You should always plan your content before you start writing. This applies to emails and presentations just as much as to annual reports and articles.
To help you plan your content, ask yourself the following questions:
Who is your audience?
"Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person - a real person you know, or an imagined person - and write to that one."
Jon SteinbeckYou'll need to write for lots of different kinds of people who will be interested in different aspects of what you do - funders, beneficiaries, service users, volunteers, patrons, the media, MPs - so don't write for an "audience", write for individuals and make your sriting personal.
What do you want to achieve?
Many organisations will want to do one of three things with any piece of written content:
- Captivate
You might want to make your readers aware of your organisation or the causes you support - Capture
You might want to get a causal browser to sign up to your newsletter or to attend an event - Contribute
You might want to convince someone to make a donation, or become a volunteer and give up their time helping to promote your organisation or its causes.
What can you offer?
Your content should be written in a way that highlights the benefits to your audience.
For example, the headline "The Example Foundation launches a new helpline" is about you and your services.
"A bad example ruined my life - I needed support" is about your service users, highlights a need and offers the reader a hook.
Another bad example: "Join the Example Foundation's e-mail newsletter today".
Where's the persuasive elelment? How does a casual browser benefit from subscribing? What's in it for them?
How about "Join the cause and find out how you can fight bad examples" instead?
One more: "We need your donation more than ever."
We could argue that the public doesn't care about your organisation, they care about your beneficiaries or what what your charity can do for them. There may be several charities supporting the same cause as you - give people a reason to donate to your charity rather than any other. People often doante to feel good about themselves, or to feel like they're part of a movement.
Donating could be one of "Five ways you can fight bad examples."
Always remember, you only benefit after your readers benefit first.
Is this actually interesting?
Everything you write should be of interest to someone. One of the advantages of the internet is that it can connect a large number of people over a wide geographical area about an incredibly niche topic.
That doesn't mean your writing should be boring though. Even if you're writing about an incredibly dry topic, you can still make your copy engaging and interesting.
Where's that leaflet we published last year?
With any luck, it's in the bin.
Don't just copy & paste from your leaflet - people read differently on the web and the outcomes for your web article will probably be different from the ones of your leaflet last year.
The information in an old leaflet may also be out of date by now. Reward new website visitors with new and up-to-date information.
Am I a good writer?
Ask yourself "am I a good writer?" There's no shame in being a bad writer - your job will usually have many elements to it and writing is often just one responsibility on a very long list.
Are there better writers in your organisation? Can you ask a volunteer to write or to help you write that article, that welcome message for your impact report?
Ask someone else to read what you've written, prefereably from outside your immediate work group. Does it make sense to them?
Next: Step 2: Write