A Guide to Website Storytelling

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You know what I’ve noticed after years of working on website design with non-profits? The organizations that really connect with people aren’t just sharing facts and figures – they’re telling stories that stick with you. Let me share what I’ve learned about turning your website into a storytelling powerhouse.

The Building Blocks of Stories That Work

Think about the last story that really moved you. I bet it had a clear beginning that pulled you in, a middle that kept you hooked, and an ending that made you want to take action. That’s exactly what your non-profit’s story needs:

  • Start with the challenge you’re tackling
  • Share how you’re making a difference
  • Show the real impact on real people

Here’s the thing: people don’t just want to know what you do – they want to feel connected to why you do it. Share stories that are genuine, that make people feel something, and that show the human side of your work.

Bringing Your Stories to Life Online

Let’s get practical about putting these stories on your website:

Make Room for Stories That Matter Create a dedicated space for the stories of people you’ve helped. These could be standalone features on your homepage or a whole section dedicated to success stories.

Show, Don’t Just Tell A quick video of someone sharing how your organization changed their life? That’s pure gold. Add some well-shot photos or even a photo essay that walks people through someone’s journey. If you’ve got compelling statistics, turn them into eye-catching infographics.

Visual Storytelling That Packs a Punch

Good visuals can make or break your story. Here’s what works:

  • High-quality photos that capture real moments
  • Before-and-after comparisons that show clear impact
  • Simple infographics that make your data digestible
  • Short videos that bring your mission to life

Pro tip: Don’t underestimate the power of simple animated videos to explain complex issues. Sometimes a 60-second animation can convey what paragraphs of text can’t.

Getting People to Take Action

Here’s something crucial I’ve learned: even the most powerful story falls flat if people don’t know what to do next. After you’ve moved someone with your story:

  • Make it crystal clear how they can help
  • Show exactly what their donation can achieve
  • Give them easy ways to share your story
  • Offer different ways to stay connected

Keeping the Story Going

Think of your website as an ongoing conversation. Keep adding new stories, fresh perspectives, and current impacts. Your work is evolving – your storytelling should too.

Remember: The best stories aren’t just heard – they’re felt. When someone visits your website, they should leave not just understanding what you do, but feeling inspired to be part of your mission.

Keep checking back for more insights on making your non-profit’s digital presence more impactful. Your mission matters, and your stories deserve to be told well.

SEO Best Practices for Small Businesses in 2025

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Imagine your small business website as a garden in the vast digital landscape. Just like a well-tended garden attracts visitors, a website that is optimized for SEO draws potential customers through search engines.

Planting Quality Content Seeds

Think of your content as seeds. High-quality, informative content are premium seeds that grow into robust, attractive plants that catch people’s attention. Like a gardener who knows their plants inside out, showcase your expertise to make your content truly bloom. Content continues to reign supreme in SEO. Create high-quality, informative content that thoroughly addresses user queries. Long-form content that provides comprehensive coverage of a topic tends to rank higher in search results. Remember to showcase your expertise and authority on the subject to align with Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) principle.

Strategic Keyword Placement: Your Garden’s Signposts

Keywords are like strategically placed garden signs. They should:

  • Guide visitors naturally
  • Be placed thoughtfully in titles, descriptions, headers
  • Appear seamlessly, not forced

While keyword stuffing is long gone, strategic keyword placement remains crucial. Incorporate your target keywords naturally in:

  • Title tags
  • Meta descriptions
  • Headers and subheaders (H1, H2, H3)
  • The first 100-150 words of your content
  • URL structure
  • Image alt text

Technical SEO: Your Garden’s Infrastructure

Just as a garden needs a solid foundation, your website requires:

  • Mobile-friendly design (like ensuring paths are accessible)
  • Fast loading speeds (smooth, clear pathways)
  • Clear site structure (well-organized garden layout)

Backlinks: Cross-Pollination of Digital Reputation

Backlinks are like recommendations from respected neighboring gardeners. High-quality links from reputable sources in your industry boost your garden’s credibility.

Featured Snippets: Your Garden’s Showcase Spot

Aim to have your content featured like a prize-winning plant in a garden show. Create clear, direct answers to common questions in your industry.

Emerging Trends: Adapting Your Garden

Stay flexible like a gardener monitoring seasonal changes:

  • AI’s growing influence
  • Enhanced focus on experience and expertise
  • Voice and visual search capabilities

Remember, SEO is an ongoing cultivation. Regularly tend to your digital garden, monitor its growth, and be ready to adapt to the changing digital ecosystem.

Mission-Driven Marketing: The Role of Content Marketing in Non-Profit Success

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In today’s digital landscape, non-profit organizations face unique challenges in reaching their audiences, engaging supporters, and driving meaningful action. Content marketing has become an indispensable tool for addressing these challenges, enabling non-profits to share their mission, connect with donors, and create lasting impact. Here’s how your non-profit can harness the potential of content marketing to amplify your message and achieve your goals.

What is Content Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations?

Content marketing for non-profits involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant content designed to attract, engage, and inspire your target audience. Unlike traditional marketing, which often focuses on direct appeals, content marketing builds long-term relationships by delivering information and stories that resonate with supporters.

Content Marketing Benefits for Non-Profit Organizations

Benefits of Content Marketing for Non-Profits:

  • Increased awareness of your cause.
  • Deeper engagement with supporters.
  • Improved donor retention through consistent communication.
  • Enhanced credibility and trust via transparent storytelling.
  • Greater online visibility to attract new supporters.

Crafting Compelling Stories That Inspire Action

Storytelling is the cornerstone of effective content marketing. For non-profits, stories offer a powerful way to emotionally connect with your audience and highlight the tangible impact of your work.

Tips for Creating Powerful Stories:

  1. Focus on individuals: Share personal accounts of those you’ve helped or volunteers who’ve made a difference.
  2. Show, don’t tell: Use vivid descriptions and details to bring stories to life.
  3. Evoke emotion: Appeal to your audience’s empathy with relatable challenges and experiences.
  4. Highlight the impact: Clearly illustrate how contributions lead to meaningful change.
  5. Incorporate a call-to-action: Guide readers on how they can support your cause after engaging with the story.

Diversifying Your Content Formats

While written stories are impactful, expanding your content types can help you reach and engage a broader audience.

Which content format should be used to engage a broader audience?

Consider these formats:

  1. Blog Posts
    Regular blog updates improve SEO, showcase expertise, and provide in-depth insights about your mission.
  2. Videos
    Visual storytelling is incredibly compelling. Create:

    • Beneficiary testimonials
    • Behind-the-scenes insights
    • Explainer videos to simplify complex issues
  3. Infographics
    Present statistics and data in a visually appealing, easy-to-digest format.
  4. Podcasts
    Offer audio content that allows supporters to engage with your message while multitasking, broadening your audience.
  5. Social Media Posts
    Share quick updates, inspiring stories, and calls-to-action on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Measure the Success of Your Content Marketing

To ensure your efforts are effective, it’s essential to track and measure results. Key metrics include:

  1. Website traffic: Monitor increases in visitors, especially to key content pieces.
  2. Engagement rates: Track likes, shares, comments, and time spent on content.
  3. Email sign-ups: Measure content’s role in driving newsletter subscriptions.
  4. Donation conversions: Identify which content pieces result in contributions.
  5. Volunteer sign-ups: Assess content’s influence on recruitment.
  6. Social media growth: Track follower growth and engagement on various platforms.

Use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and your CRM to gather and analyze data. Regularly review these metrics to refine your strategy and focus on what resonates most with your audience.

Conclusion

Content marketing offers non-profits a dynamic way to share their mission, engage supporters, and inspire action. By crafting compelling stories, diversifying content formats, and monitoring your efforts, you can build stronger connections with your audience and amplify your impact.

Remember, effective content marketing is an evolving process. Continuously listen to your audience, adapt your strategy, and stay aligned with your organization’s mission and values. With persistence and creativity, your content can educate, inspire, and motivate supporters to join you in making a difference.

Referral Traffic – How To Drive More Traffic To Your Website

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Referral traffic comes from backlinks, or links to your website from other websites. When you get the right links, they can be continual traffic sources back to your website. Some backlinks can even generate more links on their own. This happens when someone shares your blog post to Facebook, and then his or her followers share it with their social circles afterward. Backlinks also come from forum links, ebooks, webinars, email, and so on.

Benefits of Referral Traffic

Here are just a few of the benefits of referral traffic:

  • Improve SEO as backlinks are part of Google’s ranking algorithm
  • Boosting brand recognition, reputation, and exposure
  • Developing networking opportunities and generating future leads
  • Help you tap into a new, diverse audience base you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to

Referral Traffic Strategies

Comment on Relevant Blogs

Blog commenting can be a huge source of referral traffic. Most sites ask you to fill out form fields prior to writing a comment. One of those fields is for placing a link to your website. Meaningful comments – and this is key – will intrigue readers to click the links and drive traffic.

Keep in mind that this tactic has been heavily exploited by spammers. That’s why you need to be sure to follow these ideas for commenting on relevant blogs:

  • Make an observation and reference a related post on your own blog, so you can link to the post within your comment.
  • Ask thoughtful questions about the post or give your professional opinion.
  • Create a list of the top 10 blogs in your niche, and comment on their posts regularly.
  • Sign up for a Disqus account so you can easily comment on websites that use the Disqus commenting platform
Get Social Media Buttons

According to a 2015 Search Engine Journal post, social media accounts for almost 30% of all referral traffic.

Let’s face it – social media is here to stay for now. If you want to boost your traffic, make your content easier to share. Share buttons are a must-have for making sharing more accessible. If you don’t have these on your website, talk to your website guru now.

social sharing - how to drive referral traffic

Guest Blog

Guest Blogs are usually published with an author bio that includes your name and a link back to your site. Depending on the site’s rules, you might also be able to link back to something actionable – like a top blog post or ebook you’ve created.

If you’re a massage therapist looking for blogs in your niche that accept guest posts, try a Google Search for something like “massage therapy “become a contributor”” or “massage therapy “write for us””. Quotation marks are for exact search, meaning Google will only return results containing that exact phrase word-for-word.

  • “become a contributor”
  • “write for us”
  • “contribute an article”
  • “submit your post”
  • “accepting guest posts”
  • “guest post guidelines”
  • “submission guidelines”

guest post guidelines example

Once you’ve identified guest blog posting opportunities, read the guidelines, and apply to be a guest post contributor. With calls to action, external links, and author bios, guest posting is a good way to gain referral traffic.

Participate in Local Events

It goes without saying that nothing beats an in-person speaking event. By participating in local events, you can also get website referral traffic because you will be publicized on a website and if you’re lucky, local reporters may even cover the event.

Contribute to Q&A Sites

The strategy behind submitting to social question and answer websites is similar to blog commenting. You need to make sure that your contributions are relevant and valuable. One of the best strategies for answering questions is to showcase your expertise on the subject matter and link back to a related post on your blog.

Quora is a good place to start.

Final Thoughts

By adding these referral traffic building tactics to your tool kit, you’re planting seeds that will help your internet marketing garden grow.

Does your company need an explainer video?

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Just in case you haven’t been introduced to it: An explainer video is a short online marketing video used to explain a product or service so that it’s easier to grasp.

The concept behind an explainer video is communicating an idea behind a company to its target audience in a quick and informative way. That is why explainer videos work very well for companies that offer niche or one-of-a-kind product or service like Pinterest or SnapChat, which offer a service that may be difficult to understand otherwise.

Contrary to the popular belief that every company needs an explainer video, some types of companies will be better off spending their resources on things like awareness campaigns or social media advertising. Creating an explainer video is NOT always costly, but explainer video production process can take weeks.

What factors should you consider to know whether your company can get the most out of an explainer video? Let’s dive right in.

What Industry Are You In?

The type of industry you are operating in is a fundamental factor to decide whether or not you should make an explainer video.

Let’s use the clothing industry as an example.

Do you think your target audience needs an explainer video for a leather jacket or a waterproof parka? You surely wouldn’t think so.

You would be better off spending time and resources on targeted social media ads to reach the right target audience for your clothing line.

However, if your company sells – let’s say a wearable tech in the form of a jacket, you’d be able to get the most out of an an explainer video to tell people what your products can be used for and why it would benefit them.

What is Your Main Marketing Channel?

Explainer videos are a form of digital content. They are most useful when you use them on online platforms such as website or social media.

If your company is a slow adopter when it comes to technology, you may want to hold off creating an explainer video. Invest your budget in building the best website and creating social media accounts for your brand.

If your company already has a updated website and social media presence, you definitely should invest in an explainer video. Explainer videos are a powerful marketing tool to hook your audience and engage them online. The best part is: you can use and reuse an explainer video in virtually any popular online marketing platforms these days.

You want to share your explainer to Facebook?
You got it.

Instagram?
Sure can, so long as it’s under 60 seconds.

YouTube?
Do you even need to ask?

There are many other factors that you should consider before deciding to make an explainer video for your company. This infographic contains everything you need to know about whether or not your company really needs an explainer video.

Does your company really need an explainer video?

What is a Google featured snippet?

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When you use Google to search for something, sometimes Google displays what they call a featured snippet. According to Google, “this featured snippet block includes a summary of the answer, extracted from a webpage, plus a link to the page, the page title and URL.” A featured snippet looks like this:

10 most common native tree species in the U.S.

As you can see from this, Google’s featured snippet isn’t perfect. My question pertained just to the North East and only asked for the three most common trees. However, the point of the Google’s featured snippets is to provide the best answer to a user’s questions. Google will display what they believe to be the best answer to the question, and they will feature this in a section above the ads and above the organic search results. Sometimes this will be a paragraph, or a list, or a table.

These snippets provide enormous opportunities for marketers. Businesses with a featured snippet:

  • Increase brand visibilty
  • Increase website traffic
  • Increase the click-through-rate of the web page that answers the posed question
  • Increases and reinforces authority and credibility
  • Improves exposure on mobile devices – this is what appears in voice-activities inquiries

 

Why Every Business Needs A Lead Magnet

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If you want to generate leads online your business must have a lead magnet. A lead magnet is essentially a bribe to nudge your target audience into your marketing or sales funnel. You ‘bribe’ a prospect with with a specific piece of value in exchange for their contact information that you can use to create a relationship that hopefully eventually leads to a sale.

A lead magnet (a.k.a. “opt-in bribe”) is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, or other contact information. – Optinmonster.com

Even if they like you, people aren’t going to part with their email address unless you can give them something special in exchange.

As an example of the lead magnet in action, suppose you have a blog post titled the top 10 ways you can improve your customer service. At the end of the post, you ask readers to join your email list for “updates”.

Or, suppose you ask readers to join your email list and get a free, downloadable PDF case study, detailing a real-life example of one business that used these 10 strategies to improve their customer service.

The second example is a much more powerful lead magnet because the offer is clear and specific.

The value offer of lead magnets are often pieces such as:

  • Case studies
  • e-books
  • White papers
  • Exclusive videos

However lead magnets can also be:

  • Free shipping
  • Free trials
  • Discounts
  • Tickets to an event
  • Tools

Make Your Lead Magnet Irresistible

Super Specific – the lead magnet should not be general. The more specific you are about the benefit of the lead magnet, the better job it will do in terms of generating leads.

Solves a Real Problem – the lead magnet must solve a real world problem. If it doesn’t help your prospective client, it’s not a good lead magnet.

Easy Win – the lead magnet should be quick, simple, and straight-forward and allow your prospect to achieve an easy win.

Quick Read – you don’t want to overwhelm your prospect. Something quick and easy to read and consume is best. PDF lists work really well.

High Value – this is really important. The lead magnet must actually deliver high value. To make it irresistible, it has to appear like a really good deal.

Instant Gratification – people love instant gratification. Create a lead magnet they can see and use immediately.

Demonstrates Credibility/Value – the lead magnet should reinforce what you do.

Content Marketing Lead Generation Tactics

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Content marketing is one of the most important SEO factors in 2017. This should be no surprise to anyone. Google has long rewarded websites with relevant, quality content. What this means however, is that if small businesses want to compete with big businesses, they need to effectively use content marketing to generate a steady flow of leads. And if done correctly, content marketing will also create awareness, build trust, convert leads, serve existing customers, and help you generate referrals too.

The good news is that you don’t need as much content as you might think. Focus on quality over quantity. Consider writing just one or two blog posts a month, but make sure you adhere to the following system for using content marketing to generate a steady flow of leads.

Content Marketing Lead Generation

  1. Build a list of 6 of the most useful content ideas for your ideal customer
  2. Create a lead generating content upgrade for each of these 6 ideas
  3. Start promoting each idea in social media and advertising

Step 1 – What content should you produce?

The key factor here is to remember who your ideal customer is and remember that effective, lead-generating content is going to be content for that ideal customer. Using your knowledge about your business and your customers, and tools like the Google Keyword Tool, Spyfu, or Semrush, develop a list of core content topics and assign one or two to each month for the next twelve months.

Each theme should be a significant topic related to your business or industry and represent an important search term. Think about it as if it were a book. Each month is a chapter in what could be a book at the end of the year.

Step 2 – What exactly are content upgrades and how do I create them?

The idea of driving someone to your website or landing page and enticing them to give you their email address in exchange for something they are looking for is standard marketing procedure these days. However, the idea of bait for lead capture has evolved. The basic idea behind a content upgrade is this:

Write a great blog post and then when people show up to read it offer them an “upgrade” to the content (check list, video, case study) relevant to the topic in exchange for contact information.

If you can do this correctly, you can effectively convert visiting traffic to a lead funnel. The benefits of content upgrades are:

Creating Content Upgrades

One of the best ways to create a content upgrade is to look at your Google Analytics data and find the most popular content and then consider way to personalize a content upgrade for these posts. Hubspot has a great post from 2016 with 20 example of lead generating content – 20 Types of Lead Generating Content to Put Behind Your Landing Pages.

You don’t have to overthink this. Most people just want a snack – they aren’t looking for a manual. Here are some ideas for good content upgrades:

  • a checklist based on a how to post.
  • take a longer list type of post and then expand on the first 10 in more detail.
  • create a list of tools related to a particular type of advice.
  • create and offer a screencast showing readers exactly how you do something.
  • share a template.

Step 3 – Start promoting each article using advertising and social media

The Field of Dreams mantra just isn’t applicable anymore. If you build it, people won’t really come and they probably won’t find you online. You have to promote your content on social media. Here’s some advice from one of my favorite marketing blogs – Kissmetrics: 17 advanced methods for promoting your new piece of content.

 

 

How Can Content Marketing Benefit My Business?

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Before I dive into the details, some of you might be wondering:

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the use of content – emails, tweets, landing pages, product descriptions, blog posts – to help meet a marketing goal for your organization or business. That marketing goal could be acquisition of potential customers, retention of existing customers, increasing brand awareness, increasing or improving product recognition, or nearly anything else.

How can content marketing benefit my business?

Some companies are reluctant to focus on content marketing because it can be difficult to understand the benefits of content marketing. In truth, however, there are many benefits of content marketing. After all, content is king, and there are both tangible and intangible benefits to content marketing.

The Intangible Benefits of Content Marketing

Strong brand awareness

Creating content gives your audience something to talk about. When they’re talking about your organization or company, they’re teaching each other about you or your company, passing referrals and recommendations and links around in the process. This is intangible marketing gold.

Respect and industry admiration

You’ll need to establish trust first, but once you have proven your knowledge, you can become the reliable source of information in your niche where your audience or prospects can turn to for clear advice or resources. The authority you gain then transfers to your products and services and makes it more likely that customers will choose you over your competition.

Indirect customer conversations

If you create content that targets potential customers or clients, you’re bridging the gap between those people and your products or services, making it more likely they will buy from you or hire you in the future.

The Tangible Benefits of Content Marketing

Site traffic

If you create great content, more people will come to your site, where they will hopefully also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO

Great content attracts editorial links which tell Google that you are important and authoritative. Google will also crawl your site more frequently and have a better idea of what you are about and what products and services you provide.

Direct customer conversions

Occasionally, great content actually yields a direct customer conversion.

 

How to Use Long Tail Keywords in Headlines

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According to Worldometers, every day we are inundated with more than 2 million blog posts and 200 billion emails. No matter what you are writing – blog posts, emails, online ads, or anything else – the headline is a crucial element. How do you get people to stop and read what you write when there’s so much competing content? If you get the headline right, you will probably be positioned at the top of the search results pages. A truly great headline might even prompt people to respond and share your article. Keyword-rich headlines will improve your website rankings and increase engagement with your audience. Your target audience is looking for blog posts that will solve their problems and address the keywords they typed into Google’s search box.

Follow this 3-Step Process for Using Long Tail Keywords in Your Headlines

First Step: Research and choose long-tail search terms.

Let’s stay with Google AdWords Keywords Planner for our example.

On the dashboard, type in your main keyword phrase (e.g., start small business) and click the “Get Ideas” button.

You can see the long-tail keywords that we’ll integrate into our blog post headlines:

starting a small business checklist
best small business to start
steps to starting a small business
help starting a small business

Second step: Model popular and viral headlines.

You can’t just pick long-tail key phrases. You also have to identify viral content specific to your industry, learn from it, and then improve upon it.

When you find headlines that have been shared thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., it means that you can get great results, too. All you have to do is study them and incorporate the underlying strategies into your own content.

How do you find these viral blog post headlines?

Visit BuzzSumo, input your main keyword (i.e., start small business), and click the “search” button.

The two viral headlines are:

5 Simple Ways to Start a Small Business ~ 102,658 Facebook shares
6 Things I Wish Somebody Had Told Me When I Started My Small Business

Third step: Create your headlines using the viral headlines as a model:

Original Headline: 5 Simple Ways to Start a Small Business

Keyword phrase to integrate: steps to starting a small business

Unique and keyword-rich blog post headline based on the model:

7 Steps to Starting a Small Business and Growing It
3 Simple Steps to Start a Small Business That You’ll Love

When I find a headline that makes me click, I’ll copy it, study it, and create a unique and better one.