Erika Kosina

Flexible marketing and event support for nonprofits

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Human Creativity + AI Support = Content Marketing that Works

Or, How I used AI to help get butts in seats for a workshop (and landed a front-page news article)

Spoiler alert: I didn’t use AI to write the article.

OK, so the front page I landed was for a tiny paper called the Union Democrat in Sonora, but those newspaper readers were exactly my target audience! And I met my client’s marketing goals. Hear me out. 

But first, a word on content marketing. When I tell my new clients about the virtues of content marketing and thought leadership, their eyes glaze over and they ask me if I can just write some social media posts for them. I could, but those posts might not be as effective as one well-placed thought leadership article. Let me walk you through it. 

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is creating content that is useful or valuable to your target audience  — information and insight about something your client’s customers or donors actually want to learn about. It’s something they choose to read, as opposed to advertising copy they skip past. 

Content marketing in action

In this case, my client wanted to get people to attend a workshop about forest entrepreneurship in a remote rural area of Northern California (Sonora). I wrote an article about emerging trends in the forestry industry — how the market is shifting to use smaller diameter trees for low-carbon building materials. Would-be forestry entrepreneurs learned about a new trend and a market gap that they could take advantage of. And oh by the way, the article also mentioned a FREE forest entrepreneurship workshop happening in their town that would help them launch or grow exactly this type of business.

Lead with value, not sales

I led with the educational information, not the advertisement for the workshop. I provided useful information that my target audience was interested in reading. Of course, this only works if you know your target audience really well, but that’s another blog post. In this case, I knew my target audience well enough to land an article on the front page of the newspaper they read. I also made sure the story was well written, which means I wrote the story, not my robot.

How AI can help (and not help)

AI was a helpful partner in writing the story, but not in the way you might think. Here’s how I did it:

  1. Human – Interview. I spoke with a successful forest entrepreneur and got his (human, lived) perspective on emerging trends in the forest industry.
  2. Robot – Outline. I gave ChatGPT my interview notes, some additional background, my goals and target audience for the article, and asked it to draft an outline for the article.
  3. Human – Writing. I filled in ChatGPT’s outline with my own writing (ignoring the parts of the outline that didn’t work ).
  4. Robot – Research. I asked ChatGPT to do some research on the history of forestry in California, citing resources to avoid hallucinations.
  5. Human – Validation and Writing: I fact-checked and summarized ChatGPT’s history and incorporated it into the article.
  6. Robot – Editing: I asked ChatGPT to review my article for AP style, clarity, and flow.
  7. Human – Validation and Final Edits: I reviewed ChatGPT’s suggestions, made my own refinements, then submitted it to the editor of the newspaper.

Partners! We worked together, I saved hours of time,  and everyone was happy. Especially my client, who saw the results of this content marketing when the workshop filled with attendees in Sonora.

Content marketing can work for your organization too

Ready to learn how to use content marketing to engage donors? Let’s talk. Give me 30 minutes of your time and I’ll give you five thought leadership article ideas to help you accomplish your marketing goals.

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Is Your Website Working for You? Put on Your User Hat.

A good nonprofit website tells a great story about your organization’s work — it educates potential donors and volunteers about why your work matters, builds trust, and connects people with your services. Your website should also make it easy for visitors to accomplish what they came to your site to do. 

Does your website do both? If not, it might be time to rethink, redesign, or refresh. Thinking about how well your website is accomplishing your organization’s and your users’ goals BEFORE you embark on a redesign can save you time and money. You might even be able to vastly improve the user experience with just a few content updates.

Here are some things to think about before you hire a web designer.

Does your website tell the story of your organization?

Before you do anything else, get clear on what you want your website to accomplish. At the very least, your website should tell the story of your nonprofit. What need is your organization filling? How does it accomplish that need? Why does your work matter? Who is benefitting and how? What is the impact you are making? A visitor should be able to immediately get the answers to all of those questions just by visiting your home page. What else do you want people to know? Make sure that information is front and center, or easily accessible.

Imagery is important. Show the impact you are making, don’t just tell. Infographics can help those impressive statistics stand out better than a bulleted list. Pictures of your staff and board give your organization a human face. If you serve a specific population, make sure the people you serve see themselves in the imagery you use so they know your organization is for them. Snapshots from events give volunteers and prospective patrons a glimpse of how much they could be enjoying themselves and connecting with other, likeminded people. 

How is the user experience for your website visitors?

It’s important to get your message across, but site visitors have their own reasons for visiting your website. Take the time to think about your target audiences and what they are looking for. What are the three most important actions you want visitors to be able to accomplish when they visit your site? Is it easy for donors to give money through their payment method of choice? For volunteers to find out how they can help and then sign up? How about the people who benefit from your services? Can they easily find the information they need to take advantage of the services you provide? It should be easy for your users to accomplish what they came to your site to do.

Put your user hat on

One way to figure out if your user experience is working is to put your user hat on and actually try to donate $50 with a credit card, or sign up to volunteer. You will quickly learn where the friction is, and what information is missing. 

A large insurance firm engaged my services to solve the problem of why they weren’t getting any job applications through their website. Starting the process as if I was trying to apply for a job on their site, I quickly figured out that the typical pathway to apply for a job led users in an endless circle. It was an easy problem to solve; nobody in the HR department had actually tried to apply for a job through the website. It is often an enlightening experience to look at your site from a user perspective.

Is your content working for you?

Once you are clear on what you want your website to accomplish from your organization’s perspective and your users’ perspective, it’s time to look at your existing content with these three questions in mind: 

  1. What is helping with your goals? Maybe a link to the “Volunteer” page is right up front and people who want to volunteer with you can easily find out what their options are and what to do next. Congratulations.
  2. What is hurting you? Is there inaccurate or outdated content with broken links? At best, this makes you look careless, at worst, it erodes trust.
  3. What is missing? Do visitors have to hunt for the “Donate” button? We’ve all heard about fleeting attention spans — don’t make users work to accomplish this important goal.

Start by looking at what you have

A content audit with a free tool like Screaming Frog will give you a comprehensive list of all the pages on your site. That list can help you identify any stale content that can be immediately eliminated, like old event pages and landing pages for programs that no longer exist. Review each page and flag any information that needs to be updated or removed, like staff changes or outdated COVID information. This will give you a fresh start if you are moving content to a new website platform or design. Even if you aren’t planning to redesign your whole site, an annual content audit that ensures all of the content on your site is up to date makes you look buttoned up and organized. 

Decide what to keep and what to kill

Looking at that list of pages might bring up strong emotions for some people in your organization, especially if they lobbied to create certain content in the first place. Objectively evaluating content based on whether or not it meets user and organizational goals will make the decision to keep or get rid of content easier. Metrics can help as well. Look at what people are clicking on (and what they aren’t clicking on). These metrics can tell an interesting story about what is important to your users. 

Maybe you are an animal sanctuary who is considering getting rid of your “Pet of the Week” feature because it’s a lot of work, until you see that the Pet page gets more clicks than any other page on the site. Better yet, you find out that the “Adopt me” link on the Pet of the Week page gets ten times as many clicks as the same links on the pets who are not featured. If one of your organization’s goals is to get animals adopted as quickly as possible, it’s an easy decision to keep that page, and to consider getting more leverage out of it by promoting it on social media and in your newsletter.

Decide what needs to be added

Once you know what you have, it’s time to look for opportunities to add content. How could you better support those user goals and organizational goals? I worked with a client recently who hadn’t realized that there was nothing about what they do or why on the home page. Their mission, vision and values were buried deep in the Who We Are section under photos of their board and staff. You had to really hunt to find out what this organization was all about. Many staff members had been with the organization for decades — they assumed everyone already knew what their organization does. This is where an outside consultant can help light up blind spots. It can be hard to think from a user perspective when you are so familiar with your work.

Talk to the people who listen

Ask the person who answers your phone and email what they think. They know what information people are looking for, and what is hard to find on your website. One of my first jobs was to answer emails that came through the website of a technology company. By listening to what people were asking for, I recommended and implemented changes on the website that reduced email queries from an average of 300 to 160 messages per week. Listen to your users.

How to put all of this into action

Start by getting clear on the story you want to tell and decide if your website is doing a good job telling that story. Then think from your users’ perspective and evaluate how easy it is for them to accomplish their goals. Keep both sets of goals in mind as you decide what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to add. If you need objective help deciding what to keep, kill, or add, give me a call. My website assessments are ruthless, but kind.

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From Tech to Community: Why I’m Doubling Down on Nonprofits

As many of my friends and colleagues will attest, the tech industry isn’t what it used to be, especially if you are looking for a job. I could blame AI for the downturn in tech and consulting, and I would probably be right. Instead, I am embracing AI and learning all about how to use it as a marketing partner and tool. It’s a wild ride, folks.

While translating complex technical concepts into plain language will always get my engine revving (bare  metal hypervisors!), I’ve decided to return to where I started with my freelance writing career 15 years ago and focus on nonprofits. Truly, they need us more than ever.

Committed to Giving Back Through Local Nonprofits

Even while I was working (mostly remotely) in tech, I have prioritized giving back to my community. Over the past 15+ years, I’ve served on boards and volunteered for many local nonprofits, including the Fire Safe Nevada County Coalition (formerly the Nevada County Coalition of Firewise Communities), Sierra Commons, Sierra Harvest, SYRCL, the Nevada County Economic Resource Council, and nearly every school and sports team my kids have been a part of.

Marketing Support for When You’re Overwhelmed and Under-Resourced

Through those experiences, I’ve seen organizations pull off some amazing feats with few resources. Nevada County’s culture of volunteerism is pretty incredible. But too often, nonprofits struggle to tell their stories, or have hard-working marketing teams who are stretched too thin to do everything.

That’s where I come in. I offer flexible, affordable support for content marketing and event production. Whether you need help clarifying your marketing strategy, reaching new audiences, writing stories that move people to act, or promoting and producing events, I can jump in and help where and when you need me most. Check out my services page to find out more about what I do for nonprofits.

Help Me Help You!

Interested in learning more? Get in touch for a free, 30-minute consultation, or if you’d like to receive content marketing, AI, and event planning tips, sign up to receive my very occasional blog posts in your email box.

Thanks for reading – I am super excited about this new venture! If you or a nonprofit you know and love could use a little extra support, please send them my way.

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Conserving Resources in a Harsh Job Search Environment — Lessons from the Ancient Bristlecone Pines

I was hiking recently among the oldest living creatures on the planet, in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains on the California/Nevada border. These trees have survived for more than 4000 years in the high desert, enduring harsh conditions at a high altitude in inhospitable soil with very little water. You can see in their bodies how they have survived, twisting thick, dense roots through and around rocks to find purchase against the wind and snow, angling squat trunks and wide branches with small clusters of hard needles to grow slowly and patiently in the direction of sustenance.

Walking past these ancients, I feel like a gnat in their majestic presence. My entire life is a blink of an eye for them. I feel weak and vulnerable and insignificant compared to their steady, sure growth, their vast life span. I also feel awe-struck, and a deep sense of peace, something that has been scarce in my life the past few weeks.

I was laid off from my job more than a month ago, and I immediately went into resource conservation mode. Ancient Bristlecone Pines are masters of resource conservation, living in the environment they do. I was prudent and made sure I had some savings to get me through a job search, but spending money when it is finite and another paycheck may or may not be coming soon has made me think differently about what is a necessity versus a luxury. Here are some of the choices I have been making:

  • Charitable giving was the first thing to go. Sorry, local nonprofits, favorite political figures and warriors fighting the good fight to stop climate change!
  • Cable TV went next. The only thing I was really watching was baseball, and the Giants need a year to get used to their new manager anyway.
  • I held on to my gym membership for the first month because it supports my physical and emotional health. How could I give that up? And then I figured I could find other, cheaper ways to stay strong and healthy.
  • I love good food, and I spend an inordinate amount of money on groceries each month. Now that I have more time than money, I’ve turned my weekly sprint to the closest grocery store into an hour-long journey to three different markets, starting with the bargain shopper’s paradise — Grocery Outlet.
  • We’ve also cut way back on meat, because I can’t bring myself to buy the cheap, mass-produced stuff (Hello, Nevada County Beef!). I don’t miss the meat, but the kids do, especially when my son gets home from a 19-mile mountain bike ride and I fling a few sprigs of cauliflower in his direction for dinner.
  • Dinners out? Only on special occasions, in dire situations like road trips, or if we are in the neighborhood of something really special. I could not, in good conscience, pass up the fish tacos at the Whoa Nelly Deli in Lee Vining when we were in the Eastern Sierras.
  • Most of the road trips where we stopped for fast food were for my son’s mountain bike races, which I still considered a necessity. The mountain bike team has been the best thing to happen to him in a long time. I still paid for race-critical bike repairs until the season ended in May, but the annoying squeak my bike is making will have to wait until I have a job again.
  • Gas? Also a necessity, although I have been toying with the idea of riding my squeaky bike more places.
  • Occasional coffees and drinks with friends? Justified! It’s for networking. And also my sanity. It’s just no longer a weekly habit. Miss you, Outer Heaven!
  • Vacations? Well, a necessity. We have a family trip to Chicago planned that was mostly paid for when I was still working. I’m not cancelling it, even though the dining out and just two tourist attractions will deplete my savings. Because? It’s for the children! This is what life is about – experiences, together, which are rarer now that my kids mostly prefer to spend time with their friends instead of their mom. I realize taking this vacation may sound foolhardy to some, but I am committed.
  • I’m also planning a solo writing retreat, technically a vacation, for when my kids are in the Czech Republic for a few weeks this summer. I’m trying to do it as cheaply as possible – camping, staying with friends, cooking my own food. I want to take advantage of my rare kid-free time, and make progress on the creative non-fiction writing I was so excited about before I lost my job. Maybe I’ll regret it if I run out of money the following month, but I would arguably regret it more if I stayed home and did nothing but look for a job for three weeks.

It’s a very tough job market in tech and consulting, where I have earned a good living for the past few decades, and I may need to conserve my resources a bit more stringently, move some “necessities” to the “luxuries” column over the next month or two if that’s what it takes. Just documenting my choices here is making me re-think them. But I still want to enjoy my life, and honestly, I would never make it as an Ancient Bristlecone Pine. Not enough food choices or travel opportunities.

Like those pines, I’m very lucky to live next to the Sierra Nevada mountains, full of free recreation opportunities and a source of grounding for me. Plenty to occupy me on breaks from the job search. Maybe I’ll visit those pines again when I need a pep talk on persevering.

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Maximizing AI’s Potential for Content Creation

Is ChatGPT really as smart as it sounds? Will it replace human writers? What’s the best way to use it in my job?

All the content creators I know are talking about artificial intelligence based natural language processing tools, and specifically ChatGPT. Read my POV on AI for content creation on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maximizing-ais-potential-content-creation-erika-willett-kosina/

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How Are You Working to End Racial Injustice? Your Customers Want to Know.

Racial and social injustice has exploded into the media and conversations at both local and global levels, and organizations have been rushing to post content that expresses their stance on social justice.

If businesses and organizations do not address the topic of social justice, they risk looking out of touch at best, and alienating entire segments of customers at worst.

Developing content that addresses the systemic racism in our culture is terrifying to many organizations who are afraid that they will say the wrong thing. And, such content is important and necessary if we are to move with any significance in the direction of social justice for all.

Show You Care

There are many ways to address this topic. You can start with a blog post to join the conversation and show that you are paying attention. A blog post about systemic racism as it relates to your industry is one way to show that social and racial justice is an issue that you as an organization care about. Here are some other suggestions for topics that can be addressed objectively:

  • What systemic racism looks like in your industry or region
  • How businesses in your industry are reacting to and/or making changes to end systemic racism
  • How prioritizing diversity is beneficial to companies
  • How mentoring can help marginalized populations + how your organization does mentoring

Walk the Talk

Ideally, organizations will also make a statement about their position on social justice and how they are addressing it internally. For this statement to be effective, organizations must first decide what kinds of changes they want to make, and commit to a plan to carry out those changes. This type of statement, with action behind the words, is much more powerful than a generic statement about how racism is bad. However, any type of statement is better than saying nothing. You can always say that you are carefully considering how best to address racism within your organization – just make sure you follow up later with the results of that planning.

Build Those Relationships

Marketing and selling today is all about relationships. If you can show that you as an organization are making a sincere effort to do the right thing when it comes to social and racial justice, building a real relationship with loyal customers will be that much easier. So take some time to figure out how you are going to walk the talk in your organization, and then call me  to help you with that statement or blog post.

Free Blog Post

For my part, I am offering one free blog post (on any topic) to Black business owners and professionals. I welcome ideas on how to better support the Black community in the Comments.

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The 4 Pieces of Content That Can Make or Break a Retail Website

Small businesses are scrambling to launch e-commerce websites to make up for a lack of foot traffic in their brick and mortar stores during the pandemic. I recently wrote about an artist who reaped some unexpected benefits from this transition.

In their haste to get websites up, retailers might be tempted to launch with the bare minimum. This can backfire if customers visit the new site and have a less than satisfying experience – they won’t return. Spending a little more time preparing the right content allows store owners to take advantage of selling opportunities they don’t have in a brick and mortar store, and ensuring that customers return.  It’s worth taking that time. Here are four pieces of content that can make or break a retail website.

Give them a reason to go deeper

When a customer lands on your web site, it’s a bit like standing outside your store window. You need to give them a reason to come in. Use your home page to offer an enticing special or showcase a product that everyone is looking for with a big visual statement. Yuba Blue, a women’s apparel, home décor, and gifts shop does this very well with a prominent rotating carousel of attention-grabbing images, starting with a colorful selection of hand-made COVID masks.

Your home page is also an opportunity to introduce shoppers to the full spectrum of products that you sell. Much like deciding how to display merchandise in a store, this requires a delicate balance between overwhelming consumers with options and collecting related products in categories that make sense. A communications consultant with information architecture skills can offer valuable insight into which top level category labels might make the most sense to your customers.

Give them a reason to keep shopping

Whether customers know exactly what they want, and are visiting your website to buy it, or they are just enjoying the thrill of the shopping hunt, you can help them make a decision on a purchase by including both a clear picture and a thorough description. Your product description doesn’t have to be as long or creative as the famed J. Peterman catalog – one or two sentences can be enough, and you might be able to cut and paste everything you need from a wholesale website.

Yuba Blue does this really well – while they might not have every single product in their brick and mortar store listed for sale  on their website, the curated collection on the site includes a brief description that gives most visitors the information they need to make a purchase decision.

If you have the time and writing skills to embellish these descriptions, you can create a miniature advertisement for each item, or explain the benefits of a product that consumers might not be familiar with. Reflecta Creations sells healing crystal jewelry, and their website is the perfect vehicle to educate consumers about the healing power of crystals – something the average consumer wouldn’t necessarily learn in a traditional retail environment. By including basic information about the size of the piece as well as a detailed description of the healing properties of each crystal, owner Paul Jordan is creating an informed market for his wares, empowering customers to choose the crystal that is right for them.

Give them a way to talk to a human

Imagine your customer, standing at the cash register and confused about how to check out. Or wondering if the socks they chose will fit a 5-year-old, if that sweater is actually navy or black, or whether the massage oil they are looking at contains soy or not. People will abandon your cart and immediately go somewhere else if something interferes with their purchase experience. Make it easy for your customers by providing your phone number or a chat window on every page, or make sure there is a prominent link to a contact page with that information. Just make sure someone answers the phone, or gets back to your customers in a timely manner.

Give them a reason to buy from You

Let’s face it. When you go online, you are competing with Amazon. Your customers need to know why YOU are special and whey they should spend a few extra dollars to support a small, local shop. You can’t chat up every customer who enters your store with your life story, but on a website, you can give them a reason to choose your store. In her store Make Local Habit, Aria Griffis sells one of a kind treasures make by local community members. She does a beautiful job on the Make Local Habit website explaining how her store supports local artists and creators and why her mission matters.

There you have it. Four basic ways you can use content to enhance the shopping experience on your small business retail website, and four ways you can lose customers by omitting content that helps them to make a purchase. Do you need help crafting enticing product descriptions or telling the story of your business on your website? Contact me for information about how I can help enhance your customer experience.

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5 Ways an Editorial Calendar Can Make Content Marketing More Effective

I get it. Content marketing managers are busy. Finding the right content to get in front of the right audience and herding all of that content as quickly as possible through the review cycle can make you feel like you are on a hamster wheel that never stops.

An editorial calendar can help you create and promote content more mindfully – and more effectively. Here’s how.

  1. Visibility: Creating an editorial calendar makes your work more visible to everyone. Not only can your boss can see at a glance exactly how you are telling the company story, so can everyone who contributes and approves content. Everyone knows exactly what is coming up and when – there are no surprises.
  2. Coordinated Amplification: Which leads to the next bonus of an editorial calendar – coordinated amplification. At a large company, several different teams may be working on content for the same event, customer, or solution – without knowing what everyone else is doing. An editorial calendar shows all of the work that is in progress, so efforts are not duplicated and opportunities are not missed. When a social media manager can see exactly when that big story is coming out on the blog, she can plan accordingly to promote it.
  3. Ensuring You Hit All of Your Target Audiences: Coordinating messaging for different products or campaigns for different audiences in different channels can be stressful. An editorial calendar can help you make sure nothing is falling through the cracks, because you (and everybody else) can easily see what’s missing.
  4. Easy Tracking and Tweaking: An editorial calendar not only gives you a snapshot of what is happening right now, it also keeps a history of previous efforts. Have you been neglecting a particular vertical over the past few months? Put it on the calendar for next month. Including trade shows or other industry events on the calendar will help you plan.
  5. Repository for New Ideas:  Planning an editorial calendar for the next 12 months is unrealistic. Good marketers know you have to stay agile. However, providing a framework to plug in new ideas keeps everything in one spot. Is there a potential customer success coming up in a few weeks? An event coming up in a few months? Get a placeholder on the calendar to remind you to check in or plan.

There are a million tools and ways to format an editorial calendar. That’s a whole different blog post. If you are stymied, start with a spreadsheet and let it evolve.

For more tips on making content marketing more effective, sign up to get this blog in your inbox on a regular (not more than once a month) basis.

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5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Find Work

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Find Work

So, your job disappeared and it’s not looking like it’s coming back any time soon. It might be time for a whole new career. Or maybe your spouse got laid off and now YOU need to get a job, pronto! Here are five things you can do right now to start down the path of gainful employment.

  1. Brainstorm ten possible jobs that you might be able to do.

These don’t need to be jobs that you are going to do for the rest of your life (but they could be!). They don’t even have to be jobs – they could be freelance gigs. Or businesses you’ve always wanted to start. Or micro-businesses that could get a little extra cash coming in. The important thing is to get ten ideas down on a piece of paper so that you can see that you have options. And to get you ready for the next steps, which is narrowing these choices down. There are no bad ideas here! Write them all down.

2. Pick three jobs that actually sound interesting to you.

Ok, so maybe there were some bad ideas. But those bad ideas can sometimes be turned into really good ideas with a little tweaking! This is part of the work I do with my students in the Get Back to Work! Workshop. But YOU, right now, just need to pick three options that you are willing to pursue. You’re going to approach this in an “agile” way, which is fancy business speak for pursuing multiple options simultaneously to see what gets “traction” (another fancy business term).

3. Make a list of people you know who do this type of work.

Now that you have your three options, it’s time to find out more from the experts – the people who actually do this type of work, or work with people who do this type of work, or – even better, HIRE people who do this type of work. If you can’t think of three people who are experts in the three jobs you picked, make a list of people who might know someone who does this type of work. Still stuck? Ask around! You might be surprised who knows who. You just have to ask. And now you are ready for step four.

4. Set up a phone call to chat with the people on your list.

You knew I was going to ask this, right? Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds, because you are NOT going to ask them for a job. You are just asking them for information. You are calling to find out more about the work they do. It’s called an “informational interview.” This way, you not only find out what you need to be qualified to do the jobs on your list (and what the best and worst parts of the work might be), you also get a solid networking contact. Networking is how at least 70% of people find their next job. Be sure to have a list of questions ready to go, and keep it brief. And finally, don’t forget to do step five.

5. Thank each of the people that took the time to talk to you.

Email each of them a thank you note within 24 hours. It doesn’t have to be long, but it does have to happen. You’ll make a great impression that could lead to a job, and you’ll be practicing the art of gratitude, which is scientifically proven to make you a happier person. Also, it’s just good manners. Your mother will be proud. Also, it’s a great way to open the door to keeping in touch with them and strengthening your all-important network.

For more tips on how to find work, sign up for my workshop – Get Back to Work!