August’s resource round-up carries the theme of awareness. The first is a story of a homeless man turned homeless advocate and his year-long endeavor to bring awareness to the untold stories of the homeless crisis in the US. The next is an organization thinking way outside the box with new and inventive ways to use Google’s free tools and their own ingenuity to bring much needed assistance to their constituency and awareness to their cause.Read More

August’s resource round-up carries the theme of awareness. The first is a story of a homeless man turned homeless advocate and his year-long endeavor to bring awareness to the untold stories of the homeless crisis in the US. The next is an organization thinking way outside the box with new and inventive ways to use Google’s free tools and their own ingenuity to bring much needed assistance to their constituency and awareness to their cause.


Bringing awareness to an untold story
Last August we told you about Mark Horvath, a former employee of the television industry who’d found himself homeless. At that time, he’d decided to take his background in television to the streets in order to give a voice to the homeless populations across the US. Now he’s compiled a number of video interviews with folks across the country and shared his own story about starting Invisible People.tv, his road trip and his hopes for the future.


Using Google’s free tools to generate awareness
Fly for MS, an organization raising global awareness about Multiple Sclerosis, is taking on a unique and powerful endeavor for the sake of their cause. They’re leaving New York City on August 30, 2010 aboard a small plane for a 60 day journey through 30 countries, where they’ll fly MS sufferers for treatment, specialists to treatment centers and share the joy of flight with MS sufferers. They’re using a host of free Google tools to achieve this mission including Google Analytics for managing visitors, Google Translate for communicating with people in the different countries they’re visiting, Google Checkout for accepting donations, Google Earth for navigating airports, and Google Webmaster Tools and AdWords for site design and marketing.

If you come across resources that would be useful to the greater non-profit community, feel free to post it to the appropriate topic in our discussion group so that everyone can benefit. If you'd like to review previous round-ups, just click here and read through previous months' round-ups or search for "resource round-up" from the search box at the top of the page.


Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

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Getting started with the YouTube Non-Profit Program only takes 3 simple steps:

1. Create an account with YouTube under your charity’s name: www.youtube.com/create_account

2. Register for the YouTube Non-Profit Program (US, UK, CA, AU only): www.youtube.com/nonprofits

3. Get your videos online!

Building a really effective channel that attracts subscribers takes a little longer. Here are some tips on getting the most out of your YouTube Non-Profit Channel:

Customize your channel wisely - The brand channel wide frame illustrates which images can be customized under your channel. The channel banner for example can link externally and is the first image to grab your visitor’s attention. Make sure your logo is clearly shown to present a trusted front for your non-profit.

Add Call-to-Action overlays - A major benefit of this program is that Call-to-Action overlays are made freely available across all of your uploads. These instructions will help you get these configured. Calls-to-action provide a powerful prompt that should be used to engage your video viewers into performing an action that will support your non-profit’s cause.

Upload content regularly - It can be hard to keep your content updated, but even low quality footage from the field can be a powerful driver of engagement and trust with your audience. In fact, it is best to focus on authentic and original content as this will best communicate your message amongst the large amount of competing content on YouTube.

Share your content - Enabling auto-share by linking your YouTube channel to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts makes it easy to keep your subscribers up to date no matter which channel they follow. Auto-share combined with regular uploads and comments will prompt your subscribers that you are still actively engaging your area of focus. Also, make sure you embed your videos on your website.

Video is an incredibly powerful tool as it can convey emotive and visual messages more effectively than any other media. YouTube not only provides you with this channel of delivery, but also an important feedback and engagement channel with your audience. For more information on YouTube please visit the YouTube Blog.

Posted by Scott Savage, Google Australia

Encouraging your website visitors to make donations can be a challenge and can directly impact the success of your organization or cause. Fortunately there are several steps you can take to influence visitors to your site to make a donation. First, examine your site with free tools such as Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. These tools will help you identify areas for improvement, diagnose what causes visitors to leave your site and test changes that you have implemented to drive results. In addition to these tools there are a few best practices we recommend that you test to promote donations.Read More

Encouraging your website visitors to make donations can be a challenge and can directly impact the success of your organization or cause. Fortunately there are several steps you can take to influence visitors to your site to make a donation. First, examine your site with free tools such as Google Analytics and Website Optimizer. These tools will help you identify areas for improvement, diagnose what causes visitors to leave your site and test changes that you have implemented to drive results. In addition to these tools there are a few best practices we recommend that you test to promote donations.

Landing Page

Bring visitors to the right page - your donation specific ads and keywords should link to this donation specific page.

Make it easy to donate online and don’t ask for unnecessary details. Reduce the number of fields and steps in your donation process.

Show transparent steps - use a status bar to show the stage that the customer is in. This sets expectations and makes the process seem manageable.

Navigation

Make your site easy to navigate. Use clear labels and titles so visitors can easily find where they can make a donation.

Highlight where to go next. Help visitors understand how they can get from A to B in the easiest way possible.

Site Security

Reassure your visitors that their personal information is safe. Make sure your pages are secure and include known symbols to indicate this.

Please refer to the following post for additional information about improving your website’s donation process.

Posted by Lotem Lev-Ari, Google AdWords Israel

AdWords supports advertisers with a variety of free tools to optimize their accounts and help them to display relevant and targeted ads to users. If you have already read previous ...Read More

AdWords supports advertisers with a variety of free tools to optimize their accounts and help them to display relevant and targeted ads to users. If you have already read previous posts on optimization, you know how important it is to include very relevant keywords in your AdWords campaign. Sometimes, it can be difficult to anticipate user behavior and confirm which keywords are relevant to user searches. In today’s post, we’ll look at how you can use Google’s free tools to build an effective keyword list in no time.

Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool helps you generate keyword ideas related to the product you are offering. You give the tool hints about what your products and services are like and it generates synonyms, related terms and other searches. You can select and add these terms to your keyword list and also decide on the match type before adding them to your account. With the advanced options, it’s easy to streamline keywords based on location, language and devices (Mobile search). While generating keyword ideas, the tool also gives competitive analysis on each keyword, local and global monthly searches for the keyword, and local search trends. And even without entering any words or phrases, you can look at potential keywords by category.

Traffic Estimator
If you struggle to decide what an ideal cost-per-click (CPC) bid could be for your keywords, the AdWords Traffic Estimator can give you estimates in a matter of seconds. If you click “check estimates” in the Keyword Tool, you go directly to the Traffic Estimator, where you can check several metrics such as estimated average CPC, estimated ad position, estimated daily clicks and estimated daily cost. Since Google Grants accounts have a max CPC bid of $1, you can define that bid before generating estimates.

Search-based Keyword Tool
As you might already know, the Quality Score of your keyword is often higher if the search query matches the keyword exactly. In order to make sure your keywords are the actual terms users enter while searching on Google, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to pull up the exact search queries users enter pertaining to a particular product or service. Apart from helping you get more keyword ideas, this tool gives you ideas about negative keywords if you see any irrelevant search queries triggering your ads. Learn how to optimize your account with negative keywords. In addition to showing users’ search queries, the tool shows top keywords across all categories. Read about a case study with the Search-based Keyword Tool.

Google Trends & Insights for Search
If your campaign is about a seasonal product or event and you want to make the most of a specific period by using very relevant seasonal terms, then Google Trends is the place for you. This tool can give you suggestions about keywords rising in popularity, search trends from specific target locations, and the time period during which you might run a campaign. Read a case study on using Google Trends. And see what the world is searching for with a video on Google Insights for Search.

Posted by Rasika Saikia, Learning & Development Strategist, Hyderabad

If you are a Google Grant recipient providing relief to those affected by the floods in Pakistan, there are a few things you can do to make your Grants AdWords account more effective and ...Read More

If you are a Google Grant recipient providing relief to those affected by the floods in Pakistan, there are a few things you can do to make your Grants AdWords account more effective and get your message to the widest audience possible:

• Prioritize your budget so that the majority is going to your disaster campaigns
• Build a targeted keyword list with words specific to Pakistan’s floods
• Send visitors to the most useful landing page on your website, probably one that accepts donations

If you’ve exhausted these strategies and have questions about managing your AdWords account efficiently to scale with the traffic generated by the disaster, please contact our team so that we can make sure your information reaches those in need and those who can help.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Is Google AdWords making a difference for your organization? We enjoy sharing grantee success stories and would love to hear from you. Whether your AdWords account has led to an increase in website visits, volunteer sign ups or amount of donations, sharing your experience will inspire the non-profit community as well as our volunteers.Read More

Is Google AdWords making a difference for your organization? We enjoy sharing grantee success stories and would love to hear from you. Whether your AdWords account has led to an increase in website visits, volunteer sign ups or amount of donations, sharing your experience will inspire the non-profit community as well as our volunteers.

If you would like to share how your grant of free AdWords advertising has had an impact on your organization please fill out this form. You may share your experience with only the Google Grants Team or choose to make the information available to other organizations through a testimonial. To read about how Google Grants has helped non-profits from all over the world with unique challenges check out our grantee testimonials page. You can read testimonials that are relevant to your organization by sorting by goal and/or industry. Many testimonials share best practices, so we encourage all grantees to use these as a resource. Share your organization’s story today!

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

Negative keywords play a significant role in your campaign’s success. Adding negative keywords to your ad groups or campaign means that your ads won’t show for searches containing that term. In other words, negative keywords filter out unwanted impressions to help you reach the most relevant audience. For example, an organization targeting women may want to use the negative keyword -shoes, which tells the AdWords system not to show their ad for any search containing the term ‘shoes’.Read More

Negative keywords play a significant role in your campaign’s success. Adding negative keywords to your ad groups or campaign means that your ads won’t show for searches containing that term. In other words, negative keywords filter out unwanted impressions to help you reach the most relevant audience. For example, an organization targeting women may want to use the negative keyword -shoes, which tells the AdWords system not to show their ad for any search containing the term ‘shoes’.

The process to add negative keywords to your ad group is just like adding any other keyword. The only difference is that you put a negative sign (-) before the keyword. Adding a negative keyword at the ad group level means that the term will only affect the ads in the ad group. You can also add negative keywords at the campaign level, where they will apply to all ads in all ad groups in that campaign.

It’s easy to identify negative keywords for your account! Use the Keyword Tool and Search Query Performance report to find potential negative keywords for your ad groups. Using these tools to add negative keywords on a regular basis is recommended to ensure you don’t accrue unwanted clicks and, with a limited budget and a maximum CPC of $1, negative keywords will ensure you effectively utilize your budget.

For more information on optimizing your campaign check back for our monthly tips and refer to the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

AdWords users - including Google Grants recipients - have always had the option to specify match types to decide the level of reach and the level of control they wish to exercise on their keywords. To allow our advertisers to expand their reach and exercise better control on their ads, we introduced a new match type: the Broad Match Modifier. This is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match.Read More

AdWords users - including Google Grants recipients - have always had the option to specify match types to decide the level of reach and the level of control they wish to exercise on their keywords. To allow our advertisers to expand their reach and exercise better control on their ads, we introduced a new match type: the Broad Match Modifier. This is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match.


AdWords users who switch to the broad match modifier from phrase and/or exact match types will notice an increase in their clicks and conversions, while users that are using the broad match keyword type across their account may notice a significant drop in the volume of their campaign metrics. We therefore recommend keeping existing broad match keywords active, adding new modified broad match keywords, and adjusting bids as appropriate.

To implement the modifier, put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword e.g. +keyword. You can also add the + sign in front of two words within your keyword - after each keyword, leave a space. This means that if you want the phrase “charitable organization” to be present in the user’s search query, you will specify the modifier as: US +charitable +organization. Here, the words “charitable” and “organization” will be treated as necessary to be part of the search query.

Each word preceded by a + must appear in the user's search exactly or as a close variant. Depending on the language, close variants will include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms. However, this does not work for synonyms and related searches. This means that synonyms like "quick" and "fast" and related searches like "flowers" and "tulips" are not considered close variants.

The modifier feature is live in all AdWords countries and most languages*. In languages not yet supported, + symbols in broad match keywords will be ignored and the keyword will function as ordinary broad match keyword.

For more information on broad match modifiers please review these frequently asked questions.

*Except Arabic and Hebrew languages, which are coming soon.

Posted by Reema Prasanna, Google AdWords Team In Hyderabad