Recently I was talking with a friend about baseball and his efforts to make it more accessible to young kids. My friend is a retired college baseball head coach now, but his passion for baseball continues. Today he works tirelessly supporting youth baseball. He’s set up a non-profit organization in this regard (Baseball 360 Plus). It does what it needs to do. People can learn about the organization and make tax-deductible donations. Our conversation turned to the key question, “How do you promote your non-profit organization online for free or for as little cost as possible?”
Here is what I came up with as opportunities to promote your non-profit organization online.
1. Put up a simple good looking website.
To promote your non-profit you can build a simple website using a platform like WordPress, Wiix or Weebly that just about anyone can understand and use. Key for anyone building a website is to understand what “responsive design” means. This is the same as saying “Mobile Friendly.” This means your website will look good and work well on a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone—whatever tool your customer or visitor is using to find your website.
For a non-profit you don’t need an overly attractive and dynamic site. It doesn’t hurt but it’s not your first priority. What is important is that it’s clean and says what it needs to say so that people can learn about your organization, get involved, make donations or otherwise help.
2. Promote your non-profit by sharing what you are doing on social media.
Your website needs to have clear buttons for each of the social media platforms that you want to be using to communicate with your community/audience. They should be at the top and at the bottom of your site. Some of the common social sites to use include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Google+.
Establish a routine for posting updates, good news, testimonials from donors or parents or whomever on your Facebook page and on your Twitter page. Take photos of your activities and post them on Instagram. Take short videos that share good news or updates on progress or successes and post them on YouTube. Then share those videos from YouTube on Twitter and Facebook. (When you post on YouTube there are options to automatically post to Google+ at the same time).
Check your social media profiles as often as possible, respond, share, retweet, like – you need to be “social” on social media so you involve your audience and give them reasons to come back to see what is happening.
When you blog (more later on this) you also share new blog posts on Twitter and Facebook so people know there is a new blog posting to read and can go back to your website to see the latest news.
There is a lot to know about the ways to optimize your social media activities but I will say this, for my friend’s non-profit, if he is using Twitter, he would want to include certain “Hashtags” with each post that will connect him with others who like baseball and non-profits, such as #youthbaseball, #nonprofitsports #baseballfan, etc. Hashtags are the way for groups with related interests to follow what each other are doing.
3. Promote your non-profit with a blog and newsletter
Write a weekly or at least monthly blog to promote your nonprofit that updates all your people on the latest news: the newest additions to the program, wins and successes, donation accomplishments, new equipment or goals reached. You write this up and post it on your website. It can be anywhere from 500 words to 1,000 words or more. Doesn’t matter as long as it is valuable content that informs and educates your audience.
After you post the blog to your website you do several things:
#1 Announce it on Facebook and Twitter with a link to it.
#2 Send it out in a newsletter to your entire email list with a portion of the story and a link to your website for the full blog. (You can put links to new videos from your YouTube channel in your newsletter too.)
If you don’t have it set up already, set up an account on Mail Chimp or another free emailing platform to send out your newsletter. Making an account on a newsletter web platform is rather simple and easy to do and making a newsletter and importing your email list from an excel spreadsheet is also simple.
4. Non-profit “business” listings
Consider that 4 out of 5 people searching for a business are going to search online. Then consider that once someone has found you in that search, as the one they want to do business with, 50% of those people will engage that same day. This is important stuff.
There are a couple important places online where you need to create profiles for your non-profit. First and foremost, on Google. This is Google My Business. Then, there is Bing as well. There are many other business listing places such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Manta, CitySearch, etc., but I am not sure that these are going to be useful for you as a non-profit.
5. Use testimonials to promote your non-profit
Get your friends, donors, parents and others to do video or written testimonials for your organization. Post these on your website on the home page and on a “testimonials” page on your site. Get these on your YouTube channel and then post them on your website from there as well. Friends can also post their testimonials straight to Google for you under your Google My Business listing which is powerful.
6. Continue to build up your email list
Have a place on your website for people to sign up for your newsletter. Keep adding these names to your email list. Get emails off business cards that people give you. Simply ask people to give you their email so they can get your newsletter. Everyone you know needs to be on that list. Keep building it up.
7. Google for non-profits
This is something I’ve not done myself but it is something to look into for non-profits. Google has set up a platform with tools for sharing information, getting donations, sharing your story online.
There you go my friends. I hope these points can help you make your passion and hard work broadly known online.
About the Author
Cebron Walker
Cebron is a marketing and PR expert with 12 years’ experience in Public Relations and publicity in the book and film industry, and 10 years as a Marketing Agency Director and Lead Copy Editor. He specializes in strategy, online and traditional advertising campaign development. With the rise in video as a vital piece of online marketing and website strategy, he has built a video unit within his company, International Executive Technology. This unit supports businesses with corporate videos and educational and How-To YouTube channel production. When he gets time out of the office, he’ll be with his wife and son visiting the San Francisco Bay Area or snow skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
You can reach him on twitter at @cebronw
