For those of you who have not noticed yet, the internet offers a huge potential for free advertising to promote your organisation and its projects.

The opportunities are almost endless, enough to keep many professionals in business selling services that exploit these opportunities and enough to write a book. Design Aid can also provide these services for a fee but what I want to do here is just give a short introduction to what you can achieve with no more than a little time each week and an internet connection.

Do I need to say the first thing you need…
to take advantage of the free advertising available on the internet is of course a web presence preferably your own website with a content management system so you can keep it bang up to date.

If you do not have a website…
then you need to establish a web presence of some sort. You could even use the Design Aid website to establish your web presence. Simply register membership with the Design Aid website so you can write and submit news of your organisation or each of your projects for publication on the site. You can then drive traffic to those pages, (can you see already where the free advertising is available, now all the Design Aid visitors can view your organisation on the Design Aid website). Many other services such as Wikipedia, mySpace, Facebook, Youtube, Google, Yahoo, etc. can give you a free web presence.

Your objectives…
You are looking for two things here, first you want exposure to your organisation and what you offer and secondly higher search engine ranking and more traffic to your website or presence on the world wide web.

You should now have your web presence even if it is just a page or two on someone else’s website or social network about your project and contact details. You now want people to visit and see what your project is about.

Your actions…
Use Google to find the websites your target audience will be visiting, so that will be say charity websites and if you run a homeless shelter you will be looking for websites that cover homlessness or the causes of homlessness or even community groups, social enterprises and charities etc. that support homeless people such as the council, housing associations, CVS, the church etc.

You are looking for sites that allow you to add content easily, as a submitted link, a link exchange programme, forum items, banner exchange, calendar event, profile or as with a full blown Web 2.0 website such Design Aid’s submit an article/news/content (search engine tip – as well as your usual key search words to find your target groups run the search again with terms such as “web 2.0, forum, link exchange, submit, calendar, classifieds, etc. alongside your search word).

Let’s start with the Design Aid Web 2.0 website…
Because you are here already; makes it an easy place to start and we would like to encourage you all to take advantage of our Web 2.0 capabilities for promoting your charitable projects.

Design Aid has all these features on its website and more on the way. You first need to register your membership on the site. Once logged in as a registered member there are a number of things you can you can do immediately with a basic membership.

Submit your web link…
for approval, a link from a busy high ranked site like Design Aid will help your site/page in search engine rankings. To submit a link on the Design Aid website, find the members menu, (above the main menu and only visible when logged in) click submit link. (If you can or care to reciprocate this link with one to Design Aid from your own site we would be delighted though it’s not a requirement).

The Design Aid calendar…
On the Design Aid website you can also submit items to be published in the calendar, another place your contact details and web link can find free exposure as well as advertising your event or meeting.

The Design Aid forums…
can be a great source of advertising and we have used many other website forums to great effect driving huge numbers of well targeted traffic to our websites. But there are rules in forums and the advertising is often not that obvious. Should you barge into a forum and simply post everywhere about your project or business it will be considered at best, bad manners at worst, Spam and a moderator could remove your posts or worse ban your profile/membership.

The answer here is to treat a forum as you would a room at say a networking event. If you go tramping through the event with huge placards and a megaphone shouting about who you are, it’s only a matter of time before you get thrown out. If you join the event (even uninvited) and socialise a little, ask a few questions give a little advice and happen to mention where you are from or what you do then this is welcomed as a benefit to all and handing out the odd business card will also be welcomed.

So, you first need to sort out your “business card” in a forum this is known as your signature. Most forums allow you to set up in your profile a signature that includes a small image/logo and bit of text (name and strap line) and links.

Your signature will be automatically added to every post you submit in the forum. So, now you can see the more you post in the forum the more your “business card” is seen. This means you can spend a little time in the forum helping others with answers you have to there questions or seek some advice from other members about your own issues. All the while you will be promoting your project or organisation and as others click the links driving more traffic to your website. Without spamming! (posting hundreds of items about your project).

Don’t forget its not just the members of the forum that will see your “business card” thousands of people use forums to find answers to there questions without ever joining or contributing to a forum.

Publishing your own content…
On a website is what Web 2.0 is all about. A Web 2.0 website allows you to upload content and information as well as download information. Websites such as Wikipedia allow you to do this freely and indeed rely heavily on members for all the sites content. (you really should have information about your project and links on Wikipedia).

Before you can submit content for publication on the Design Aid website you need to have your membership upgraded to “Author”. This is easily done and costs nothing. Simply email Design Aid with your user name or the email address you used to register and ask for your membership to be upgraded to “Author” the higher grade of membership is about the security of the website and there is no cost involved.

With your membership upgraded, login and use the submit news link in the members menu. This will take you to a simple wysiwyg editor with two text boxes, the first box is for a paragraph or two of introduction that will show in the sites news blog and in our e newsletter with a “read more” link below it. The second box is for the rest of your news item or article and will be viewed along with the introduction when visitors click the read more link. (We recommend you write your article in notepad and copy and past it into the text boxes, this will save you being timed out and logged out while typing your news item) You can also add images to your article and we recommend that one be placed in the introduction placed left and no more that 200px wide so it will show properly in the news blog and e newsletter.

You can contact us for further advice on this or ask us to look at and tidy up your content submission if you are struggling with it.

To conclude…
Please use the Design Aid website for some FREE promotion and advertising of your project or organisation, learn how to use it to best effect, then get out there and find other websites with some or all of these Web 2.0 features and put all this to good use.

Do a little each week or even each month and you will generate additional interest in your project whether it be from beneficiaries, volunteers, funders or partners – the word will be out there and you will see more and more traffic on your website. Results will not be overnight they will be over months, but as you spend more time on the web creating direct links and interest your website you are also slowly but surely driving up your search engine rankings – making this a slow but very sustainable and of course cheap advertising campaign.

If you have any further questions please do contact us or better still raise your question in the Design Aid forum so you can promote your project and allow others to benefit from the answers.