issues.
We provided Make it Work with photography and short cutdowns of the videos so they could run them as ads and drive traffic to the campaigns’ landing pages. The series got a lot of good feedback and attention on social media organically and because of that we were able to help them achieve the lowest media spend they ever had. Investing in strong creative content can really help leverage existing audiences and cut down costs of paid media reach.
Facebook is a hungry, hungry content gobbling monster. It loves video content and helps it spread like wildfire. But paid and organic reach can only go so far on social channels unless something is truly viral. So find other opportunities to put your content on blast. Media sites are also always on the lookout for fresh content and they love brand partnerships. Often times because nonprofit content feels more news-like and organic those sites are willing to push it for lower fees or pick it up and run it organically if it is topical. Places like Buzzfeed, Distractify, Vox, and Now This can take nonprofit content and blast it like a megaphone to their built in audiences so you can reach new eyes.
We collaborated with Make it Work early on in the campaign process to plan for a distribution strategy that went beyond paid media and social. We helped partner with female focused media hub Bustle to run our campaign about pay gap and maternity leave issues. The site was very niche focused with the professional female demographic and a perfect launch pad to make a big impact online that really tied all the different distribution fronts together.
Content marketing is no easy task. It takes a ton of work, creativity, and testing online. Founding your content creation in these three strategies is a tried and true method to keeping content consistent and making the most impact. Get in touch with us at StoryCraft to talk shop and see how we can help your nonprofit get better results online with video content marketing.
Charlie Rall is the Co-Founder and Head Producer of StoryCraft
