This is the 10th such seminar I have run with my co collaborator Jackie Dawkins and during that time we have had numerous and varied charities attend and a huge number of testimonials for this free event.

So what could a marketer or PR person from a charity gain from attending this seminar? Well the seminar will give an insight into how social networking can help your charity to:

• Communicate your cause
• Increase your following
• Interact with the community
• Improve your fundraising
• Increase your volunteer base

As with all our training seminars, interaction and participation are encouraged and we welcome all charities who want to learn how to make better use of these new media technologies in a fun and challenging way.

Booking is simple just use the Eventbrite form below, or if you have any questions or maybe want to talk about a dedicated training for your team why not get in touch here or email alistair@gleavemedia.co.uk.

3 eMail marketing top tips.

Use a decent email marketing system – my consultancy business GleaveMedia run and operate a very cost effective system with lots of inbuilt functionality included for FREE.  Does your email marketing system offer you a fully functioning solution and includes reports, who clicked what link, a to b split testing and custom integration to name but a few?

If the system you use doesn’t include all this or if the web agency you use charge you for all these addons it is definitely time to look elsewhere..

Do you know your subscribers? - categorizing of your data is so important, you need to have customers split from prospects for example, and if you can drill down into what those prospects are interested in and the same for customers. You basically want to send an email about something that the customer wants to receive, if not what is the point?

Be consistent – so if you send a regular email once a month, then send it once a month.  If you send from the email address of john@yourcompany dot com then do that – what i am trying to get across is that you need to keep the timing and information you send from the same or similar.

You may also want to read a post I wrote for my business blog titled – How to write great email subject lines - http://www.gleavemedia.co.uk/2011/08/02/how-to-write-great-email-marketing-subject-lines/

And while I am at it why not sign up to my regular email you can do this using the form below…

Indeed Geoffrey Read of the Company Secretary of the The Devon & Cornwall Food Association said of this recent seminar;

“I recently attended a seminar at Dame Hannah’s near Newton Abbot on the subject of Online Marketing which was presented by Alistair. I never really thought such things would affect our Charitable Company but this seminar certainly opened my eyes! I very much appreciate his advice and have no reservation in recommending him to others.”

So for your next business event, be it presenting to your sales team of just getting your workforce to think more about engagement in the online world why not give me a shout.

Some more quotes from satisfied attendees;

“I can sum this up in very few words: “Alistair REALLY knows his stuff.” You want a few more? OK – He’s a focused and realistic marketing professional. If you want a no-nonsense, down-to-earth and plain English approach, you really should be speaking with Alistair”
Sue Haswell, Director, Big Results PR & Marketing Ltd

“Alistair’s concise approach to social media awareness & exposure within the third sector, coupled with his underlying knowledge of the strategies required by charities to succeed make him an interesting and informative speaker on the subject.”
Ashley Wyeth, Corporate, St Loye’s Foundation

To get in touch and enquire further about having me come and speak at your next event why not use my contact form here.

A common problem is pulling all of this information together to build a single on-line identity.  This can be for either personal use, or to create a professional on-line profile. Well help is at hand with a site called about.me which allows you to bring everything onto one page – you can see mine here http://about.me/alistairgleave.

Is it any good and worthwhile signing up for, well it look good and certainly allows a synopsis of who/what you are, but doesn’t the likes of LinkedIn allow that, so for me the jury is out!

Well you can now find my consulting company on facebook here www.facebook.com/gleavemedia

Please come and join us, click the LIKE at the top of the page on facebook and come and participate in conversation and feedback, i’d love to hear from you.

Friday 13th May the launch of GrowMyCharity, yes we chose the date well!

The launch of GrowMyCharity.com a collaboration between myself (Alistair Gleave) and Jackie Dawkins. Why you may ask?  Well we have both been working with charity clients for a number of years and wanted to find a way to support charities of all shapes and sizes to grow and flourish by providing them with resources, ideas and tools.

Our opening event was at TTS in Bideford, the picture shows me in full flow….  The event saw a number of charities come along for an opening presentation and group discussion on online marketing for their charities, something close to our hearts, and where we believe we can offer real value and support to charities.

The site and events will grow significantly over the coming months with more resources, information and guests posts etc, please come and join us on our new Facebook page here.

We’d love to see you at the next event at the wonderful Seale Hayne on June 22nd and you can book a FREE place for your charity here http://growmycharitysh.eventbrite.com/

This afternoon I spoke at the excellent Social Networking for Fundraisers at the Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education on Topsham Road in Exeter.  The topic was Inbound Marketing for Charities and was a full on session with discussion, interaction and input from the Charity Fundraiser’s from the Devon area who attended.

Regular readers of this blog will know I do a lot of public speaking (read more about it on my blog here) on web related topics and in particular web communication and social media for Charities.  Indeed during the number of seminars I’ve run it never ceases to amaze me the diversity of charities, from Hens to the RNLI (yes I said Hens) we really do have a diverse charity sector in the South West and I am pleased to do my little bit…

Also the Flip Camera that i refer to and heartily recommend for YouTube – i have one and this can be found on Amazon here.  I find the Flip Camera ideal for its simplicity, ease of use superb high quality.  There are other great HD camera’s available and some good examples again can be seen on Amazon here.

Recent Testimonials from our Charity Seminars

‘Really interesting seminar that gave lots of food for thought‘ – Donna, now with RNLI

‘James and Alistair are very entertaining and make the seminar fun!‘ – Anon

‘Really useful, good to think about integration‘ – Chris Penberthy

‘I’ve learning how to use my Twitter account more effectively‘ – Philip King, Devon Air Ambulance

This post follows on from my free Google grants for Charities that can be found on my blog here.

If you are a Charity and want to use the power of YouTube to connect with your supports through this incredibly popular visual medium then YouTube can help through its non-profit program that over four distinct program benefits.

1. premium branding and increased upload capability
2. you will be listed on the not for profit channels and video pages on YouTube
3. you can add calls to action overlayed on the video, so you have space to add a message and YouTube encourage you to do just that.
4. finally you have the option to ask ‘the crowd’ so you could for instance asked an expert YouTuber to create a video just for your charity.

As with all YouTube content there are some basic rules to follow;

• Upload videos that get the viewers watching and talking, then ensure you answer any responses you get.
• Upload content regularly, much like your website don’t let it go stale.
• Don’t forget to embed the code for the video across other platform, news, blog and Twitter to name but three.
• And finally be yourself, if you are fake then you will be found out!

You can find out more on http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits

On the 18th November I spoke at the Shine Charity Lunch Event at the beautiful Hestercombe Gardens which is just outside Taunton.I have never been there before so i was very pleasantly surprised at the stunning location.

Hestercombe is a unique collection of three gardens spanning three centuries of garden history and design.  All have undergone acclaimed restoration works funded by the charity, The Hestercombe Gardens Trustand from what I saw of it, definitely worthy of a visit.

The Shine Charity lunch is fast becoming an established monthly fixture for those who work in the Charity Sector to meet up, exchange ideas, explore partnership working and generally network and it was a real honour to be asked to speak at the November event on the topic.

‘what Social Media has to offer the third sector in terms of engaging with the wider community, how it can be used to promote fundraising efforts and develop your volunteer base’

I only had 15 minutes which is by no means enough time to cover all that is needed but i hope everyone got a taster of what could be achieved in their respective charities.

As expected we did overrun a little and i did have quite a few questions, i hope all left knowing this is nothing to be scared off, inbound marketing and social media is here to stay – embrace it!

Thanks to Jackie once again for the invite, she is pictured below introducing me.

For charities in the South West we do run a number of FREE seminar that go into far more depth, the next one is on December 10th, more details and booking can be found on http://shinesocialmedia.eventbrite.com/.

I took this image while walking along a winding path finding the Shine Charity lunch where i was presenting, and i dont think the picture does it justice.