Low-cost Marketing Resources

I got my start marketing non-profits. Organizations with worthy messages often have very little money for spreading the word. Fortunately, sometimes a good idea is more effective than a big budget. Here are some resources for non-profits looking to get some new ideas or share the ones they have.

• The CraigsList Foundation will present boot camps on August 16 in New York and October 18 in San Francisco, to educate and empower non-profit leaders.
• Google AdWords offers free AdWords campaigns to some non-profits.
• Don't forget the dedicated professionals at your local library. The Morris County (NJ) library offers free access to the Million Dollar Database from D&B.
• Look for other ideas on my website under nonprofit marketing resources

NJ Outsources to TX

I wanted a list of large companies in Morris, Essex and Union Counties. The Union County website list was 11 years old.

So I checked NJ.gov, where I did not find a list either. I found a link to "Q and A NJ live help," though . Not quite sure what that was, but ready to play along, I followed the link, which offered me a live chat with a librarian.

To my surprise, the librarian was not in New Jersey, but in a very large state in the south. I will call her "Texas Tillie."

Tillie asked me if I belonged to my local library (yes), and then she found its web site. After she scanned the online catalog she told me that the database she would have recommended (RefUSA) was not available at my library.

[Librarian 10:09:33]: RefUSA is the best I have found for creating list of businesses in the US by criteria.
[Librarian 10:10:01]: New Jersey may have directories that I am not familiar with.

Tillie said she would leave the question for follow-up by a New Jersey librarian.

I have two concerns about this
1) She was checking my local library for resources. What if I were not from a municipality that funds its library well? Would she only be able to give me "poor" answers because I came from a "poor" town?
2) Why is a librarian unfamiliar with New Jersey resources answering questions for a New Jersey resident via the official New Jersey state website? In short, why is New Jersey outsourcing to Texas? Don't we have enough librarians in New Jersey?

News pyramid

Here in New Jersey we get play-by-play coverage of the sordid McGreevey custody hearings. Only by accident did I chance upon a brief in the Star-Ledger this morning about Nepal planning to depose its monarch, King Gyanendra.

I've been divorced. I am as titillated as anyone else to see how low Jim 'n' Dina can sink. But that should be the fats and sugars in my news pyramid, to be consumed sparingly.

The mainstay of my news diet, the vegetables and whole grains, should be events that concern 29 million people at a time, even if they live halfway around the world from me and are desperately poor.

Paris 'n' Britney are the trans fats. They clog the arteries of my brains.

For more information about Nepal, please visit the Friends of Nepal-New Jersey website.

BBQ with NSAIDs

A bike ride would be a great way to improve my cardiovascular fitness, I thought. So yesterday Lloyd and I rode through the Great Swamp.

Until the last hill I felt powerful and fit. I communed with nature, reveling in the scent of the haymow, and spotting a red fox. My own cries clashed with the the bird songs, however, when I wiped out descending the Third Watchung Ridge along Fairmount Avenue heading down to River Road in Chatham Township.

Thank God I wore a helmet or I would have serious road rash on my face(!) I enjoyed Lloyd's savory Memorial Day barbecue with generous portions of aspirin and Tylenol.

Today's proud accomplishment

When I learned to type, there was one way to alter the font: clean the keys with kneaded rubber.

Please visit my latest DIY project: my husband's website. Sometime soon I will add his resume, but for now I need to go pluck the gray hairs I sprouted during the hand coding and FTP processes.

Thanks to Elizabeth Castro. Without her book HTML, XHTML & CSS I could not have done it.

Pickypedia

As a marketing communications professional, I am always interested to learn how to get more people to see the message. On the internet, one way to improve that chance is to climb to the top of the search engine pages.

Giving myself a break from teaching myself HTML, I thought I would toss together a page about my church on Wikipedia. How much would a link from a huge website like Wikipedia improve my church's PageRank, so that more people would find the church?

Ha! You don't quickly assemble a Wikipedia page, I learned. It took me several hours, during which time I fretted that Wikipedia's editors would toss out my work. Wikipedia has standards. It wants to be an objective encyclopedia, not a forum for organizations to promote themselves.

The organization must be notable in some way. Fortunately, my church has some architecturally significant windows, and photos of the same. So my article discusses the granite and glass, but not the fellowship and spiritual support that I find there.

As much as the Wikipedia article leaves out, if it helps one person find the church and provokes him or her to visit, I have done a good thing.

He said it was 12 inches!

New Jersey boasts 127 miles of sandy white shoreline--and very efficient game wardens!

When he's not complaining about the wascally wabbits in his vegetable garden, my husband takes us out fishing in his boat, the Goldenbrow. Passing Gunnison Beach is a thrill for curious teenagers with binoculars.

Gotterdammerung for the blogosphere

I deliberate. When I decide to see a movie, it's already out on DVD. When I buy a sweater set, the cool people have already donated theirs to the thrift shop.

When I start to blog, blogging is clearly over. Sorry.

Thanks for visiting!