10 Free Resources for Conservation Comms and Marketing Pros

It’s a tale as old as time: You come back to work after a three-day weekend thinking, Eh, at least it’s a short week… and then it hits you—it IS a short week. In fact, there’s one LESS day to plan and execute all your content.

Social posts and blogs still need to go up and a newsletter needs to be filled with, well, something, and AI is surprisingly not doing your job, yet. So you spend day one of four just panicking and rescheduling all the calls you had booked back when you thought “all that can wait until after the holiday weekend.”

I’m with you. I spent the last few days entertaining a stir-crazy three-year-old as it relentlessly poured here in rural Vermont. We colored (for about four minutes.) We built a pillow fort that became an ice cream truck, cupcake shop, and donut factory. We watched 11 hours of YouTube videos. At some point, I was the Big Bad Wolf chasing my kid all over the house, at his request.

Chicken nuggets were consumed. It’s a blur.

All this is to say that I wasn’t brainstorming on a super engaging newsletter topic for you. I wasn’t excitedly drafting the newsletter in my head, as I did last week. (Check that one out.) But I have a secret weapon for moments like this:

✨The Listicle✨ 

When I don’t know what to make or post, man, do I love a good listicle! Three news stories you may have missed. Five things we already talked about this quarter that share something in common. Six of our top priorities. Eight big wins from the past year.

If you can group and summarize between three and ten ideas, you have yourself a listicle that can be written in an hour. Try it next time you need to fill in content in a hurry.

So, without further ado, here is the list I pulled together—not at all hurriedly—with ten free resources I’ve returned to time and time again for education, inspiration, and to inform comms strategy and goal setting. I hope you find them helpful, too.

📈 For benchmarking yourself against industry standards: M+R Benchmarks report

In this most recent report from M+R, a consulting firm that works with nonprofits, 215 organizations shared their data to reveal trends in digital fundraising, email response, ad engagement, and more. I’d use the sector-specific numbers to see where your metrics stack up or look at the data points they’ve polled on to help build out your own analytics monitoring.

💌 For boosting email open rates: SubjectLine.com

Get some indication of the potential success of your email before you send it, plus a little advice from AI on how to generate more fun or urgency in your subject line. Then test what works with your own audience.

👀 For discovering new tactics and experts to follow: Social Media Marketing Podcast

To be fair, I hate the cheesy intro and offers on this podcast, but the guests are usually fantastic with thought-provoking and actionable tips to share. I usually listen for about 15 minutes (the length of my commute home from daycare drop-off) and then just head to the show notes or the guest’s Instagram. This is where I discovered Miss Excel, one of my favorite follows!

🔉 For defining or refining your audience: Copy Posse Customer Avatar Builder (gated)

If you’re rethinking your website design or developing a new marketing funnel, then reflecting on the distinct characteristics of your different audiences is essential. Because you shouldn’t decide what to make until you know who you are making it for, if they want it, and why. Some marketers will go as far as creating an “avatar” of, say, Freddie Fly Fisherman—barf!—so you can picture an actual human to sell to or create for. Whether you want to do that or not, this list of questions from Alex Cattoni will help you hone in on who you’re communicating with and what they need from you.

⭐ For email marketing inspiration and tips: Guru Conference

This item and the next are virtual events with various workshops over a two- or three-day period. You can pop into sessions, play them in the background, or really immerse yourself and engage with other attendees in the chat. Cameras are off except for the presenters, which is great for the socially anxious, like me. Plus, there’s zero travel required and it costs nothing to register. Guru was created by the very entertaining Jay Schwedelson, a frequent presenter at INBOUND, the massive marketing conference run by HubSpot in Boston. As much as I adore Beantown, a ticket to INBOUND will run you at least $399, so Guru is a great value, even if you only attend Jay’s session.

📬 For direct mail marketing inspiration and tips: Delivered Conference

The first ever Delivered Conference is this September, and I’m already on the list because I’m intrigued by the idea of modern-day direct mail campaigns for advocacy, fundraising, and growth.

🤯 For a mindset shift on your link posts: SparkToro’s Deep Dive on Zero-Click Content

This actually blew my mind, and I’d recommend it to anyone. Amanda Natividad lays out why you should embrace the turfy nature of social media platforms and search engines, which don’t actually want users to click away, and put your very best content right in the post or caption. When you don’t require a click through to the story or report, it’s certainly tougher to track success, but you’re openly providing value to the reader—and they’ll likely remember you for it.

🚀 For a new skill: HubSpot Academy

You don’t have to use HubSpot, an enterprise-level marketing platform, to take advantage of their courses and certifications on everything from mastering SEO to promoting content on LinkedIn and WhatsApp.

🤓 For copyediting questions: AP Stylebook’s Ask the Editor

Where many copyeditors go for a definitive ruling on grammar, style, hyphens, capitalization, and abbreviations. You can see recent queries, AP’s answer, and the related stylebook policy. It’s stuff we wonder about all the time, like noting academic degrees, how to talk about ratios, proper datelines, and gender-neutral language. I’m a nerd, so I just read this for fun and hope that it’s applicable in my writing later.

🤝 For more strategic goal setting, clearer roles and responsibilities, and better work culture: The Management Center

I’ve attended two Management Center trainings—not for free—that really opened my eyes, but many of the concepts they cover can be found on their resources page. I highly recommend their tools for creating clear role descriptions, dividing labor between two adjacent roles (like director and manager), and assigning roles within a specific project (the MOCHA framework.)

That’s all for this edition. Good luck in your content planning this week—for better or worse, you’re already almost halfway through.

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Thanks for reading,
The Big Bad Wolf (KB)

P.S. How are you? Has the short week got you scrambling? Send an email to let me know. Replies to this newsletter are rapidly becoming my favorite thing!