As I’ve said before, presidential campaigns are great for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers because they give us a sneak peek into how we’ll be engaging our supporters and motivating them to volunteer and donate in the years to come. The current edition of Newsweek has a very interesting description of what the Obama campaign is cooking up, including these especially noteworthy observations.

It’s All About Hyper-personalization and Targeting

If you don’t have some kind of system in place to keep track of what your individual supporters care about, this is the year to figure that out. You are going to want that information. Look at what the Obama campaign is doing (I added the bold):

“The campaign can do a much better job of “treating people like people,” according to Michael Slaby, Obama’s chief integration and innovation officer—provided it harvests the right data. Don’t ask a disenchanted Ohioan for money; woo him first. Don’t reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during the State of the Union the same way you’d reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during a Republican debate; they respond to different incentives. To figure out who each of us is, and what each of us wants, Slaby and his team are constructing a “microlistening” and computer modeling program that will comb online and off-line behavior patterns for voter information, then use it to personalize every interaction we have with the campaign: fundraising, volunteering, persuasion, mobilization.”

“In 2012 the Obama campaign won’t send its backers a video and say, “Share this with everyone you know”; it will say, “Share this with your four Facebook friends in Pennsylvania’s crucial Lehigh Valley swing district who are worried about the president’s tax policies.”

Need help with this? Start with Idealware’s constituent management recommendations and case studies.

Go Where Your Supporters Already Are

Rather than investing in creating its own social network, the campaign is going where everyone already is — Facebook — and leveraging all it offers for their own purposes.

“In 2008, the campaign encouraged supporters to create profiles on a social networking site called MyBarackObama.com. But while MyBO was advanced for the times, it was also weirdly detached from the actual field structure—and from Facebook, which has since become the world’s default social network. So for 2012 Slaby decided to ditch the site and start from scratch. “We’re not building a social network,” one insider told me. “You don’t need to create an account. You don’t need to upload a photo.” Instead, by logging in with their Facebook ID, volunteers get immediate access to “any tool that you can get in a field office.”

Need help with this? We are offering our “Social Media Starter Kit: Facebook for Nonprofits” webinar next Thursday, January 19 for All-Access Pass Holders. CharityHowTo also offers good Facebook training.

Make It Work in Mobile

You can’t ignore it . . . people are looking at your website and reading your email on something that’s often smaller than a business card.

“Last November, the campaign redesigned its website so that it would look and work the same on every platform: PC, mobile, tablet. The motivation wasn’t merely aesthetic; a site that renders properly on a smartphone makes it easier for volunteers to register new voters and call undecideds on the go, and that kind of efficiency translates into extra votes.”

Need help with this? Stay tuned! I’m excited that Tonia and Susan from TheMGen will be joining us this spring with blog posts, a free webinar, and an e-book on mobile.  Also check out Google’s How to Go Mobile initiative.

It may be many years off before your nonprofit reaches the level of sophistication described here, but it will get there eventually. Start doing what you can now, by understanding what’s happening and taking baby steps in those directions.

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Timothy Spell of nonprofitcms.org

In this guest post by Timothy Spell of nonprofitcms.org, you’ll pick up some great advice on doing keyword research, which is the first step toward applying for and using a Google Grant.

Does $9,500 or even $40,000 of advertising spend per month sound alluring? That is what Google is offering any non-profit willing to abide by a few guidelines, and learn how work with their Adwords system. Google Grants is a tool non-profits can utilize in order to place ads within Google search results. From personal experience this system can be gangbusters, and in other cases it is not always helpful. Here is one invaluable tip before considering the program.

Research Search Trends First: It’s not best to simply hurry up and apply. For starters, the application will take months to be reviewed, worse if you are rejected or unsure how to manage the grant, anticipate additional time before actually realizing any results. Grant recipients must understand how to use Google’s Adwords system, target keywords, and create ads that direct visitors to pages on your website that are relevant to the ad.

Above and beyond learning the Adwords system you’ll first need to find out if search based advertising is going to work for your organization. Here is how to find that out:

To begin, ponder the reason why your organization needs exposure on search engines. A bad answer to this question is along the lines of, “Well, it’s good to be on Google, because everyone is on Google.” Search marketing means that you’ll need to target search terms, or specific keyword phrases commonly typed into Google. For example, if I’m an Italian restaurant owner based in Ballston, VA (which is a smaller neighborhood within Arlington, VA) I want to connect with Google users typing in “Italian Restaurants in Ballston” or “Best Italian Restaurant in Arlington VA.”

Based on this example, consider what terms you believe your non-profit needs to show up for? It’s best to brainstorm this question for some time and create a list of possibilities. For instance, if the organization I’m with delivers grants to green businesses I would want to target a term like “sustainable business loans” or “financing for sustainable companies.” If I work with an animal shelter, possibly I target terms like “puppies for sale in Ballston,” or “fox terrier dog for sale in Virginia”

Once a complete list of terms is created the moment of truth arrives. Are people actually searching for my desired terms? Without search traffic, your grant will be meaningless. To find out if search traffic exists use this free keyword tool provided by Google . Here are some tips for using the tool:

> Checking the box labeled “only show ideas closely related to my search terms” will limit results so that the tool only returns phrases that include keywords you specific. Not new ideas for related terms.

> Exact targeting (a filter option on the left after results appear) returns the exact number of estimated searches per month.

> Broad targeting returns the estimated searches per month that include your keywords. For instance, if the keyword “hot dog with relish” was entered into the tool it’s likely the exact estimate will be smaller than the broad estimate. On the broad setting the term “hot dog with relish” may also count results for such phrases as “hot dog relish” or “relish dog.” Broad targeting ignores the exact order of keywords and returns estimates including any combination of the phrases entered into the tool.

> The local column vs. global column: Local is US based, Global includes estimates from all of Google search portals.

> The competition column is less useful, or indicative of the actual competition. Use it as a light indication of how many other sites are targeting the term.

Conclusions:
If the keyword search tool shows considerable traffic for your targeted terms the grant will be of value, without solid indicators of traffic the grant can waste valuable time better spent on other marketing objectives.

Timothy Spell is the president of nonprofitCMS.org, a company whose mission statement is to develop amazing websites for non-profits. In addition to the 100+ nonprofit web sites developed under his supervision, he serves the community through a multitude of webinars and educational events in coordination with other nonprofit leadership groups such as Nonprofit Spark, NP Solutions, CAN, and the Center for Nonprofit Advancement. To read more about non-profit web development and non-profit web design, go to www.nonprofitcms.org/blog.

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Today I’m live blogging parts of the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit, a virtual conference.

This session is called the Microvolunteering Revolution, presented by Jacob Colker of Sparked.com (@jacobcolker on Twitter)

Most volunteering still happens offline, of course, but there are significant barriers to it. It can be hard to find the right opportunity, you might have to be interviewed, you have to schedule it, get there, etc. Sometime you enjoy it, sometimes you don’t. Nonprofits often have a hard time taking advantage of skills like marketing, or languages, in the offline volunteer model.

73% of Americans don’t volunteer, often because it’s just too time-consuming or the opportunities don’t fit into their overbooked schedules. But the reality is we all have lots of spare time — but it comes in chunks of minutes here and there, not big blocks of time we could schedule to meet in person with a nonprofit. Think of all that time watching YouTube videos, for example. There’s great skilled help out there — writers, translators, designers, marketers, IT, etc. — but the cost of in-person volunteering to skilled professions is too high.

What if you could take 30 minutes on your own schedule though?

That’s the idea behind Jacob’s company, Sparked.com. Nonprofits post “challenges” and microvolunteers accept them. Big companies are partnering with them to offer their skilled employees (e.g. LinkedIn employees will help with social media problems, for example). This is a worldwide service, so you can tap into experts from around the globe. Same goes for nonprofits — you can help nonprofits all over the world too. The service is free for nonprofits; they get paid by corporations who want their employees to be able to participate as experts, and they have a unique experience on the site that the public doesn’t see.

Ronald McDonald House in Cincinnati used Sparked.com to get  documents translated into Arabic. They got about $1500 of translation services for free. One volunteer did the translation, and two others verified it. Surfrider Foundation got their business cards redesigned. The Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest had their website hacked and as a result pulled from Google’s search results. Volunteers helped them figure out why they kept getting hacked and fixed the problem. More examples here.

Jacob says letting employees do microvolunteering on the job helps them feel better about work — it’s almost like a break. The site is very social, with commenting and rewards built in. Multiple volunteers can be working together on the same challenge, much like you have multiple people commenting on a thread in Facebook. It’s interactive and collaborative.

Jacob does wish nonprofits would be a little more engaging with the system. A nonprofit asked for design help, and a volunteer did this great job for them, and the nonprofit didn’t respond. Turns out the staff person posted the challenge and then went on vacation! Be there, and be responsive with your challenges and the volunteers that take it on.

Individual staff members in a nonprofit can post challenges and have those accounts linked, so your development, program, and IT people can all post challenges. They have also just launched a local element, so volunteers can connect with local nonprofits and vice versa if that’s important. They are also partnering with Network for Good, so a fundraising element will be added to the site, but the volunteering is the core.

A few more tips from Jacob . . .

• Don’t post massive requests, like “build us a website,” however.  Break it down into two-hour chunks of work, at most.
• Think creatively about ways to use this kind of talent. Ask them to vet a proposal or design before you pay a consultant big bucks to implement it, for example.
• Use Sparked.com in concert with Twitter and Facebook fans. You have these people who love you already, so let them know about your challenges.
• Don’t share really sensitive login information in challenges.

Some additional blog posts from other MDS11 bloggers . . .

10 Absolutely Essential Truths about Social Media by Katya Andresen

Live blogging from the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit: Successfully Going Mobile by Amy Sample Ward

What I learned about Trust in 10 minutes from @Julien at #MDS11 by Nonprofit Nate

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Today I’m live blogging parts of the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit, a virtual conference. So you’ll see a few posts from me today.

This session is called When Mobile Delivers Millennial Donors with Tonia Zampieri (Iheartcharity on Twitter)

Smart phone sales have surpassed PC sales — two years before it was projected to happen. Mobile is growing faster than anyone has predicted — even those who are supposed to know.

Smart phone adoption is also very prevalent in lower income brackets, because you can basically get all you need in your hand, and avoid phone and broadband charges at home.

90% of mobile subscribers in the US have an Internet-ready phone.

So . . . how to engage millennials and use mobile, given its prevalence?

Think about these four elements:

Mobile Websites: If they can’t find you where they are looking, millennials will go elsewhere. So if they can’t get your website on their phone, that’s a problem.  They want basic info and tools for action. Look at your own website on a mobile phone. Are the basic info and calls to action right there? Probably not, which means you need a mobile version of your site that is really stripped down. Same goes for email — make sure that your emails look good on mobile phones (and yes, millennials do still use email for some purposes.)

You can’t take everything to your mobile site, so boil it down to essentials.

SMS/Text: Every device now can send a text, so this is really available to everyone. Millennials really like seeing immediate impact. So when they reply Yes to an advocacy message, and as a result you send their name to an executive or decisionmaker (like PETA did to Donna Karan to ask her to stop using fur), they love that. Really think about how you can use texting and mobile apps for advocacy in particular.

Mobile Giving: Start segmenting your channels — know where to talk to your supporters and use those for communications, including the asks and feedback on how those gifts are being used. Make sure your donation pages are mobile optimized. The form needs to be super simple and easy. 82% of millennials also prefer to donate to specific projects, so along with a mobile donation page, think about doing this project by project. It’s all about making it really simple and convenient.

Mobile Apps: An app for volunteers would be a great way to engage millennials — very action oriented, where they can volunteer in real-time, push messages like “We need 10 more people today . . .”  Fun activities that are game-like where you compete against others could also work. Think scavenger hunts. It’s all about activism. Mobile apps can run $10K-30K, however.

Bottom Line: Make progress on mobile by starting with a mobile website. Think about specific educational and activism opportunities that make sense for mobile. What do you really want millennials to do (volunteer, share with friends, get educated)? What information is most important for real-time delivery? What updates can you provide in real-time?

More session updates after the lunch break.

Here are some other MDS 11 Live Blogger posts . . .

Exploring the Latest Millennial Donor Research – summary by Amy Sample Ward

Notes from Livestrong and Mr. Youth – summary by Nonprofit Nate

7 things I learned about Millennial Engagement from Mr. Youth — by Katya Andresen

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I’ve run into more than the usual number of nonprofits who have crappy websites built by consultants lately. I’m not talking subjective design preferences here, but flat-out terrible decisionmaking and implementation. When I’ve questioned the nonprofit communications staff about these websites, the answer is always “The website consultant did it that way.”

Enough is enough.

If your web development/design consultant is doing any of these things, they are hurting your organization’s ability to communicate effectively, which is the whole point of having a website. If you are a web developer who does these things, please stop working for nonprofit clients. They can’t afford the pain you are inflicting.

1. Not using a standard content management system.

It is not acceptable to provide your nonprofit clients with a bunch of flat HMTL files and scripts. Nonprofit staff should be able to login to a content management system (CMS) to make simple changes to the text and graphics on their own sites. They should not have to pay you or another consultant to fix a typo, to update their event calendar, or to put their latest news on their home page.

Nor should they have to learn how to code, or to invest in expensive software, in order to make basic changes. They shouldn’t even have to learn how to FTP! Adding a new page of content, or editing an existing one, should be as simple as writing an email — which demands that consultants use content management systems.

Idealware recently reviewed the major open-source (free) content management systems. WordPress is what I use most often and is a great choice for most small nonprofits.

2. Not explaining how to use the content management system.

I don’t think web consultants are obligated to turn their clients into CMS experts. I do, however, believe that web consultants are obligated to build some basic training into their contracts (like an hour or two).

At least two people at the nonprofit should be trained by the consultant on how to make basic edits to existing pages, to add new pages of content (including how to upload photos), how to embed code from sites like YouTube, and how to delete pages. Ideally consultants will also teach them how to change the navigation too (e.g. adding and renaming menu items). Even the least tech-savvy staff can handle these kinds of changes.

Granted, some nonprofits will want to outsource even the most basic updates to consultants. But they shouldn’t have to, and I think good consultants should use these requests as training opportunities, helping the nonprofit learn the difference between what they should and can do themselves and what should be outsourced.

3. Not creating adequate space in the design for timely updates.

I’ve seen many nonprofit website home pages that look perfectly lovely, and yet are communications disasters. Why? Because there is very little space in which the nonprofit can make timely changes. Five lines of text that staff can edit in the corner of the home page doesn’t cut it. Photos that can’t be easily changed because they are part of CSS backgrounds (even though they look like current content) don’t cut it.

I know that nonprofit staff are often afraid of “breaking” their websites, and so consultants often lock down as much as possible in the design to prevent the nonprofit client from messing up the design. But I’ve seen several websites that cross the line. Give your nonprofit clients at least several paragraphs worth of text they can update, especially in the key locations on the home page. Give them space where they can upload photos or embed videos — and where those can be changed easily over time without having to rely on you or another consultant.

Rant over.

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We all know how valuable photos are to telling our nonprofit stories. And decent point-and-shoot cameras are so affordable that we can do much of this photography ourselves. But then what? How do you organize your photos so you can actually find what you need?

I asked one of my favorite nonprofit photography and storytelling teams, Throwing Light, to share their ideas with you. Here’s what Leah and Andrew Hood advise . . .

A Guest Post by Leah and Andrew Hood, Throwing Light

Andrew, Leah, and their son Emery on assignment in the Dominican Republic

So you know photos are important and you have found staff and volunteers to help document the great things that happen at your organization. Now what?! It can be overwhelming to know how to organize all those photos. Here are some simple tips we have found helpful in organizing digital images.

Off the Camera and Onto the Computer

The first step in organizing your photos is pretty simple: download & backup your files. This may be stating the obvious, but how many of us have 500+ photos stored on our point and shoot. This is not only a recipe for file-loss disaster, but makes it harder to actually use the image. So plug in that camera, and get those files onto a computer. If your organization has a server, save the images on there vs. your personal computer. There is a phrase in the photography business that if your image doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t really exist.

Get Organized

This part is really the key in making your photos “findable” and “useable”. Creating a filing system on your computer that makes sense to you (and to your co-workers) is important. First, choose a naming system for your folders and sub-folders. The three primary naming systems are:

1. Date-based

2. Event-based

3. Client-based

The date-based system depends on organizing and naming folders by date. So a folder for the month of February might be named 2010_02. Be sure to put the year first so that the folders will sort properly.

In an event-based system, the folder might be named “Walk-A-Thon” or “Theater Banquet” or whatever your event is named. In these folders would be photos from all previous occasions of that event. So within your “Walk-A-Thon” folder, you might have a “2010” sub-folder.

The client-based naming system is a bit more rare for non-profits. We worked with an organization that brought professional musicians into schools to teach music lessons. That organization might want to keep all of its photos from a certain school in one folder. So they might have a “Lincoln High” folder and a “James Elementary” folder, for example.

It’s All in a Name

A key element in the usability of your system is changing the file names of your photos and folders from something like C:folder/IMG_290e01.jpg to C:Photos/2011/Jan/VolBanq2011.jpg. When you download your photos from the camera, they will automatically show up in an unhelpful format, so take the time to batch rename them when you download them. Only name the photos that you want to keep. Use a “batch renaming” feature to rename multiple photos. Always name photos with simple, searchable, descriptive text. Usually the name is based on an event or subject. For example, “Tree_Planting_001”. This step will save you HOURS of searching for that perfect image in the future.

Keep a Running Folder of A+ Images

Every once in a while you are going to get a stellar image. Don’t lose it in the virtual pile of photos on your computer. When you have an image that you know you will want to feature on the website, an e-newsletter, or next year’s annual report, copy it into a special folder. This gives you a chance to get the most mileage out of your great photos.

*********************

What ideas do you have for organizing photos so you can find them when you need them? Share your thoughts in the comments.

You can also share on our Facebook page, where reader Katherine Jimenez posted the question that prompted this post.

Leah

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I came across 17 Email Marketing Terms Every Business Should Know last week and it’s a nice summary written in plain English. We included a plain English glossary of online marketing terms at the back of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause (Amazon).

If you’ve been afraid to ask what something really is, or even more likely, been unable to explain in plain English what you mean when talking to board members or others new to online marketing, you’ll find both of these resources helpful. Here are several definitions from the book that aren’t related to email.

Analytics. Statistics generated about visitors to a website or readers of an email. Analytics can help track what pages visitors look at, what links they click on, and how they found the site.

Anchor Text. Also called link text. The text on a website or in an email that when clicked on, takes you to another place on that page or on the Internet. Anchor text is usually underlined.

Domain Registrar. A company that manages the registration of Internet domain names. Your domain registrar and web host may or may not be the same company.

HTML. Stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is made up of various codes that are surrounded by angle brackets < >.Web browsers (like Internet Explorer or Firefox) read HTML and then display it as web pages. The same code is used to create HTML emails (emails with colors, fonts, images, etc.).

Keywords. The specific terms (single words and phrases) used by someone searching for something on the Internet. By knowing the keywords that best describe your organization and its work, you can track mentions of those words on the Internet. You can also use those words on your own website, so that search engines will associate your website with those topics.

Long-tail, Long-tail keywords. Typically phrases with three or more words that are much more specific versions of your keywords. For example, if one of your keywords is “homeless shelter” then “homeless shelter for families” and “homeless shelter New York City” would be examples of long-tail keywords.

Microsites. Mini-websites, with their own domain names, that are often created for specific campaigns. They can be independent websites or part of a larger site.

Permalinks. A direct link to a specific blog post or forum entry.

Redirect. When someone types in one website address and is automatically taken to another website address. For example, you can redirect someone who types “yoursite.com” to “yoursite.org” if you own both domain names and your main site is the .org.

Retweet. Forwarding someone else’s tweet (an update on Twitter) to your own Twitter followers.

RSS. “Real Simple Syndication” is a way for websites that are updated frequently such as blogs or news sites to send new content automatically to subscribers. Readers of these types of sites subscribe and then receive updates to their RSS reader or email box, instead of having to check all the different sites all the time.

Search Engine Optimization. Improving the quality of your website so that search engines rank it highly on their search engine results pages when people search on your keywords.

Search Engine Rankings. How results of a web search are ordered. The most relevant websites should appear toward the top of the list. Sites are ranked according to a complex formula that includes how keywords are used on the site and how many other related websites link to the site.

Tags. Descriptive keywords used to categorize an article, such as a blog entry. Tagging can help the entry be found more easily by both people and search engines.

URL. A web page’s address. Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com is a URL.

Web 2.0. The second generation of the World Wide Web, which includes many more tools for online conversation and collaboration (social media).

Web Hosting. The storing of the pages of your website on a computer server owned by the hosting company. The web host then makes the pages available to Internet users. Your web host and your domain registrar may or may not be the same company.

Are there any online marketing terms that you are having trouble defining in plain English? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help!

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A flurry of questions came in at the end of today’s webinar on Writing for Social Media, so I’m going to try to quickly answer a bunch of them here. I didn’t get permission to use people’s names, so I’m sharing these questions anonymously.

We have both the Facebook Page and the Group.  I know you said stick with the page.  Do we somehow fold our group members into the page and close out the group?  Does that sound like the right way to proceed?

Now that Facebook has made Pages more like Profiles, they are the way to go. Unless you have a subgroup of folks who really want to talk with each other about something specific (groups can be private, for example), I’d say ditch the group. Just post to its wall and send a few messages to members to explain that you are shutting it down on a certain date in favor of the Page.

When writing blog posts, I am asked to always link it back to our organization so it is the focus.  Should this be the case?

It sounds like your blog might not be on your website? If it is on a separate domain, than frequent linking back to the main site is important. But be sure that you are linking to others just as much, especially to other blogs. It’s fine to have lots of links in a post, both to your site and to blogs or websites of others.

What kind of frequency do you recommend for Facebook posting? What’s enough and too much?

Of course, it all depends on your strategy and what you are using your page for. But as a default starting point, I’d say once a day is good. You could even get away with every other day. On the other end of the spectrum, I’d say more than two or three times a day might be too much, unless, again, there is a real strategy behind it. The culture of Twitter is quite different, where multiple updates during the day are the norm.

There are often concerns about compliments and retweets being seen as endorsements. How do we get around this?

This sounds to me like there might be bigger issue with someone not really appreciating how social media works and how it is different from other more traditional forms of communication. To address this issue, I would sit down and look at real examples and scenarios and try to get a better sense for what people think is OK and what is not. We have two webinars coming up in February that will help with those conversations: Social Media Fear Factor-Getting Over What’s Holding You Back and Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit.

I set up a Page for my nonprofit. When the nonprofit does anything on Facebook, it shows up as me doing it, not the nonprofit. For example, I just “liked” a few pages, and it shows up on my personal profile, not of the nonprofit’s page. However, when I add another page as a favorite of nonprofit’s,  it shows up on nonprofit’s page as a favorite.

(2/10/11 Update: Big changes at Facebook! I recommend this post by John Haydon to understand those changes. The answer below no longer applies.)

Unfortunately, what you have described is exactly how it works! While Facebook has made organizational pages act much more like personal profiles do, Facebook does not recognize the Page as a person who can go around and do things on Facebook. So, while you may think you are “liking” something as the Page, you are really doing it as an individual who just happens to also be the Admin of the Page.  You can, however, have your Page mark other Pages as favorites so they appear in the sidebar on your page. It’s confusing, and annoying, but that’s how it works, at least for right now.

We are a research based intermediary so we don’t have pictures of kittens. How do we make facts interesting on Twitter w/out stories? Trivia?

Trivia could be a good approach. Even though you are an intermediary, I would encourage you to work with your organizational partners to identify some stories you can tell that highlight the importance of your work. Even stories about how you help the staff people at your partner organizations is better than nothing.

How much overlap is OK between Facebook and Twitter? Can you post the same stuff in both places?

You’ll find people who will argue with me on this, but I say, yes, you can post the same stuff in both places as a baseline, as long as you aren’t overdoing it on Facebook (The Twitter community is more accepting of frequent updates than the Facebook community.) Then you might supplement with additional material that is really best on Twitter, and do the same with Facebook. But I think some repetition is fine, and actually a good thing.

How do you set up a custom shortened URL?

I use a service called ShortSwitch, which turns links at kivilm.com into my custom short links. You have to have a dedicated URL of your own to use the service.  There are a few others services like that, as well as several programs that you can host yourself on your own server. Search on “custom short URL” and you’ll see a bunch of options.

Thanks for all the great questions!

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up next in our weekly webinar series . . .

January 27: Writing to Raise More Money

February 3: Writing Thank-You Notes That Inspire Future Gifts

February 8: The New & Improved Nonprofit Annual Report

February 16: Social Media Fear Factor: Getting Over What’s Holding You Back

See the Full Webinar Schedule through Mid-March

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Yesterday I presented part of NTEN’s “We are Media” workshop at the annual conference of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, along with Holly Ross, Jordan Viator, and Ruby Sinreich.

Here’s the slideshow, which gives you some quick tips on how to deal with the six most common concerns nonprofits have about using social media.

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One of the best tactical sessions I attended at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference week before last was “Optimizing Your Site for Search Engine Performance: And We Ain’t Talkin’ Just Keywords.”  Here is the slide deck.  It’s a mouthful, but it boils down to this one simple idea: Getting Google and other search engines to point people to your website. The presentation goes beyond simply making your site “search engine friendly” to making it truly “search engine optimized.”

If what follows is too technical for you, check out this introduction to SEO (search engine optimization) for nonprofits. If that’s too technical, start with the CommonCraft video on search.

Below are a few standout points made by the panelists (nptech friends, feel free to correct anything I’ve oversimplified by leaving a comment).

Use on your site the keywords that people actually type into Google. Don’t use “Art Quilts for Purchase” on your site when searchers are much more likely to actually type in “Art Quilts for Sale.”  Think in terms of the goals of your searchers. The speakers recommended several free or affordable keyword research tools, including

Google’s Keyword Tool

Compete.com Search Analytics

SpyFu.com

SEM Rush

Get more specific with your keywords. If you are having trouble getting your site to come up on broad terms like “climate change,” get more specific, like “western land climate change.” Focusing in on your niche will help the search engines bring the right people — the ones truly looking for your content — to your site.

If you want to rank highly for a specific keyword, you need to devote a page to content on that keyword. You can’t just talk about it generally on all of your pages.

It’s all about links. High-quality links to your site (i.e. links from reputable sites) are incredibly important to your search engine rankings. It’s like being cited as an expert in Google’s eyes. Mentions of your site in social media will become increasingly important as the search engines start to include all the chatter in social media into the algorithms.

The anchor text that others use when linking to you (what’s underlined on their site) is also important. If you already rank highly for your org’s name, then working on getting people to link to you on your keywords is your next step. For example, if you run Smithville Senior Center and your site already comes up first when we search on your name, then ask colleagues to link to you using anchor text like “elder care” or “senior daycare” or whatever your keywords are instead.

Use the same strategies for your internal links (from one page on your site to another). Use those keywords – not meaningless anchor text like “click here.”

Strategically place your keywords. Your keywords (what you want Google to think your site is about) belong

• in your site navigation (your menus),
• in your page titles (what appears at the top of your browser tab, which people often don’t see, but search engines do),
• in your URLS (in the http://www . . . limit to three words for best impact, with hyphens in between),
• in your headlines formatted as H1,
• within the body copy on the page,
• within the linked anchor text (what’s underlined with links attached), and
• in the ALT descriptions of images.

The rule of left to right applies, as does top to bottom. Words at the start of a headline or page title are more important that words at the end. The first paragraph is more important than the second paragraph. If you have a lot of code on a page, try to get it near the bottom, so the keyword-rich content is at the top of the page.

Don’t sweat keyword density. Those keyword density tests that people were all excited about a few years ago aren’t as important anymore. You do need to have your keywords on your page, but don’t worry about trying to use them a certain number of times within an article of a certain length.

Coax the traffic you do get to where you really want it. If your web analytics tell you that certain pages on your site get lots of traffic, but those pages aren’t necessarily the ones you wish were getting all the traffic, then add links to your newer pages from those older ones. For example, if an old photo album page gets great traffic, include links to current information prominently on those pages.

If you need to remove an old page that gets good traffic, be sure to use a 301 redirect to send that traffic to the next most relevant page. Don’t just drop a popular page entirely, because you’ll be giving up your Google authority (or “Google juice”) for that page.  Leave 301 redirects in place for at least three months.

Don’t water down your page titles with your org name. Take your nonprofit’s name out of your site’s page titles, because it waters down the other keywords in your titles. If you can’t take out the name entirely, put it after the topical page title. The exception, of course, is if your organization’s name is actually made up of good keywords.

If certain pages on your site are already ranking well, don’t change the page titles. But where pages aren’t ranking well, editing the page titles is the first place to start.

Work on your page descriptions. They are important not only to the search engines, but in getting the right people to your pages, because the descriptions are often excerpted and shown in search results.

Make your pages load faster. Google has confirmed that it is also taking how fast a page loads into consideration when deciding whether to rank it highly or not.

Give it time. Measure your success in increasing your search engine rankings on your keywords over months and quarters, not days and weeks.

Getting your website to rank well for your keywords is an important long-term marketing strategy for every nonprofit. This list of tips is a great place to start those conversations with your marketing and IT staff on how to best improve your website’s performance.

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up next in the Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar series:

April 20: Switching from a Print Newsletter to an Email Newsletter

April 28: Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit

May 6: In Search of Your Little Black Dresses: Find the Stories That Will Raise the Most Money for Your Nonprofit

May 11: Turn Your Fundraising Event into the Best Party in Town

May 13: Nonprofit Writing Stinks! Bring Your Writing Back to Life

May 20: Writing Moving Profiles about Donors, Clients, and Other Supporters

May 25: Powerful Programs and Amazing Auctions for Your Fundraising Party

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.