[Build Backlinks Online] Online Marketing Tips for Nonprofits

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Online Marketing Tips for
Nonprofits'


Posted by SteveOllington
What's this about?


Having worked in-house at one charity and provided some volunteer consulting
to a couple of others, I decided it would be good to write about some useful
ways that charities can increase their online exposure, without the need to
drain too much of their already limited resources.


Many of the examples below are from my experiences working as the digital
strategist for the British Humanist Association, where I learned that it can be
very different from working at an agency, or in-house for a for-profit company.




How is online marketing for charities different?


There are advantages and disadvantages in digital marketing for charities. The
advantages are the passion of the staff, the compassion of the audience, and the
natural, powerful content that comes about through its work. The disadvantages
are primarily the lack of resources and budget in comparison to the business
world. What resources exist come from the generosity of people through donations
and volunteering, and the willingness by staff to work twice the number of hours
for half the pay.


So, here are a few tips that might help to offset the resource limits.

Google Grants for AdWords


As long as you have a registered charity number you can apply to Google Grants
and receive $329 USD per day in free advertising with Google AdWords. Whilst
this has to be in USD, itâs not confined to America only; UK charities
(and others internationally) get the equivalent amount to spend on their ads.


Until recently, it was difficult to use up this budget, as there was a maximum
per-click bid limit of $1.00. This meant you could only really go for keywords
which didnât have very much competition (and thereâs a reason for
that). However, in early 2013 this was increased to $2.00 per click, which makes
a huge difference, allowing you to advertise with more highly searched keywords
and bringing you more of the traffic you want.


How to set up Google Grants


Setting up Google Grants can take a few weeks because once you apply Google
will need to assess your eligibility. The eligibility criteria and restrictions
on use for Google Grants can be found here, but the main items are:


Restrictions on use


Only run keyword-targeted campaigns
Only appear on your countryâs version of Google (this will differ
depending on where your charity is based)
Only run text ads


Eligibility guidelines


Hold current and valid charity status
Acknowledge and agree to the application's required certifications regarding
nondiscrimination and donation receipt and use.


If you have a registered charity number and are not yet using Google Grants,
set up a Google AdWords account here (donât complete the billing section
upon setup), then apply to Google Grants here. Once you get going youâll
be offered the help you need from Google and youâre on your way to getting
free advertising that can make a big difference to your online presence.


*Where Iâve taken so long about writing this, I have been pipped to the
post (pun intended) by another Mozzer. Theyâve got lots more detail on
Google Grants in their post here.

Effective use of video


Videos can have a huge impact for charities because they offer a chance to
show viewers the problems theyâre trying to combat, allowing them to
spread awareness about the charity and/or individual campaigns whilst triggering
an emotional response that other media types might not.


Video doesnât have to be expensive. There are plenty of volunteers out
there at both the amateur and the professional level who will help out
(thereâs more on recruiting volunteers later), and for the video content
there are student actors to act, staff members to interview, or people who have
been affected by issues youâre campaigning on that are happy to talk about
those issues.


If your charity is environment- or wildlife-based, contact Environment Films
to have a video created. Theyâre a non-profit organisation too, and if
youâre lucky you might even end up with Distilledâs Margarita Iosif
working on your video!


Have a look at these clips worked on by a team including Margarita:


Whips Hurt. Ban Them. â A video for Animal Aid. This is a campaign-based
video about horsewhipping (45 seconds).


The Soi Dog Foundation â A trailer for the Soi Dog Foundation. This is a
video about the charity itself (4 minutes, 19 seconds).


In just a few minutes, the clips above are able to communicate their message
in a way that people are often more willing to engage with than with plain text,
and the short duration means theyâre more likely to be both watched and
shared online.


There are lots of different types of videos that your charity could consider,
including trailers, animations, discussions, interviews, and debates. The most
important thing in the video is the message.

Video marketing

Itâs important to determine the goals for your video before you market
it (or even create it). Is the primary goal to spread awareness, or to encourage
donations? The goals of the video will make a difference in how you should
market it, such as on which platform (because itâs not always YouTube that
you should go for).


Phil Nottingham, whom I have the honour to sit opposite, is the video
marketing specialist, and if youâre going to make a video, you HAVE to
watch this video of Phil explaining how to do it right. Also, check out the
Distilled Video Marketing Guide.

Video outreach

Videos, just like any other content, should be promoted through outreach.
Outreach in its simplest form is contacting others in the relevant field with
the hope they will publish, share, or promote something for you (thereâs
more on this later).


Below are two videos that were released by the BHA.





Video One was published on July 30, 2012, and Video Two was published on
December 3, 2012. So there is more than four months between them, but look at
the difference in the number of views. By the time the first video reached 8-9
months in (as the second has now) it had a lot more than 8,575 views. In fact,
it had that within the first couple of weeks. Why is that? Both videos feature
the same people, and are on the same subject appealing to the same audiences.
Itâs because the first video had a lot more outreach done for it. At the
time the second video was released, there was a lot else happening with a new
site going live, etc. As a result, not as much outreach was done as with the
first video, where many people were contacted early and offered the story on the
day of the release so it was still new news for all. Lots of people were emailed
and asked if they could tweet or blog about it, and they did. Outreach is an
important component of online marketing, and it can mean the difference between
success or failure of a marketing campaign.

YouTube Nonprofit Program


If you have videos, you likely have at least some of them on YouTube (any/all
videos for which the primary goal is lots of views). But do you know about the
free benefits you can have on your channel if youâre a charity?


If you sign up to YouTubeâs Nonprofit program, you will have access to a
number of exclusive features, and features you would normally have to pay for.

Donation button

There is the option of a Donation button on your channel page, which could
increase your donations if you get many visitors to your channel. Youâll
need to sign up to Google Wallet for this, if you donât already have an
account.




Call-to-action overlay

Any videos uploaded to YouTube can have annotations applied, but with the
Nonprofit Program you can have a call-to-action overlay containing a link, which
is usually something youâd have to pay for. The overlay shows up at the
bottom of the video screen and encourages people to take an action such as
following a link or sharing.

Live streaming

If your charity stages events, such as protest rallies, talks, or anything
else, you can live stream the event directly to your YouTube channel for all
those supporters who couldnât attend. The most important thing to remember
about doing this, is that youâll need to publicize that people can watch
this live first; thereâs no point in live streaming to no audience. When
you promote your event, be sure to let everyone know that if they canât
make it, they can watch live, providing the date, times (including for different
time zones), and a link to the channel.


For details on how to set up live streaming, see this video from YouTube.

Community forum

The Nonprofit Program supplies access to a Community Forum which can be
helpful in terms of support. However, most of this support will tend to come
from other users (many of whom are very helpful and will do their best to solve
your problems) rather than actual Google staff.

Donating on Facebook


If you have a significant Facebook audience, or are working towards one,
itâs worth considering adding a way for people to donate through Facebook.
If you add a story to Facebook that becomes well shared and brings more people
to your page, then some of those people may want to help out in any way they
can.


There are a number of solutions for taking Facebook donations. There is an app
by JustGiving which can appear in the Facebook navigation, as shown below on the
Dogs Trust Facebook page.








You will need a JustGiving account to set this up, but itâs relatively
simple to do. You can find out more about it in these slides.


Another option is DonateApp. This solution takes a small commission, but if
itâs donations that would not have been received otherwise, then
itâs still a net gain.


DonateApp reports that:


A 2012 study of 3,500 nonprofits found about half of them (46%) have raised
funds on Facebook.
The most popular way to raise funds was to solicit Facebook supporters for
individual donations.
The average value of a Facebook donor was found to be $214.81 over 12 months.

Advertising on Facebook


Sadly, there is no Facebook equivalent to Google Grants, so there is no free
advertising for charities (or even discounted), but due to the way audiences can
be targeted by their interests itâs worth looking at as an option.


Whatever your charityâs causes are, youâre likely to find plenty
of people on Facebook who have declared those causes in their interests, and you
can target just those people with your ads. Of course this applies to
businesses, too, but the difference is in the number people who tend to join
relevant groups or state relevant interests. There are plenty of
âlikesâ for brands, and some products, but generally thereâs
going to be a lot more people who have interest in causes such as eco-issues
than there are for kitchen appliance parts, and you can take advantage of this.
There are plenty of other targeting options too, including location, age,
gender, and more.


You can put just a small amount of budget into a Facebook ad campaign to run a
test and see how it goes, but donât forget to track the results in your
analytics so you know if itâs working or not!


You can find out more about and sign up for Facebook advertising here.

Media Trust (and Community Newswire)

For UK charities, Media Trust is an organisation that provides a variety of
support for promoting charities, from marketing and PR classes to information
sharing and new initiatives. As far as I can tell, the closest match to this in
the US would be Charities.org. However, I can only really talk about Media Trust
as I donât have any experience with other similar organisations.


One thing which your charity may find particularly useful from Media Trust is
The Community Newswire. You can submit press releases here that will have
increased opportunities to get picked up by news outlets. Media Trust has good
relationships with the Press Association and journalists who report in the
charity sector. Press releases that go through their system will be monitored by
some journalists who know that Media Trust is a credible source and are
therefore more likely to run with something that comes through them.


Do have a look at what Media Trust has to offer as a whole (if you
havenât already), but also make sure you submit your press releases
(ensuring theyâre well written, contain at least one image, and are about
something interesting) to the Community Newswire.

GrowYourCharityOnline.com


At the start of this year I attended an opening event for an initiative by
Google and the Media Trust. There were lots of charities there, and some Google
staff to answer questions. It was the launch of a new website called
GrowYourCharityOnline.com. Here you can find information and action steps on the
Google products discussed in this post, including Google Grants and the YouTube
Nonprofit Program, as well as advice on using Google Plus to promote your
campaigns and causes.


Have a look at the website, itâs got some useful tips and will help you
organise your efforts with promotion through the Google products.

Text to donate


Most charities will likely already know about donations via text. As I
learned, this is not always the best option, as it depends entirely on your
channels of promotion. If youâre campaigning mainly online through your
website and social media, then people generally seem to prefer following links
to donate with something like JustGiving or Razoo. Text-based donations were
very few when I tried this. However, if youâre also going to be promoting
offline then itâs definitely worth it, as it gives people a way to donate
if they donât have a link to follow. This can be on any literature
youâre handing out, or in press releases for local print newspapers, on
billboards, presentation slides, T-Shirts and other merchandise, or speaking to
people on the street.


This is relatively easy to set up. See JustTextGiving to do so; then all
people need to do is text a campaign code and an amount to a particular number.

Quiz apps

This one went fantastically: Everyone loves a quiz, right? At least if
itâs a nice short quiz that tells you something about yourself, anyway.


At the end of January 2013, the British Humanist Association launched the
simple quiz "Are You a Humanist?"


Since then, itâs been taken over 70,000 times, and continues to be taken
a few thousand times per month. This is important because many of the people who
are taking the quiz had never heard of humanism before, but they have now. That
was the quiz's objective from the start â to spread awareness to a new
audience â which it continues to do.


The quiz has been taken so many times largely because it offers to share the
results at the end:








Not everyone shares their results. Many people donât (and wonât)
but there were and are still enough to keep it spreading, and therefore to
generate new interest.


Some of the tweets made by people after having taken the quiz indicated their
new realisation of humanism as a concept, and sometimes even their intention to
become a member of the organisation.


The percentage scores are actually irrelevant in this quiz, and werenât
originally going to be included. However, people like scores. Scores make such
things more shareable, and since the point in the quiz was to spread awareness
of humanism with a bit of fun, scores worked best.


Your charity should think about doing something like this. Once you come up
with the right quiz, meaning something that gives people results theyâll
be happy to share, you can find a volunteer developer to help you build it into
an app (thereâs more about volunteers later).

Giving away content for social shares


Every online marketer looks for existing resources to utilise or recycle. One
of the first things youâll do if you start a new in-house position is poke
around in archives both online and offline â in storage cupboards for
forgotten leaflets or on the old network drive for forgotten PDFs. Usually,
somewhere, thereâs some great content lurking about that people will like
and share.


On to my example â The charity I worked for gave away hard copies of an
interesting book at events, and also to new members. The aim of the book wasn't
about profit, it was about awareness and education, so giving the books away
suited just fine. Of course there were limits as to how many could be given
away, because printing and binding the book cost money (and so did sending it),
and then there were only so many event attendees and new members to whom the
book could be given away.


However, it turned out we had it in PDF format, too. So, we set it free as a
PDF eBook and offered it via the Pay With a Tweet system. Using Pay With a Tweet
meant the only thing people had to do was tweet (or share on Facebook) about the
book, and they got a free copy to download. A win-win situation. One click of a
button and the user gets a free, interesting eBook, and the charity gets to see
more of its books being read. Itâs a great book actually, and chances are
that at least some of the people who read it will agree with its philosophy
enough that they use the included membership form to join the charity.


Thereâs been over 7,700 downloads since it was launched in October 2012,
and hopefully there will be many more downloads in the future, too.


If you want to see how it works by downloading a copy and paying with a tweet,
grab it from here: Humanism: A Short Course.

Getting into Google News


Whether or not you currently release news, you should. If you want publicity
for your charity and its work, itâs important to get yourself in front of
other news sources, and Google News is a great way to do that.


Here are some benefits to being in Google News:


It can provide high search engine rankings, potentially bringing your site more
visitors (the right visitors, too, if theyâre arriving because they
clicked on your news result after searching something relevant).
It can mean your content gets republished elsewhere. Other publishers use
Google News to draw inspiration on what to write about. This could be anything
from bloggers with a small but targeted audience to journalists from national
media outlets. Lots of news sources monitor Google News to see recent
developments, and often they will pick up stories to run with themselves.
It may gain you some backlinks to your website (which can help your website
with its traffic, and its search rankings overall, especially if the links are
coming from a large and popular news site).


Getting into Google News is easier said than done, as Google has strict
guidelines as to what passes as acceptable news and it can take a while to get
your news pieces right. When submitting your news to Google to appear in Google
News, you will provide the URL for the news section of your site, and then you
will likely need to wait up to several weeks before being accepted or rejected.


Reasons for rejection may include format, the type of news, or many other
issues including being "overly self-promotional." Now, the overly
self-promotional issue is a problem for a lot of charities since they are by
their nature releasing news about campaigns and causes they are undertaking
themselves. For example, if a charity were to challenge an unjust law at the
ECHR then the news is that the charity is fighting the government over a policy
at court, for the charity to then exclude itself from that news would be
difficult.


One way of dealing with this is to divide your news through categorisation or
tagging. On your website's news section, you can tag or categorise less
"promotional" articles to appear under a particular URL away from the rest, then
submit only this URL to Google.


Your news releases may well be made up of your general press releases. From my
understanding, this wonât work with Google News submissions, and press
releases will need to be rewritten as news items in order to get in.

Content and sharing


There can obviously be a lot of impact from having celebrities tweet about
your campaigns and charity work, and some charities are very fortunate in having
celebrity support for their causes, but of course there are limits to how much
you can ask for help from high-profile individuals (especially as many of these
people are inundated with requests from charities every day).


The right content on the right subject can still get plenty of traction on
Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere without the need for celebrities (although it
helps, of course). Charities are in a great position when it comes to getting
social shares because their content is often naturally interesting â maybe
controversial in some way â and likely to trigger some kind of emotion in
people (whether it makes them happy, sad, or angry, if it triggers an emotion
then people will want to show it to others). However, you still have to do what
businesses do, and think about how youâre going to present this content in
the first place.


Due to the nature of charity work, a lot of the content to share will come
naturally, through stories of campaign successes or losses. Thereâs bound
to be other stuff you can share, too. The trick here is to keep an eye on what
others are sharing and how successful their content is on social media
platforms. This would be a large and complex task if done manually, but there is
a tool for it, and itâs free! Yousaf Sekander of RocketMill created a tool
called Social Crawlytics which allows you to enter a web address, and provides
you with information on content from the website such as how much it has been
shared and on what platforms. Doing this will show you examples of what works,
and what doesn't, so you can adapt similar content strategies for yourself!


Also, have a look at the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report, which
offers up tactics that have proven successful for other charities along with
data about which channels have been most effective for various types of
fundraising and campaigning.

Tracking your success with Google Analytics


In order to know whatâs working and what isnât, you need to track
your campaigns. Iâll assume you already have some analytics software such
as Google Analytics installed on your website. You can see a lot with that, but
you can see and organise far more by using the Google Analytics URL Builder.


How to use the URL Builder is beyond the scope of this article, but here are a
couple of posts from Chris Gilchrist of HitReach if youâd like to learn
more:


Why you should use the Google Analytics URL Builder
How to use the Google Analytics URL Builder

Your authority staff as a marketing asset


Someone in your charity is an authority on the issues youâre campaigning
for. You need to use that. Itâs important that theyâre getting out
there in front of people on every possible occasion.


Referring back to the charity I worked for, the CEO Andrew Copson was very
good at this. He seemingly worked 168 hours per week, what with running the
organisation and travelling around the country (the world even) to give talks
and feature in debates. When it comes to the charity and its causes, he is an
authority. That means when secular issues come up in the news, journalists want
to hear from him. For that reason, heâs often quoted in newspapers,
interviewed on TV and radio, and asked onto panel shows to discuss current
issues. This exposure of course means more people get to hear him, and if they
agree with him (heâs so very reasonable itâs hard not to), it brings
more awareness to the charity.


Rand Fishkin gave a talk on using your CEO to spread awareness at the 2013
LinkLove Conference. Normally youâd have to buy this video, which
isnât actually even available to buy yet, but since youâre reading
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must-watch!). Just follow the steps below.









Go to How to Transform Your CEO into a Link Building, Social Sharing Machine

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If you have an account, sign in. If you donât have an account, create
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Enter this code: MOZSL2013RANDFISH

Watch the video and have a notepad to hand, thereâs some great tips in
there!



Note: If you enjoyed the video, Distilled is hosting another conference in
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Finally, make sure you film every time your CEO (or whoever they might be)
talks at any event!


Look at what happened with Philip Wollen. He gave an impassioned speech which
went viral on YouTube (there are many videos of the whole debate but
hereâs one with just the speech to save you time). Lots of people became a
fan of his after seeing that, and it brought a lot of attention to The Kindness
Trust and all of the charities he supports through it.

Getting volunteers to help with your online marketing


Many of the recommendations in this article are relatively inexpensive, but
some funding may still be needed to hire copywriters, developers, designers, a
video agency, etc. You donât have to spend a fortune for this though
â not if you get volunteers.


If your charity has followers, fans, connections, and whatever else on its
social platforms, use them to recruit volunteers. You may well be doing this
already, but remember thereâs a difference this time: The types of
professions youâre looking for in this case are technology based, meaning
thereâs a greater chance of them being accessible online than with a lot
of other professions.


Tweet for help, and thereâs a good chance itâll get retweeted. The
same with Facebook; people may not be able to help with certain tasks but
theyâll often tag others into a response who they think might be
interested, such as their friend who makes apps and is a keen environmentalist.
Many tech savvy professionals will use software to monitor social media channels
and alert them when there are mentions offering work. A tweet asking for a
copywriter recommendation will often result in copywriters tweeting back because
theyâre watching any tweets that have that keyword of
âcopywriterâ in it.


There are also websites that may be useful. Reach exists to hook up volunteers
from different professions with charities in need of specialist help. Get
yourself listed on there and provide a description of what you need, and someone
may well get in contact with the expertise youâre looking for. Reach is a
UK organisation, so if youâre in America, try CatchaFire instead.
Iâm not sure about other locations but Iâm guessing there will be
similar organisations in other countries.

Build a contacts list, and do outreach


Regular Moz.com readers and those in the industry know this well, but if
youâre reading this as someone who is volunteering or working at a charity
and donât have much experience in online marketing, then this is important
for you.


Remember the two videos above, where one had a lot more views than the other?
If you have a great piece of content, whether itâs a video, an app, an
eBook, or anything else, tell people about it! Too often there are great pieces
of content that get uploaded somewhere on the web, tweeted or shared by a couple
of people, and then left without any real promotion (many businesses are guilty
of this too).


Build your list of contacts. Find relevant blogs, forums, Facebook groups,
Twitter accounts, niche news sites, or anything with an online community, and
send them a polite message about your content. If you do it right and your
content is related to the type of thing they usually post or share, then
thereâs a good chance they will publish or share your content, too.


Build your outreach list larger and larger over time, and the contents of the
list will often help to get the ball rolling for many of your campaigns. Look
after it, donât abuse it, and keep it secure (itâs a contact list
and it contains people's data, so just be careful with it).


Got any tips to add? Let me know in the comments... :)

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