1.     Get knowledgeable and start small. Join social networking as an individual and learn the ways you and the people you know are perceiving the current social change. According to Forrester Research, over 45% of Facebook users are over 35 with women over 55 being the fastest growing.  Find out how your organization can fit into social media (there is no organization who cannot benefit from this).

2.     Don’t be afraid to take creative chances. New rules are made everyday as the world tries to get accustomed to online, social living and as businesses join the social party. The only way for your non-profit to get noticed is with creative and clickable ideas.

3.     Get someone who understands the online, personal and business, universe and who knows how to take a calculated creative risk in this environment.  There are so many branches of online media to be a part of, you must have someone who understands your offline identity to translate that into your online one.

4.     Stay consistent in your representation with your brand. Your brand you already have built should be enhanced with social media, not changed, but evolved. Stay adamant about who you are and what you have created to help the people you have already set out to help, though concurrently listen to your community. That’s part of the reason you’re there.

5.     Stay relevant to your community.  Get volunteers, donors, and staff involved in your online media. Create group pages and followers to track what you’re getting done and going to get done in the community.  You need to be in there face and have quick and easy ways to be reached.  Also, you can’t set up a profile or a blog and leave it to dissolve into the black hole of unused, unseen web content. Staying offline leads to an inactive and apathetic perception to the online community; staying offline all together yields the same result.

Not only does your community and your organization need you to be in social media, they expect you to be.  Get creative and get out there. If you already are, look for ways to keep evolving. There are always new ways to improve, especially given the novelty of online, social marketing.  At this point, no one is really doing it right and no one is doing it wrong.  Get staff and volunteers involved in your online community.  Turn your cause into their cause.

In the non-profit industry especially, websites are going up and falling down without any hesitancy and without any thought. Think about the number of sites you visit each day. Think about the number of sites your family and friends visit, and how many are charity related. “Over 90% of websites could quietly disappear and never be missed by anyone,” says Linda Caroll, a web design professional who’s been creating websites for over 10 years. A non-profit’s website is key to advertising your cause and your goals. It’s often a first impression on potential volunteers and a benchmark for your donors’ views of your legitimacy. We’re not talking about expensive and ostentatious interfaces with tons of graphics and links; we’re talking about effectively using each page to serve its purpose properly.

Non-profit websites face the same challenges as most others.  However, with non-profits, a site is not merely a representation but a service station for charity of time and financial fundraising.  Most times the site is the only contact with your clients. Balancing your site and making your interface user-friendly are key to it’s effectiveness.  Michael Gilbert, who leads seminars on building non-profit websites, states where most non-profits falter is “the tendency to focus on a web site as a product, rather than as a means of communication. Nonprofits often focus on simply having a web site, when instead they should be developing web sites, email, and every other communication medium in the context of their communication goals and systems.”

Below, we review each page in your website, common mistakes in those pages, ways to resolve user-friendly issues and creatively optimize your site.

Home Page: Don’t hide relevant content under non-priority info or hard to read charts. Get your audience’s attention with pertinent information and accomplishments made.  Don’t take for granted that visitors know your cause or your goals. They’re visiting your site for a reason. According to a Nielsen Norman Group study, only 43% of the websites studied put their mission on the home page and only 4% stated on the home page where donated money would be applied. This information was often provided inside the site, but users had trouble finding it and this ultimately affected their decision to donate.  Include captions on your photos. Photos convey a real world, tangible effort and captions validate you accomplishing community goals.  Be sure your layout is user friendly.  Remember your audience is not just university/high school volunteers and college-educated, business owners but also those your cause is trying to reach in the first place.

About Us: Be sure your About Us page is clear and inclusive of your cause, reach, future goals, and importantly, your passion to induce change in your community. This should not be an apathetic summary of your company but a personal invocation for support.  Be professional and experienced.   Include contact information here, and display emails and branch numbers.  When will your visitors be more involved with your purpose than after seeking and reading your About Us.

Donate: The Donation process should be as painless and step-less as possible. Limiting the number of clicks and personal information needed will increase the likelihood of transactions and capturing the highest non-profit donation. “People would be willing to give money to charities, and even give a greater amount of money through online donations if only it was easier,…in 17 percent of cases studied, users simply could not find where to donate,” Business Wire.

Goals: In addition to your Home Page, your Goals page or “Action” page should be a break down of the money earned and reserved for your goals in your branch and the entire organization (if applicable). Include a detailed, structured and easy to read analysis. This will provide  legitimacy to serious donors.

Contact Us: Include a Contact Us page as well as the information provided in your About Us including names of the persons they’re reaching.  Those looking for a quick reference will be firstly looking for this page.

Social media: Include direct links to the networks your site is involved with and make sure those sites include direct links to your own website.  Also, provide links to sites that talk about your organization and include fresh perspectives and information about your accomplishments in the community.

Your website is your first and main reference for everyone looking to be a part of your purpose. It’s your online P.R. center.  Don’t let your site AND YOUR CAUSE get sucked up into the vacuous emptiness that makes up most of the internet. Make your site count. The one time your visitor comes to your site may be the only time.

Eric: Brad, one of the purposes of the blog is creating a backbone and a reference for local non-profits; web layouts, advertising, social networking, things like that.  I’ve talked already in earlier blogs how brand identity is important and storytelling should be passionate, especially in your online persona.  How does non-profit marketing and advertising differ from profit-making businesses?

Brad Forsythe: Non-profit advertising differs in many ways from other businesses.  Reaching available professionals and pro-bono assistants to non-profits begins with searching for helpful businesses to promote your own cause. Essentially you are using their resources for your campaign.  Businesses willing to involve themselves in tie-ins with your organization yield the opportunity to benefit from your cause as much as you can benefit from their widespread reach and their ad space. That’s crucial. Creating community synergy between your organization and their business means increased awareness and opportunity for your cause and decreased pocket strain.  You are choosing an agency to represent your work. Agencies must treat their profit-making businesses and non-profits equally, balancing clients that create money and those that need money.

Eric: Social media seems to be the new wave of non-profit marketing due to its widespread availability and low costs.  There’s actually a movie coming out called The Social Network. What do you think will be the future of free media and ad space after social networking.  Are these sites reaching or going to reach a saturation point?

Brad: No, not even close. I do not think we’re reaching a saturation point with social media. Social media is just growth as a reflection of our society.  What’s interesting is that the technology creates a new playground for consumers.  Social media, especially as far as advertising goes, is just a new way to connect.  We are increasing ways to participate.  As far as using social networking for non-profit advertising, you need to be willing to let it all hang out while also monitoring your image. There are caveats out there and you need to know what they are and how they affect your company.  However, you must be willing to lose some control.  The benefits far outweigh the bad but you need someone who knows what they’re doing.

Eric: Ogilvy talks about advertising not so much in terms of creating donations to cover the ad space cost, but sensitizing the population to increase personal funding. I think advertising creates credibility to your organization, but I’m an ad man, of course I recommend advertising.  What do you think?

Brad: Well from a social standpoint paid advertising seems reckless, especially when it’s local companies.  The money you could be using toward your cause is going other places.  What you need to do is align yourself with profit-making companies and ad agencies that will employ your goals into profit-making companies.  ‘Proceeds from this ad go toward [your organization and cause here].’  I interviewed the Ad Council several years ago and they talked about how they pick and choose who to provide communication to.  You should align yourself with a medium that increases reach for your cause to another cause.  Creating several different PSA’s is too much expense and no reliability.  Get with a particular and relevant media outlet that will promote your organization and get your name associated with things they do, this will keep you included in the different ways they promote themselves.

These companies that assist your organization will also benefit from using your organization by showing their involvement with the social good.

Eric: One of the great and interesting things about advertising is everyone has their own idea of what is effective. Do you have any personal philosophy to creating effective campaigns?

Brad: We do more than run the ads, we view the client-agency relationship as a partnership.  Clients want agencies to get personally involved.  Usually your client’s CEO is not aware of what’s involved at the customer or “retail” level. The agency needs to interact on all levels with the client’s customers as well as be an expert at all levels. It’s about working with your client, agreeing to realistic goals for both parties, and achieving real world results.

Non-profit work is more really difficult because your agency is not dealing with cash.  You need to keep up relationships in the non-profit and profit-making world. Your agency needs to be able to align clients with non-profit organizations and their goals.

Check out The Advertising Show at their website, TheAdvertisingShow.com, and download the podcast from iTunes for some great weekly advice on marketing in the new world.