Combining blogging, SEO and social media for Non-Profits and Charities

A case study showing how the power of digital media can help small charities engage a passionate following

Many not-for-profit organisations have developed a compelling, inspirational web presence for their cause that has helped create a passionate social media-led community and strong interaction. When discussing good practice in digital marketing for charities, Amnesty, Cancer Research, NSPCC, Oxfam and PDSA are the usual suspects. My case study looks at how a campaigning site against Knife Crime was created from a standing start with minimal budget, but created fantastic engagement. In my post, I'll say a little about the background to the site and how it's doing and then look at how we used blogging, SEO and social media to gain awareness and engagement.  I hope you find it inspiring.

The site was started after I was in a McDonalds fast food restaurant with my family one Saturday lunch time when a former employee ran in wielding a knife and attacked a supervisor. It was an horrendous killing that left its tragic mark on those in the restaurant and the local area.
I had observed for a little while that knife crime was a growing menace with so many victims, and many families and friends left devastated by death and injury. So I decided to set up a knife crime blog using Google’s Blogger just wondering if the ‘power of the web’ could possibly help tackle such violence.

It is fair to say that the Knife Crime blog has not looked back since. It started as a single blog post with less than a handful of visits. Since then, it’s steadily grown in profile and size, attracting regular interest and debate. Now one of the UK’s top websites that is successfully raising the issue of knife crime in the public arena, the blog has been an ongoing ‘live’ experiment in SEO, PPC and social media.

As well as comments by blog readers, there is now a thriving pro-active Facebook ‘anti-knife crime’ community which I’ve watched and supported, as best I could, its development from the ground up. And streams of ‘knife crime’ tweets are updated across the site via the Twitter widget.

In addition, I’m aware the Knife Crime blog has contributed to ongoing crime and societal debates that are focused on finding solutions. It has often also been a reference point for media professionals.

Knife Crime and Societal Goals

I set up the knife crime blog with a few key objectives:

• Memorial to the knife crime victim I tried to save at McDonalds – Jacky Marshall
• Provide a little support and foster community among those affected by knife crime
• Increase awareness about knife crime
• Online resource bank about knife crime and other violent injury

Overall, these aims continue to be achieved. It serves as a useful campaigning resource for all to inform, assist and educate about a terrible type of crime that really does need to be actively reduced.
Possibly there has been a little scope creep as it became obvious that knife crime was one of several types of violent crime. However, reasons and causes for knife crime are similar to those of violent crime so there is a natural overlap so I don’t believe there has been dilution of the anti-knife crime message.

Key data indicates how successful the blog now is – site visits and Google impressions are now into the tens of thousands. And from just 200 posts, the knife crime blog is now frequently on page 1 of Google for ‘knife crime’-related search terms. Not bad when you see the competition for that first page of Google results:
• BBC
• The Guardian
• Direct.gov.uk (the Government)
• Knifecrimes.org
• Wikipedia
• Daily Mail
• Brooke Kinsella

Applying Search Engine Optimisation

I’ve worked with various SEO agencies and consultants including well known ones (more recently with Bigmouthmedia, Propellernet and Lakestar Media). At one point in my career, I took a deliberate decision to work solely on search engine marketing in agencies (including Greenlight).

I did this to train myself fully in the SEO craft, especially content-driven search engine optimisation, and to be able to offer this expertise as part of my consultancy portfolio.
Combining this SEO knowledge and applying that, as time allowed, to the knife crime blog has undoubtedly help achieve better and often prominent results in the search engines.

In terms of potentially controversial findings about SEO, there are three key conclusions I would like to boldly assert or claim to have fellow web and online experts out there comment on via this post:

• You don’t need many links to develop a prominent presence in the search engines
• Content alone can get you to top search engine positions – probably
• One day content will absolutely rule and SEO will no longer be required

I’ve had no time to focus on link-building. I did get a link from a Channel 4 website at one stage and also from the BBC. And nterestingly, I noticed, Google state that links pointing out of a site are an important signal about the website’s theme, not just those pointing in.
During the past few years, when the world of search engine marketing was stating links were everything, I wasn’t prepared to spend time or money on that – and doubted its truth too.
I focused on finding a few quality, content-relevant links and made a conscious decision to test whether many links pointing out of a site would help improve SERPs (search engine results pages). And I was right – many links out are indeed valuable.

At the same time, the driver for any link development was to ensure links were relevant and contextual – not about building a vast databank of links. My thinking then is obviously interesting and relevant now as the Panda updates roll-out - my type of approach has also been Google’s thinking too. I like to think we are both great minds thinking alike ☺

Three Tips to Start Campaigning Online

In short, here’s a round-up of three simple key steps to help you start to set up and running a blog for causes or charities you might work for; they are easy tips to build a blog to rank well in the search engines.

• Start - and write blog posts regularly. It sounds obvious but it’s clear that many companies, organisations give up on their blogs, leaving them to float about like a rubbish tip in outer cycberspace. Try to write well too – I’m a journalist by profession and well-written blogs stand out (like Smart Insights!).
• Learn some SEO basics. If you decide to do this in-house or yourself, it is worth learning some SEO basics – they will be invaluable. Not least, there are a few matters with using Blogger that require a little research.
• Apply SEO basics in the content you write. Use keywords about your cause or charity that people search for. It is easy to find out what these are – visit the Google Keyword Tool and learn to play around with it to discover search terms you’d like your blog to be found for.

The Power of the Web

What continues to be a brilliant hallmark of the Internet and web community is there is always someone who will offer a little help, provide a useful link (as well as Googling of course) to answer any question.
Feel free to get in touch with me if you are interested to establish or improve your blogging and social media footprint for causes with society in mind. With almost 20 years working online now, there’s not much I haven’t come across as far as e-business and digital activity is concerned.

That’s it. Cost-effective web presence is possible on a minimal budget. It’s not perfect but I hope the UK’s Knife Crime blog might inspire you to help in your job working for a cause or charity – or maybe, like me, a cause close to your heart.

Thanks to Mark for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Mark Chapman is ‘the eConsultant’ - an independent e-business and online marketing consultant, working on digital projects since the commercial Internet started almost 20 years ago. Specialist expertise includes audits of current online activity and content-led SEO. For more information, see Mark’s LinkedIn Profile.