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Blogs
5 Google Analytics stats you should be tracking
Producer: John Haydon
October 2012
Tutorial: If you want your website to increase the number of email subscribers and new donors on your website, you first have to know what’s currently working (or not) on your website. The best tool for the job is Google Analytics. Here are five important stats to measure with Google Analytics.
6 key ways to make your website more social
Producer: John Haydon
September 2012
Tutorial: The purpose of your website is to encourage people to take action. The actions may vary – like joining an e-mail list or donating money – but regardless of the specifics, your website’s value consists of the end actions it elicits. Following are six ways you can make your website more social.
5 powerful ways to improve your website’s SEO
Producer: John Haydon
September 2012
Tutorial: Optimizing your website for search allows you to reach people precisely when they are looking for you. This means that they’re probably more likely to donate, volunteer or join an email list. With this in mind, here are five ways to enhance your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
5 ways to make your website content more remarkable
Producer: John Haydon
August 2012
Tutorial: When it comes to marketing on the Internet, your website is your primary marketing machine. Here are five things you can start doing today to amp up your material and make your website content more remarkable.
7 top tools for content curation
Producer: JD Lasica
August 2012
Tutorial: By now you’ve likely heard of content curation, the process of collecting and cataloging the most useful or interesting things about a topic in order to share it for the common benefit. Here we explore some of the best tools for doing so: Socialbrite’s six top tools for content curation.
7 smart techniques for content curation
Guest post by Beth Kanter
for NTEN: Change
August 2012
Tutorial: Content curation is the process of sifting through information on the Web — from articles to images to videos to tweets — to organize, filter and make sense of content and then to share the very best material with your network. Here are seven techniques for efficient, focused curation.
10 ways to make your nonprofit site more awesome
Producer: John Haydon
August 2012
Tutorial: Despite the proliferation of social media, your website is still your primary identity online. It may not be the place where you engage with constituents and supporters, but it is the place they’lll go to when they want more from the relationship. To improve your site’s ability to attract and convert email subscribers, volunteers and donors, make sure your site has these 10 must haves.
Title tags: One way to boost search engine results
Producer: John Haydon
July 2012
Tutorial: A title tag is the main title of a webpage that search engines index. It’s visible in the title bar of a browser and in the headings of search engine result. Here are five steps to writing better title tags.
8 tips on how to write awesome blog posts
Producer: John Haydon
April 2012
Tutorial: Writing awesome blog posts is something great bloggers are always working toward. In this tutorial you’ll learn 8 ways to up your game with better blog posts.
12 ways to develop a loyal community for your blog
Producer: Debra Askanase
October 2011
Tutorial: One of the hardest things to do is to develop a community of interested readers, sharers and contributors to a blog. For new bloggers, it can be discouraging to publish thoughtful content without seeing the immediate return in reader comments and shares. Creating a blog community takes time and commitment, but there are some things you can do to develop a community of interested readers and fellow bloggers.
How to create a successful multi-author blog
Producer: John Haydon
September 2011
Tutorial: One of the biggest questions that nonprofits have when starting a blog is, “How can one person possibly continue to publish interesting articles?” The answer is: You don’t. And this is precisely the reason why many nonprofits such as Oceana and the National Wildlife Federation have multi-author blogs. A second great reason to have multiple authors on a blog is that you get a wider variety of opinions and ideas that your readers will love. Here are tips for managing a blog with multiple authors
12 tips for writing more blog posts each week
Producer: John Haydon
July 2011
Tutorial: The author writes six to seven posts each week on four different websites. He used to struggle to write just two posts every week. Here are a few things he does that have helped the author be more efficient (but still authentic) with his blogging.
Build a WordPress site for your nonprofit in 9 steps
Producer: John Haydon
May 2011
Tutorial: Building a website (or blog) for your nonprofit is not as hard as some people make it out to be. You may want to hire a developer to set up your blog if you have nobody on your team who’s technologically proficient, or you can do it yourself. Here are nine steps to getting started.
29 tips to improve your nonprofit site’s landing pages
Producer: John Haydon
May 2011
Tutorial: A landing page is a page on your website where you want visitors to complete a specific transaction, such as donating money or joining an email list. Obviously these are some of the most important pages on your website. Here are tips that can help you improve the results on your landing pages.
How to customize your Feedburner emails
Producer: JD Lasica
March 2011
Tutorial: Since I began blogging back in May 2001, I’ve let readers access content on my sites in any manner they chose, including full-length posts in RSS feeds and automated email updates. I was an early user of Feedburner, now owned by Google, and while there are other services out there that probably do a better job of delivering updates to subscribers, I have stuck with the tried and true. This is a tutorial that will teach you how to customize the subject line of your Feedburner emails.
10 steps to create a great call to action
Producer: John Haydon
December 2010
Tutorial: A call to action is a direction or request for your visitor to take action. That can range from sharing content via social media, joining an email list, signing a petition or making an online donation. Here are 10 steps to create an effective call to action on your site or blog.
How to optimize your nonprofit’s donation button
Producer: John Haydon
December 2010
Tutorial: Here’s an improvement that you can make to your website or blog that only takes a few minutes but will have a lasting impact on the amount of donations you receive through your site.
How to create a comments policy for your blog
Producer: John Haydon
September 2010
Tutorial: If you’re launching a blog for your nonprofit or organization, one thing you’ll have to think about is how to deal with comments. A comments policy (or community guidelines) is a set of rules and expectations your readers can follow when commenting. This tutorial will teach you how to create a comments policy for your blog.
10 tips for writing an impactful blog post
Guest post by Spencer Critchley
O’Reilly Network
July 2010
Tutorial: As you start a blog for your nonprofit or organization, write what you know and what you care deeply about, and follow some of the best practices that journalists and writers have long employed. Here are 10 tips on how to write an effective, authoritative and persuasive blog post.
The difference between WordPress Posts and Pages
Producer: John Haydon
April 2010
Tutorial: When you launch a hosted WordPress blog for your nonprofit, one of the first questions you might have is the difference between Pages and Posts. When would you use one over the other, and why? We’ll tell you.
A WordPress plug-in to simplify SEO
Producer: John Haydon
March 2010
Tutorial: SEO is the practice of improving the traffic to a website from your website’s organic results on Google. If you don’t understand the value of SEO for your nonprofit, ask yourself the following question: “How would sending people to our website just when they’re interested in our cause impact our online fundraising?”
How to engage your blog’s community
Guest post by Danny Brown
January 2010
Tutorial: There has been much written about what makes a good blog community. This post will give you some ideas on how you can best engage your blog community once you’ve started to grow one.
How to repost content with Posterous
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Posterous has broken down barriers to blogging by allowing users to post various types of content via email. Video, photos, videos and text are automatically formatted by Posterous. Here’s a quick guide to posting content quickly and easily.
How to grow your blog with guest posts
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Nine tips on how guest blogging could be a critical addition to your blog.
9 ways to attract more comments on your blog
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Getting more comments has a lot to do with the content and how inviting the post is to make comments. How do you solicit more comments with social media?
6 essential social media plug-ins for your blog
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Here are six mission-critical social media plug-ins for your blog — and why they’re important.
How to optimize your blog’s commenting system
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: You can tell a lot about the impact you have on your readers by the number, diversity and quality of your comments. Here’s how to lift the barriers to comments on your blog.
How to grow your blog with social media for social good
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Within your blog strategy, make a list of non-profits that you really care about. You can either reach out to them or hop onto existing social good campaigns like TweetsGiving and Blog Action Day.
How to make your website more accessible
Producer: JD Lasica
August 2009
Tutorial: Some 60 percent of all websites are not accessible to the disabled. Here’s an interview with two experts to discuss specific steps website operators and bloggers can take to make their sites and blogs accessible, including adding simple things like alt tags, captions and underlined links.
How to make giving on your site more social
Producer: Guest post by Frank Barry
January 2010
Tutorial: Suggestions on how to make the online giving experience more social for your donors.
6 actions to optimize your blog’s subscriptions
Producer: Guest post by Grant Griffiths
January 2010
Tutorial: Here are six actions you can take to optimize subscriptions to your blog, ranging from design and ease of use to rewards.
How to optimize your most visited blog pages
Producer: Guest post by Michael Martine
January 2010
Tutorial: Tips on how to identify the most popular pages on your blog and how to optimize them for better reader engagement and conversion.
Essential social media connections for your blog
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: The main goal of your blog is to be a platform for connection: your readers connecting with you, connecting with each other, and connecting with your social media outposts. Here are some tricks you should know.
9 critical stats to measure on your blog
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: A guide to assessing the key metrics you should be looking at to measure your blog’s success.
How to Integrate Your iTunes Podcast Into WordPress
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: A step-by-step guide to integrating an iTunes podcast into your WordPress blog.
How to install Google Analytics on WordPress and Posterous
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Optimizing your blog presence starts with measuring it, using Google Analytics. Here’s a quick guide to get you set up.
