How to pick topics for your nonprofit blog

Let’s say that you’ve set goals for your blog and have selected the right blogging platform. What are you going to write about? This is the No. 1 question that keeps every blogger up at night, and is exactly why it’s referred to as feeding the beast.

Survey your readers

One of the easiest ways to find out what your readers want is to conduct a survey. Remember to ask yes or no questions around specific topics – or select 10 topics and ask respondents to pick the top three – to get the most responses. Socialbrite has a great list of online survey tools, and you can also post surveys to Twitter with PollDaddy:

Keep your ear to the ground

Monitoring blogs and using the advanced Twitter search will enable you to find out who’s talking about your cause. This will lead you to recent articles, and also give you insights into what’s important. If you’re a community-based org, you can also research local trending topics on Twitter:

Check out your click-throughs on Twitter

If you’re using Twitter, chances are you tend to share a lot of useful content. Tools like Hootsuite and Bit.ly allow you to go back through your recent tweets to see which links received the most click-throughs.

Check tweets that your community ‘favorited’

You can use Favstar to find which of your tweets people have marked most as favorites. This gives you insight into which topics resonate with the people who follow you.

What other methods do you use? Read the rest of this post over at the Razoo Blog.
John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.” Curious? Then visit the John Haydon blog, follow him on Twitter or leave a comment.