6 fun ways nonprofits can use word clouds

Never heard of “word clouds”?

According to Tagxedo, word clouds are “words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.”

Why use word clouds?

Simple. They are fun. They look cool.

And in a world where no one reads, it’s all about the visual!

Thanks to easy-to-use sites like Tagxedo and Wordle, absolutely anyone can create a compelling and visually-appealing word cloud.

Here is a word cloud that I made on Tagxedo. They scanned my tweets on Twitter, then I chose the shape, the font, the colors, the orientation, and viola! (Pretty neat!)

So how can nonprofits use word clouds?

1)     Create a word cloud from the five or 10 most popular posts published on your blog or your email newsletter. This will highlight what your supporters most care about – I’m sure it will surprise you! Post it on your blog, in your email newsletter and/or on your website.

2)     Scan your Twitter tweets and make a word cloud to discover your most-tweeted terms and topics. Share this with your Twitter followers (Tagxedo makes this easy) and on other social media profiles.

3)     Create a pinboard of word clouds on Pinterest. I haven’t seen anyone do this yet, but if done correctly and with an eye to the aesthetic, a word cloud pinboard is sure to get lots of follows and repins!

4)     A great word cloud could be used as an interesting Facebook Cover photo. Take all the language from your website and printed/electronic materials, choose colorful and bright colors and large fonts. (Make sure to comply with Facebook’s guidelines for Cover images.)

5)     Poll your supporters on an issue, and instead of sending the results in list format, send a word cloud! Post the word cloud results on your website and social media profiles.

6)     Print out a gallery of colorful, bright word clouds and hang them in your office or waiting room. One word cloud could focus on words pertaining to your mission, one cloud could be employees and/or volunteers’ names, one cloud could be sponsors’ names.

Get creative with word clouds! The possibilities are endless.

Have you or your nonprofit experimented with word clouds? Do you have other ideas that I may have missed? Please share in the Comments section or email me at Julia@jcsocialmarketing.com – Thanks for reading!