How to Start Inbound Marketing for Non-Profits

At its core, inbound marketing is the concept of using materials to bring visitors into a website or other destination as opposed to using those materials to go out and get the attention of people who may have been otherwise unaware. Not only is inbound marketing making waves for businesses around the world in today's modern environment, but it's also seeing non-profit organizations of all types get an increase in traffic at the same time.According to a Hubspot report issued in 2014, for example, inbound marketing was responsible for generating almost twice as many leads for non-profit organizations as all other channels were combined. If you want to start using inbound marketing for the benefit of your non-profit, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

The Power of Social Media

Social media is one of the biggest inbound marketing avenues that non-profit organizations should be exploring for a host of different reasons. According to a recent study released by the Content Marketing Institute, a full 91% of non-profit professionals admit to using sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more in their inbound marketing tactics. These sites come with built-in user bases in the hundreds of millions of people and are a great source of attention that you can no longer afford to ignore.

Know Your Target Audience and Understand Where They Are Online

While you should be making an active effort to utilize social media for the advancement of your inbound marketing strategy, it is also integral to understand that not all networks are created equally. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and more are all aimed at different types of people and the content that you're generating should be geared towards the eyes that you're most likely to attract. Did you know that 68% of Instagram's user base is female, for example? As a result, content geared towards men would be unlikely to perform as well on Instagram as it would on something with a much more evenly divided demographic split like Facebook.

Relevant and Regular Content

One of the keys to succeeding with an inbound marketing strategy involves posting relevant content that your audience actually wants to read on a regular basis. It really does begin and end largely with this idea. In an era that is now officially over, search engine optimization (SEO) was the best way to attract attention with inbound tactics due to the high visibility it could guarantee in search results on sites like Google. Thanks to Google's recent aggressive algorithm changes designed to penalize those who were attempting to "game the system" by emphasizing SEO above quality, that has all changed.

So What?

Make no mistake: if you post high quality content that is relevant to your non-profit's mission on a regular basis, the rest will almost take care of itself. The volume of content and the frequency at which it is posted will increase your online presence, will naturally help propel you to the top of the search results for relevant keywords and will definitely help to grow your network of loyal followers both now and for all time.