Tavis Yeung answers:

Keep Visitors Coming Back

Don’t just market to new visitors; market to return visitors as well! There are a number of ways to do this:

Update your web site at least once a month!

Make sure ALL departments are using the web site to communicate. Not just the marketing staff but, also, your volunteer manager, anyone who works with clients, your fund-raising staff, etc.

Have a place on the home page for announcements, upcoming events, links to blog updates, etc., so that a visitor to the home page can immediately see what’s new.

Create a subscription-based email newsletter to promote updates to your web site.

Create a way to allow people to receive updates about your web site via their RSS readers. For instance, you could create a blog at a free site like Forumer (it’s what I use for my blog) that you use only to announce events, new services, updates to your web site, etc., and then link these announcements to appropriate places on your web site. Then, anyone who wants to can put your web site announcement blog into their RSS reader, and automatically receive updates whenever you post such (the RSS feed address for the Jayne Blog: is http://blogs.forumer.com/rss.php?u=jcravens).

The key to successful Internet marketing is to accept that it is a never-ending, integrated process. New web sites and online discussion groups emerge and disappear regularly. You need to track with regular searches new sites with whom to link and new lists on which to announce your organization and its service. To market efficiently and effectively online your entire staff has to immerse itself, at least to some degree, in using the Internet regularly as part of their work.

Other resources from Jayne Cravens and Coyote Communications:

Promoting Your Nonprofit Online
Advice that goes well beyond just Web sites — it talks about email, online communities, podcasts, webcasts, and more.

Don’t Just Ask for Money!
Something much more should happen if someone clicks on your web site’s “Help Us” link than a message that asks only for money.

Mission-Based Groups Need Use the Web to Show Accountability
There has never been a better time for mission-based organizations to use technology to show their transparency and credibility, and to teach the media and general public about the resources needed to address critical human and environmental needs.

Handling Online Criticism
Online criticism of a nonprofit organization, even by its own supporters, is inevitable. How a nonprofit organization handles online criticism speaks volumes about that organization, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. There’s no way to avoid it, but there are ways to address criticism that can help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting.

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Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Use social networking sites to promote your products and links. As you know social networking sites are self promotoable. If you got a nice profile with beautiful pictures in it, i bet you’ll get a lot of visits from other members. Forum Marketing works just like Yahoo Answers. They would be a lot of tips and questions exchanged in any forums. So start getting active and contribute to any forum members and they will appreciate your expertise and start visiting your websites for more up-to-date tips.

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Here are some free web marketing tips.

Not all web marketing needs to cost money. Aside from website submissions, there are a number of things that web marketers can do that are free, though they may be rather time-consuming. Other marketing tactics are relatively inexpensive, and are often well worth the investment.

Follow these basic steps to market your website and business.

Free Web Marketing Tips
http://www.small-business-software.net/free-web-marketing.htm

Tavis Yeung answers:

Getting traffic to your web site is a slow process but it is one of the surest way to establish your site for the long term success. You need to promote your website FOR FREE in order to acquire inbound links to your site. At least for a start. Plenty of quality inbound links to your site improves your site’s search engine rankings.

When you’re getting your feet wet learning the ropes of online marketing, the skills you develop in promoting your website FOR FREE will be enduring. Once you master a few FREE online marketing techniques, you can rinse and repeat the same process for other sites that you are going to launch in the future.

The following are some ways to get FREE advertising and promotions for your website:

Using Social Media Sites: This is the hottest method today. The web has become a social tool where people meet and exchange ideas and thoughts. Social media sites can be categorized into

•social bookmarking sites like Delicious.com
•social networking sites like Facebook.com
•social news popularity sites Digg.com
•social communication sites like Twitter.com
•Social image and video sharing sites like YouTube.com and Flckr.com

Using Free Classified Sites: The key to success in free classified advertising is an effective title. It must be magnetic for others to open your ad. And once they open your ad, the ad description should be compelling to make them click on your link. You should renew these ads regularly for search engines to find and index them. Sometime, search engines will find your profile page in these free classified site and index the profile page which must display your latest ads.

The following is a list of some sites you can get FREE Classified Advertising:
– www.bestwayclassifieds.com
– www.asdcashgenerator.com
– www.exchangead.com
– www.webclassifieds.us
– www.asdcashgenerator.com

Good Luck!

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Here are some free web marketing tips.

Not all web marketing needs to cost money. Aside from website submissions, there are a number of things that web marketers can do that are free, though they may be rather time-consuming. Other marketing tactics are relatively inexpensive, and are often well worth the investment.

Follow these basic steps to market your website and business.

Free Web Marketing Tips
http://www.small-business-software.net/free-web-marketing.htm

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

You could give out fliers in the local area, adverts in newspapers, offers – by one get one free, free products, set a good price etc