Learn to Use (and Maximize) Your Google Grant from The Google Grants Team

Flickr Photo: nasmacYou probably know that Google Grants gives out free AdWords accounts to nonprofits. With an account, if somebody searches for info on, say, "polar bears" -- we're told polar bears are ratings gold -- and your organization is trying to ensure there's an ice cap left for them to do polar bear-y things on, you can try to try to steer them to your web site. (The searchers, not the polar bears. If polar bears learn to use the Internet, we're all in trouble.)

Yes, you too can try to attract the attention of folks looking for specific information with 3 lines of text next to Google search results. But with all the competition, it's hard -- very hard. That's why we've enlisted the Google Grants team to lay out the best practices in our upcoming webinar series, "Learning to Use and Maximize Your Google Grant".

> Learn more and register today!

Member Appreciation Winner: Google AdWords for You?

As the second week of Member Appreciation month starts to wind down, I'm glad for the opportunity to discuss today's particular NTEN give-away:

AdWords for Dummies, courtesy of Jossey-Bass/Wiley publishers.

Now, I can bring up Google's AdWords and how it could fit in with your nonprofit organization:

Optimizing Keywords in AdWords

To publicize our CMS and CRM Vendor Satisfaction Reports, we tried including, in an AdWords campaign, the names of the software covered in the reports -- "Plone", "Drupal", "Salesforce", and so on. For 2 days, our impressions shot into the thousands. On day 3, it dropped to, oh, 36, 37 per day, and there was a message from Google that said, basically: "Your clickthrough performance is too anemic to be worthy of these keywords, so we've turned them off. Please increase your bid or improve your CTR."

Aaaaand they're still turned off.

So, I'm looking forward to our upcoming webinar, "Optimizing Keywords in AdWords", the 2nd in our series on AdWords, presented by some wonderful people on the Google Grants team.

Google Announces Special Benefit for NTEN Members

At the close of his session at the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference on Thursday afternoon, Google Adwords Evangelist Frederick Vallaeys announced a new partnership between Google and NTEN.

"Due to our similar goals in supporting the non-profit community, particularly through technology, Google Grants and NTEN are partnering to enhance their impact on non-profits. We would like to invite all qualifying NTEN organizations to apply to Google Grants and we will expedite the review of those that apply."

How cool is that? Very.

If you don't already know about Google Grants, they allow qualified nonprofits to use Google Adwords for the low, low price of free.

To take advantage of this offer:

• If you're not yet a member of NTEN, join today!
  
• Then, apply for the Google Grant at http://www.google.com/grants through Google's easy online application. Please spend some time reviewing the site to learn more about the program, eligibility, grant details, etc.
• Finally, send an email to grants-nten@google.com to help Google identify you as an NTEN member, which should hasten your application through the process.