This post is part 4 of the Introduction to Cause Blogging Series.

Last time I talked about the benefits of blogging.  In this post I’ll cover setting goals, both short and long term results and return on your investment.

Goal setting

You’ve probably heard of the SMART system for setting goals.  Make your goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.  Here’s a great post from Lori Rice about goal setting.

While it would be great to acheve all of the benefits of cause blogging at once, that’s not realistic.  First, in order for your goals to really be SMART you have to start with one primary goal and focus on that.  Secondly, achieving results online takes time.

As you brainstorm to decide what your short and long range goals are for blogging, and more generally marketing your cause online, focus on the benefits of what you want to achieve, not on tasks.  For example, setting a goal to “get a website up” is not beneficial. A goal to “create a website that will move people to take action: first by subscribing to our weekly newsletter” is more specific and benefit oriented.

Brainstorming question: what results do you want to achieve? Review the benefits of blogging and how these translate into specific goals such as:

• Publish information about our cause two times per week
• Ask readers to take action on a policy issue at least once per month (contacting elected officials, signing a petition, sending a link to a friend)
• Publish one press release per month on a site such as PR.com; then reword to use as a blog post (increases publicity and website traffic)
• Build relationships between staff and readers with a monthly blog post from leadership: executive director, volunteer coordinator and development director
• Build community by asking questions in blog posts, requesting comments and feedback; add this to the end of blog posts whenever possible

Tracking goals

Once you’ve set goals for your online efforts, it’s important to document them and follow up. Here’s how:

1. Use tools to help track your progress. For example running website traffic reports each month; using Google Alerts to find out about mentions in the media or links from other websites.
2. If you’re working for a nonprofit, designate one person who will keep track of progress and provide reports
3. Online marketing takes time, especially with a new website or blog.  Keep at it while you wait for concrete results.
4. Celebrate incremental improvements such as blog comments, readers contacting you via email, increasing web traffic.
5. When you find something that is working especially well for you, ramp up that effort. For example, if you get more feedback from readers when you post quotes from your clients, do that more often!

Measuring return on investment

Now for a little good news/bad news…

Unlike other efforts, online marketing such as blogging, can be more difficult to measure.  With something like direct mail, you can scientifically measure it — from our mailout of 10,000 letters we got X number of responses, % response rate and an average gift size of $X.   It’s easy to calculate the immediate return on investment.

On the good news side, cause blogging and other online marketing carries very little financial investment.  Your investment is more related to time and effort rather than money.

Things that you can easily track include:

1. Which blog posts are getting viewed the most
2. How many RSS readers you have
3. Number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans
4. Number of mentions in the media (online and off)

The big question is what results are we getting from these efforts? Donations, more volunteers, measurably increased publicity? This can be more difficult to track, especially at first.  Once your blog really takes off, it will be easier to prove that your online work is making a real difference.

Getting started

When starting a new blog, allow yourself at least 3-6 months for you to really get your feet wet blogging.  You’ll be learning which kind of blog posts you enjoy writing most, which get response from readers and kind of figuring it out as you go along.  There’s really no other way to do it, but to just dive in and get going.

This is the same amount of time it usually takes to really start building traffic as well.  Your blog posts will start to get ranked for search terms in Google and other engines.  Other bloggers will notice you and start linking to your blog and traffic will slowly build.

Focus on the long term

Online marketing activities like blogging are long term strategies with cumulative efforts over time producing results.  In the business world, they say it takes at least seven contacts before a customer buys.  Most of the time blogging is much less direct than cold calling or targeting major donors.  So it may take many more contacts for supporters to take action.

So in the first few months, it’s important to stick to your goals and activities that support them.  Celebrate the little achievements, ask for feedback from others and network with other bloggers.  Don’t get discouraged!

Back to basics – relationships

Activism, advocacy, public relations, fundraising and promoting a cause generally – is based on building relationships with people.  Blogging is just a tool to help you do that.

Beth Kanter recently observed about her work promoting arts organizations that:

A successful social media strategy with arts audiences is more like an audience development or education program, not a straight ticket sales strategy.

With every strategic blog post, tweet, or facebook update you are potentially building a relationship with others who are also interested in the same cause.  At the end of blog posts, include a small note encouraging readers to leave a comment. Then when someone leaves a comment, leave one in reply.  Send a response to email inquiries you get.  Take the initiative to reach out to other bloggers and nonprofits by emailing them and leaving comments on their site.

You may never know when or what  specifically encouraged someone to take action such as making a donation or volunteering.  Most likely, it’s the cumulative impact of the interactions they have with you online.

Improving results with focused blasts

It might be easier said than done to appreciate benefits that are hard to see.  You want to see that the time you’re investing is making a difference.

Once your blog is established you can improve results with short term campaigns or “blasts.”  No not email blasts or SPAM!  I mean focused, short term campaigns.  I’ll go into these in more detail in future blog posts, but here are a few ideas…

1. Submit 30 articles in 30 days to a website like EzineArticles.com to build traffic to your blog (include 1-2 links in the “author box”)
2. Use your blog to promote a time based event, such as an auction fundraiser
3. Call to action based on a holiday, such as can food donations for Thanksgiving
4. Use Facebook causes to request donations because of your birthday

These kinds of short term campaigns will give you some encouragement to continue your online efforts.  It will give you and others connected to  your cause measurable results — proof! — that it works!

Next… Part 5 – How do I set up a blog? Now that you know the potential benefits and results of blogging, we’ll talk about how to set up a blog using the most popular platform, Wordpress.