Content creation strategy can help your nonprofit tell a story. The Kurdish Project started with a simple goal: raise awareness of the Kurdish people in the United States. At the start of the project, there were no non-political resources dedicated to informing and educating the public about Kurdistan or the Kurdish people. So, we created one.
To inform and educate the public about Kurdistan, we aimed to build an engaged digital community that would drive information about Kurds and generate awareness about the project. Our content creation strategy consisted of three parts:
Fred Khosravi Founder of The Kurdish Project
Before we can achieve a client’s goals, we need to know the lay of the land. Our discovery process allows us to assess existing efforts, successes, and opportunities before we dive in.
Using Google trends and Moz to conduct SEO research, our team sought to build a site that would satisfy target audiences’ existing interest in a key set of issues related to Kurds. We conducted keyword research around search topics on Kurds and Kurdish issues (Ex: “American Kurdish relations” or “Where is Kurdistan”). This research informed the site structure, page titles, and priority content pages while revealing actionable competitive information.
Our infographics put issues people cared about front and center, generating key engagements that significantly amplified the reach of the project. We touched on issues that were gaining momentum in news cycles, including Kurdish female fighters, ISIS, refugees, and women in politics. By keeping our finger on the pulse of current political events, we were able to strategically drop original content into these relevant conversations and propel the project forward.
Due to the complex nature of the issues incorporated in our communications, sentiment analysis became extremely important. We knew that positive sentiment involved empowering women, facilitating democracy, and non-political point of view. This required balancing cultural awareness, education and current events. So, we weighed the pros and cons of engaging in certain issues, reached out to scholars in the field for guidance on how to position them, and developed key communications points. The tone, then, became one of educating around an identity—and it resonated.
Experts and thought leaders wrote personal stories, held interviews, and shared valuable publications and photos with the Kurdish Project, which we then shared with our audiences. These individuals included the author of the Kurdish Declaration of Independence, the Kurdish language expert at the U.S. Library of Congress, and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s representative in Washington, D.C. We may have started with limited connections to Kurds who would help us amplify the Kurdish narrative, but this influencer outreach helped us grow our network of Kurdish experts to over 100 people.
The average time on site reached a peak of 2:33 and pages-per-session at 1.65% well above industry averages.
