As a busy nonprofit communicator, your to-do list is mountain-high and you can’t imagine finding the time to write the content you need. Is it time to bring in the help of a freelance copywriter? Have you done so before? Once you’ve secured the budget, hiring a writer should be a simple process, but to… Read More »
You may have heard rumours of the demise of the news release, but I think a news release is a lot like chocolate: if it’s good, there’s always room for it. How you use a news (or ‘media’ or ‘press’) release to get media coverage may be changing, but the formatting and recipe for a… Read More »
If the importance of marketing can be a hard sell in the nonprofit sector, then the importance of investing in strong nonprofit taglines is even harder. Too many nonprofits are operating with ineffective, unoriginal or even no taglines at all, missing valuable opportunities to add power to their marketing messages. I recently asked Nancy Schwartz,… Read More »
The first step in writing a donor or volunteer profile is conducting a solid interview armed with great questions. Ask everything, taking copious notes (you want to also record the conversation as a back-up and to ensure that you catch everything). Now, thanks to your stellar interview skills, you have pages and pages of interesting… Read More »
As a health communicator, you need to turn often-complex information, advice and terminology into simple, easy to understand messages that inform, interest and potentially help your readers. Here are some important points to consider when shaping the content of your health communications. 1. Determine your objective There are many potential objectives for a health communications… Read More »
Having previously shared my process for speech writing, I’d like to elaborate on step #4: interviewing your speaker. Asking these four simple questions will help to make your interview as fruitful as possible: Why is this event important to you/why will you be speaking at this event? What do you want the audience members to… Read More »
Is your marketing communications copy strengthening your brand? To be successful, your message must not only be compelling, but it must also be aligned with your brand position. Here are five key points that will help you to assess the brand-strengthening potential of your words: 1. Key messages Your brand is most likely based on… Read More »
Are mission statements being abused by nonprofits? Given all of the heavy lifting we expect of mission statements, is it a mistake to also expect them to serve as effective marketing messages – taglines in particular? We invited mission statement expert, Sam Frank, Principal at Synthesis Partnership, to weigh in on the matter and ended… Read More »
When it comes to writing an interesting volunteer or donor profile – a real human-interest story – for me, it’s all about the interview. I like to be prepared with as many questions as possible, both top-level and context-specific. Here are some of my favourite top-level questions for unearthing a good donor or volunteer story:… Read More »
When did you last look at your media release boilerplate? You know, that ‘about us’ copy that sits (but should be working for you) at the bottom of your news releases. How old is it? Who wrote it? Have you just been updating facts and stats for years, without a real re-write? Given how often… Read More »