You’ve done your homework. You’ve taken a good, hard look at your philanthropic organization’s internal communications and content. You spend time researching and understanding your funder or supporter personas, and you’ve developed a written description of your personas. You know what gaps exist in your communications efforts, and what content you can repurpose quickly and easily.

Now, it’s time to execute. You’re ready to build your digital media platform.

What’s a Digital Media Platform?

Your digital media platform is your entire online communications and content presence. It’s your website, blog, videos, podcasts, webinars, and download guides, e-books, tip sheets, and white papers. But it’s more than the content and communications that exist on your website.

It’s also:

• • Comments you make on other philanthropy blogs
  • Online press releases
  • Tweets
  • Facebook posts
  • Linkedin posts and comments
  • Videos posted to YouTube
  • Slides posted to SlideShare
  • Reviews supporters share about your organization
  • Articles written and posted on other related sites
  • Your search engine rankings

In short, it’s everything you create and the items others create and share about you and your organization online. Your digital media platform is a major communications asset. Unlike print media and advertising, digital media has a much longer shelf life.

Build Your Platform

Here are the five key pillars to build a successful digital media platform:

1. 1. Generate ideas for content – Here are 22 ways to get you started if you’re stuck.
   2. Identify key messages – Tim, the ideas guy, says: “An easy way to get everyone saying the same thing within your organization is to develop key messages. Those messages that are fundamental to communicating what your organization is all about and what it stands for. Limit key messages to three or five. Support them with a few bullets that illustrate or enhance the message. Use simple language and brief phrases that can prompt personal stories or examples. Put them on handy cards people can tuck into their pockets, diaries or wallets. Distribute them to your volunteer spokesmen (board members, supporters) and staff. Message cards enable everyone to make the same points and that increases the power and effectiveness of your message.”
   3. Outline standards for quality – What are your design templates for blog posts and white papers? How do you produce digital media free from spelling and grammatical errors? Is there a certain tone and style you want to maintain?
   4. Ensure consistency – How frequently will you post to your blog? Publish a newsletter? Conduct a webinar? It’s better to demonstrate consistency because this builds trust and credibility rather than “going dark” for a period of time.
   5. Repurpose whenever possible – Always look to leverage your digital media. How can you turn a series of related blog posts into a guide available for download? How can you add slides to this and create an infographic and a video? How can you take snippets from a blog post and turn them into Tweets or Facebook posts?

Building your digital media platform isn’t an expense. It’s an investment of time, effort, and money in creating a long-term communications asset for your organization.

For more information about how building a digital media platform fits into an overall communications strategy, download the free guide: Fundraisers’ Guide to Digital Media.