What is all the Yelping About?

So what is Yelp? Founded in 2004, it is a social networking site where people can add reviews about businesses that have interacted with, and frankly it’s growth in traffic should make local non-profits/Volunteer Centers think about how to get involved.
This June, more than 1.4 million people visited its site, an increase of 124 percent [...]

Work for Google Part time in Your Own Community

Own a camera and looking for an easy part time job?
You can work for Google by helping them document the world!

(All you have to do is) buy a digital camera and a notebook, and walk down the street. Take pictures of every business you see. Then write down the address, hours of operation, method [...]

Does Offline Advertising Drive Online Searches?

Jupiter Research and iProspect have released the results of a fascinating study about how people use search engines. The whole study can be found here.
The interesting part for me, however is the chart showing which offline advertising/marketing medium influences people the most to go online and use a search engine to find the product/service they [...]

Writing for how People Read Online

Volunteer Centers and nonprofits use a variety of ways to get the word out to the community about their need for volunteers, and the specific volunteer jobs that they would like to fill. Many nonprofits use the media to spread the word, or create a flyer/brochure, or post something online.While the basic message can be [...]

Generating a Search Engine Sitemap for your website

What is this Sitemap business?
A sitemap is a free and easy way for you to tell the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) about your website so that it can be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently.
How Sitemaps Work
A Sitemap is an XML file that you upload to your web server and it [...]

Where do I start with Search Engine Marketing?

Many folks who have attended my training and leave wondering where they should start when it comes to optimizing their site and marketing it to search engines. I understanding that everyone is busy in the non-profit world, and have created a cheat sheet of what one should do first if they have “no time”, and [...]

Get your Volunteers & Board to Help you Build Links to your Website

Building inbound links to your non-profit’s site can be time consuming, but it’s essential to ensure that your website and your volunteer opportunities are listed in the search engine results pages.
I’ve gone ahead and written a one pager explaining what link building is, and have included an example of a link building email that you [...]

Is your Email Making it through Spam Filters?

Do you know if your email is making it through your volunteer’s email spam filters?
There are many elements to making your email more deliverable, but let’s just focus for the moment on the “from” and the subject line of your email.
From Line
This should be your organization’s name - something that your volunteer will recognize. I [...]