Monday, June 13, 2011

SEO and Social Media for Non-profits

Coming from a non-profit background, learning about digital marketing has me thinking about ways that these methods can be used for non-profits as well as for-profit companies. My experience with non-profits is that they have a long way to go in terms of SEO; it’s not something I hear people thinking about and I’m sure that most of them (the smaller ones anyway) are not tracking analytics. I’ve noticed in e-mails I get from various groups, for instance, that many links say “Click here for more information” or something along those lines as opposed to information about where the link will take you. It seems like this could be a big area of growth and improvement for non-profits and those that do focus on SEO should gain an edge. However, they have fully embraced social media and this is an area where non-profits have an advantage over for-profits. It makes more sense to friend or follow an organization whose activities align with your personal interests than a corporation who is trying to sell a product. Successful non-profits know this and have done a lot to increase their visibility and promote their agenda through Facebook and Twitter. Text message donations have also been a huge boon for larger non-profits and are an interesting and exciting fundraising strategy. It will be interesting to see how they are able to innovate in the years to come in order to use social media to their advantage, and to see if SEO starts to become the buzzword in non-profit circles that is for for-profits.

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