Those of you who know me know I have a special place in my heart for non-profits and cause marketing. I think what they achieve for society is truly amazing. One of my favorite quotes is by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” This post is for all my non-profit friends out there. Keep up the great work. You are all amazing!

 

Free Online Advertising

1.)     Google AdWords™ – Non-profits can advertise on Google AdWords™ for FREE by applying for a Google Grant. This takes a few moments but is well worth the effort. For more information on eligibility requirements click here.

2.)     Google Local Business Listings – Is a great way to list your business online and get priority placement at the top of the search page. E.g. Google “non-profit businesses in San Diego”. You will see 10 non-profit business listings at the top of the page before the regular search results.

 

Free Online Document Sharing

3.)     My first favorite is SlideShare. This is a free program for non-profit and for-profit companies to easily share power point presentations across the web. Click here to see an example presentation for Xpressive Marketing’s Cause Marketing Project.

4.)     Box.net – This website is a excellent place to post your pdf brochure or event flyers online to easily share with your clients. The Lite version is free to both for-profit and non-profit businesses and allows you 1 GB of storage with up to 25 MB per file. Making file sharing easy and your clients will appreciate it because you won’t slow down their email with large attachments.

 

Free Web Analytic Tools

5.)     Google Analytics – This is a valuable tool to see what visitors are doing on your website and when they are leaving. By learning these great stats you can test and modify your design and layout to maximize your volunteers and donations.

6.)     SiteMeter – Provides basic real-time web stats, has the ability to email reports and predict traffic. The downside is you have to display their logo on your site to use the program.

 

Free Website Builders

7.)     Doodlekit – Doodlekit is completely online eliminating the need to install software on your computer. Doodlekit has teamed up with Grassroots.org to provide free websites for valid 501c3 non-profit organizations. Doodlekit will provide qualifying organizations with a $14 a month voucher which can be applied to one of three website building plans.

8.)      Google Sites – Google Sites is a Free and easy way to get a website up quickly without having to know HTML. Easy to make your own changes and edits as needed.

 

*Special Note: Free website builders usually will place advertising on your website and the site will usually live within their domain name instead of your own custom domain. For a monthly fee you should be able to modify this.

 

I highly recommend creating you own custom website. You can do so fairly inexpensively, but if this is simply not within your budget these tools will work great. Don’t forget to submit your website to the search engines once you build it! Search Engine Submission - Easily allows you to submit your website to the top search engines and get an analysis of your META tags for free.

 

Free Blog Sites

9.)     Blogger.com – Blogger is powered by Google and allows you to build your own blog page for free. It’s a quick and easy to use program.

10.) Wordpress.com – Wordpress.com offers a great way to easily create your own blog. They provide the hosting and security and you provide the content.

 

*Special Note: The free blogging websites are great and easy to use, especially if you are operating on a shoe-string budget. However, they are hosted within their URL, not yours.

 

When hosted within your URL blogs are an excellent way to create relevant content on your website which will improve your website’s SEO. For this reason I highly suggest creating a custom blog and hosting it within your current website. This can be done fairly inexpensively and is well worth the money.

 

Free Talk Radio & Conference Calls

11.) BlogTalkRadio – Create your own radio show! BlogTalkRadio is the social radio network that allows users to connect quickly and directly with their audience. Using an ordinary telephone and computer, hosts can create free, live, call-in talk shows with unlimited participants that are automatically archived and made available as podcasts. No software download is required. Listeners can subscribe to shows via RSS into iTunes and other feed readers.

12.) FreeConference – Free conference calls are great for businesses on a budget. They allow you to setup calls with a fairly large audience base at no cost. There are several services out there for you to use. Note with free services you may experience some technical difficulty and size restrictions.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA!

Let’s not forget the importance of social media! Social Media is the most popular method of meeting, networking and connecting with people. For more information check out this article, “7 Social Media Tools to Successfully Market Your Business” http://tinyurl.com/d9xueo

13.) Facebook and LinkedIn Groups are excellent ways to stay connected to your volunteers and community supports. Start a group for your organization. It’s free and easy to setup and your group will be searchable to all of the 250 million users on Facebook and 40 million professionals on LinkedIn. How’s that for massive reach? Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook!

14.) Ping.fm – This tool is a time saver! You can update all of your social media sites at once for free.

15.) Twuffer – This great site allows you to pre-schedule tweets on twitter. This is great for promoting upcoming fundraising events. You can schedule times and tweets to make sure you maximize your viewing audience.

 

This list may seem a little overwhelming if you are just starting out. Just take a deep breath, choose the first one that speaks to you and start there. Rome wasn’t built in a day. We are here to assist you in the process with one-on-one coaching calls or complete setup. For more information feel free to call 858-229-4015 or fill out our contact form at http://www.xpressivemarketing.com.

 

We love to hear your comments! Please share and make sure you sign up to receive our posts in the top right corner. If you like this article you will definitely like the next one…Free Online Fundraising Tools!