In the Darfur game, players are encouraged to pass the game on to their friends. Think about ways you make your message viral, meaning people pass your message on. Think about ways in which you can involve as many people as possible. For example, sell media, or other goodies, in pairs to make it easy for people to share it with friends.
Create a blog and/or newsletter, and invite subscribers to become authors. This will increase their sense of ownership, and reduce your workload. Use syndication networks, like YouTube, to host your videos. Create groups on social network sites to help get people together.
People involved in causes are highly likely to share and have a keen sense of community. Make it easy for them to join and contribute.
Link Up
One of the most important metric search engines use to rank sites is inbound linking.
Search engines don't just count the number of links, they also count the quality. Links from high profile, non -commercial sites, such as .edu , carry a lot of weight, as official education related domains are deemed a high quality citation. It is often difficult for a commercial site to earn such a link, however a non-profit is more likely to receive one.
Make a list of top ranking sites in your niche, particularly those not in direct competition, and send them an email telling them about your cause.
Giving a link doesn't cost the link giver anything, but benefits you greatly. Most people would only be too happy to help out in this way, especially if your cause is relevant to their readership. Keep in mind that aggressive marketers also use these link building tactics, but the way to stand out from the crowd is to tell stories about you organization. Make the email personal, and craft it for the intended recipient, rather than using a generic template.
The value of ten or twenty high quality links will trump thousands of low quality links, so it is worth the time and effort to personalize your correspondence when requesting these types of links.
Twitter is a service where you can publish short messages, less than 140 characters long, and let people know what you're up to in real-time.
You can use Twitter to make people aware of your latest content, and the latest news and issues concerning your non-profit. You can provide live coverage of your events. You can get feedback from your community on your work. You can see what issues your community is discussing, which can give you ideas on how to frame your messages in future. Are there any common topics that come up regularly? What type of language do people use?
Remixing The Web For Social Change writes:
A nonprofit organization may not be ready to Twitter their latest news and events, but they can still use Twitter to find individuals who have an interest in their own cause or mission. My favorite Twitter search tool is Terraminds Twitter Search because it's responsive and allows you to subscribe to search results with RSS. I use it to search for people who have mentioned the word: "nonprofit" and I'm constantly finding new interesting people to introduce myself to".
Check out 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners. Also, here are a few articles about reasons non-profits should, and shouldn't, use Twitter
Build A Platform
In this post, Seth Godin laments the fact that The New York Times star is fading. One of the reasons for this is the NYT appears to be stuck in the past.
"Lots of organizations go through this analysis. How do you leverage your brand or your customer base to get to the next level, to enter new markets or new technologies--and do it while running your old business. And almost without exception, organizations are run by people who want to protect the old business, not develop the new one."
It can be difficult to transition to a new environment, but Seth has some good ideas on how to do so:
"Use their influence and brand to enable users to spread their content: Why, precisely, aren't the Zagats guides a NY Times product? Or Yelp? That's a quarter of a billion dollars worth of value that the paper with the most influential restaurant reviews page didn't create. Why didn't they build Wikipedia? Or a platform to influence the way politicians govern?"
This example could be applied to non-profits, too.
Instead of just publishing something for someone to read, think about ways you can directly involve people in your process. Create a wiki about your work, and let people contribute and add to it. Become the leading resource for information in your chosen area. The success of Wikipedia demonstrates that people are hungry, not only to share knowledge, but to have an information resource that isn't driven by advertising concerns.
Google tends to reward this type of content, as it is a natural fit with their business model i.e. we suspect Google would like to see objective, informational resources in the main results, whilst commercial concerns tend towards Adwords.
Create Linkable Content
A recent trend in internet marketing is called linkbaiting.
Try to create content that is worth remarking upon, either by being controversial, taking a new angle, or doing something that pushes the boundaries. Join sites like Digg and Reddit and submit your content. If people pick up on a story, and debate it, links will likely follow.
Are there radical aspects to your charity? What truly remarkable things are you doing? Can you re-spin your agenda to closely match a rising media trend?
For example, one hot area - excuse the pun - concerns environmental issues. A story about water shortages could easily be re-spun to give it a green angle, and increase the likelihood it would be picked up by a ravenous media.
Public RelationsIssue press releases, using sites such as PRWeb. Optimize your press releases. Research your keywords, include them in the title tag, paragraph titles and the body copy of the release, link to the press release from your site, and use keywords in the link text.
By doing so, you increase the likelihood your press release will be picked up by the media, as journalists often use the news search services for story ideas. Try to make the titles enticing. Remember, you may be competing with thousands of other press releases on the same topic.
Whilst quick and easy, the downside of automated press release distribution is that it is anonymous and impersonal. Non-profits may get better mileage by building relationships with specific journ
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