Tag Archives: social media marketing strategies

Google’s One-Stop Shop for Nonprofits: What is Local Marketing?

Local marketing uses methods of promotion to bring customers to your brick and mortar location. In the case of nonprofits, successful local marketing can bring in supporters and volunteers for your organization.

Google Places is a free method for businesses and nonprofits to connect with local customers, donors and volunteers. 97% of consumers search for local business online, so Google Places is a helpful platform to ensure you’ll be there when customers are searching for you. You can add photos and videos, highlight special offers and respond to reviews from your Places for business account. Google Places allows businesses to proactively reach customers and build a close relationship with them.

Another popular local marketing solution is Yelp.com, a free service for local businesses to post information, pictures and website links. Customers can write reviews to share with the public. With over 66 million users and 25 million local reviews, Yelp boasts a very large and loyal following – the perfect place for nonprofits to spread their message to the community.

Foursquare uses location-based tracking to allow users to check-in to places they frequent. The social media platform has proven to be a very successful clientele retention tool, especially in urban areas.

Facebook Places is similar in that it allows users to check in at local businesses. Its advantage is that it completely integrates with the social network to drive traffic to the organization’s business page.

Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare and Facebook Places are all pieces of a complete local internet marketing strategy. Blue Interactive Agency can help you develop social media marketing strategies to benefit your nonprofit organization. Offering a wide range of services including Facebook marketing, email marketing and SEO strategy, we help our clients reach their online marketing goals. For any questions, call us at 954-779-2801.


Google’s One-Stop Shop for Nonprofits: What are Google Sites?

As part of the Google for Nonprofits program, the company offers a suite of Apps including Google Sites which allow nonprofit organizations to easily create and share group websites to promote their cause. Nonprofits can create dynamic websites without coding or HTML knowledge, which saves on billing costs. Google Sites are a useful tool for centralizing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos and slideshows to keep teams organized.

Google Sites offer dozens of pre-built website templates – all customizable – and easy, single click page creation. New templates for company intranets and project workspaces help nonprofits to build collaborative sites.

A great advantage of Google Sites is that it is securely powered by the web, so users can access pages anywhere from the office or on the road via mobile or tablet technology. “Google Sites has revolutionized the way we communicate with our clients and with our team members. We currently have 15 Active Google Sites. Each of our clients has a dedicated site containing important project related information. As an example, we use lists to capture information about the meetings we setup. Several people can update information on each meeting in real time…we now use Google Sites as our core vehicle for communication. We have sites for HR, Training, Sales, Systems and Project Management,” says Steve Lightstone, president of Corner Office Leads.

The full suite of Google Apps includes:

  • Google Sites
  • Gmail
  • Google Calendar
  • Google Docs

Nonprofits can get started with Google Apps for free by applying at Google for Nonprofits.  If you have any questions regarding setting up Google Apps or Google Sites, Blue Interactive Agency can help. We provide interactive marketing tools such as search engine optimization and social media marketing strategies to help companies increase their online visibility. Contact us at 954-779-2801.