Internet Marketing Priorities: Stump Ian, Question 2

Ian Lurie Oct 16 2007

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Rhys, who works at a non-profit, asked a great question:

“I’m wondering, if I know I can’t do everything that is important, what marketing options and best practices should I focus on, and which could be skimped?”

Online, content still rules. Don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

If you have a limited budget, and limited time, set your priorities like this:

  1. Write great, great content.
  2. Join a few social networks, like Facebook, and build a group of friends. Then post to your personal page when you’ve added content.
  3. Use StumbleUpon! Install their toolbar. Take a few minutes each day to stumble other pages, and then make sure you stumble your own site/new stuff.
  4. Make sure any video content is pushed to YouTube.
  5. Find 4-5 related blogs. Read them regularly, comment when it’s relevant, and talk about them on your blog (if you have one). They’ll reciprocate.
  6. Make sure your site is basically search engine friendly. I don’t know enough about your organization to know whether you should actively optimize for specific terms, but at a minimum you want to make sure you’re not stopping the search engines from indexing your content.

You’re at a non-profit. I don’t recommend using pay per click unless you have a specific, measurable action, such as a donation or product purchase.

There are always more ideas, of course, but I’d stick with these priorities, in order, before you add anything else.

Hope this helps!

tags : conversation marketing

3 Comments

  1. mike

    mike

    Great post Ian,
    Would you advocate using an almost-free service like PRweb?
    Or having articles writen cheaply & submitting those to sources like ezinearticles? I guess not the best for non-profits… does the content make a huge difference in the effectiveness of this channel?
    Cheers,
    Mike

  2. Great post! Your information is rocking, thanks a lot .

  3. Rhys

    Rhys

    Thanks for the response Ian — I really appreciate your insights!
    One thing to note is that most non-profits qualify for Google Grants, which can be used for Adwords campaigns on the Google search engine. I think the grant’s dollar amount ranges, but it could be as much as $10,000 a month (important limitation: can’t bid more than $1 per keyword)! Perhaps something to recommend to non-profit clients: http://www.google.com/grants/
    All the best!

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