Christine is Working on Marketing Personas with Her Content Marketing Team

Christine Brantley

Our 200+ Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass Holders, along with all of you reading this blog, represent the great diversity in the world of nonprofit communications. To help you see that you aren’t alone in your challenges and that you really are part of a wonderful community of passionate, creative professionals, we are introducing you to one of our All-Access Pass Holders including what they are working on right now. ~Kristina, Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s Community Engagement Manager

Meet Christine Brantley of Virginia Beach Public Library

What does your organization do?

Virginia Beach Public Library (VBPL) provides free access to information and lifelong learning opportunities for residents of Virginia Beach, Va. (population 450,000). VBPL has 10 locations and provides books in a variety of formats (print, e-book, audio); curriculum-based early literacy classes; workforce development and small business resources; access to computers, Internet and software programs; local history and genealogy resources, and so much more. I could go on and on…

What is your job?

As community relations & development coordinator, my job is to ensure we communicate effectively with citizens, city officials and donors, making them aware of the services we provide and of the positive impacts we make in the community every day. With the help of a graphic designer, I oversee public relations, advertising, social media, print and electronic newsletters, marketing materials, web content and events, plus fundraising development and grant writing.

What’s one thing you are working on right now with your communications?

I created a content marketing team with representatives from our organization: subject matter experts in key areas like early literacy and technology, and those who work with and help our customers daily. Together, we have created an annual editorial calendar that allows us to capitalize on a timely theme and focus on a particular topic each month. Now that we have brainstormed our big picture themes, we are creating editorial calendars for individual channels as well as working on marketing personas (using Kivi’s worksheets) to help us focus our content even more.

What’s one thing you have learned from having the All- Access Pass that you were able to apply to your work?

I have been an All-Access Pass holder since December 2012. It’s such a bargain for the resources and expertise available in the webinars alone. I’ve participated in several of them and have found them all to be very helpful and immediately applicable to my work. “How to Create an Nonprofit Annual Report People Will Actually Read,” was timely and useful, as we are about to produce our very first annual report and I got a lot of great tips and information. I also found “Creating Awesome Content: Ideas for Nonprofit Writers,” to be especially helpful. We write about the same topics over and over, so it’s often hard to find a new angle. Kivi’s tips helped me brainstorm better headlines and punch up my writing – I’ve applied them nearly every day.