Is blogging the marketing solution for 'Not for Profit' financial institutions?

June was, for the best part a complete nightmare, my lovely wife took seriously ill and for a normally very healthy individual it was a great shock. The majority of the awareness plans for June were shelved, thankfully home life is now returning to reasonable levels of normality. A massive thanks goes out to my employees, consortium members and funder's for the genuine support they all provided. Oh and the wife is out of hospital, back home and feeling much better.

During July we have been revising the look and feel of the Blog we do of course use a Blogger template which I think are great, we've also been testing out promoting the Blog via site targeted marketing through Google. During the first week we have received a large number of visitors for a very small investment in comparison to the cost of ads running on Search engine pages. OK maybe not all are all potential clients, or are targeted as accurately as the search engine campaigns, but that said site targeted ads are great awareness tool. Linking to other relevant blogs is the next stage of the plan.

I was also reading the BAD New Network yesterday and came across the Let’s Talk Starting in Business seminars to be delivered on a national scale in the UK and Wales By Barclays Bank and National Federation of Enterprise Agencies (NFEA). The West Midlands will get its fair share of FREE seminars they are designed for people looking to start a business. FFC really want to get involved especially call the free phone numbers to book your place.

I am in the process of evaluating our quarter one direct marketing campaign I am interested to see the level of interest that was raised from the campaign, I also have plans for a second email broadcast this time it will be region wide and the development team will be selecting the market segments. While I am on the subject have you looked into email broadcasting really cost effective way of getting your message across it certainly raised some initial interest, for very little spend indeed were talking £20 to £25 per 1,000 emails.

Now in the process of seeking approval for the FFC networking event, I have written the agenda, verbally invited the proposed speakers, selected the location , roughed out some dates , just need to lobby for some sponsorship and then draft the proposal. I am really keen to shape this, I am still keen to web cast sector and the event. Of course waiting for the members to approve all the above then off we go, If you are visiting this blog and work in professional capacity preferably at decision maker level drop an email across to info@fair-finance.net and we can reserve you a place for October.

Finally missed the CDFA conference due to the home emergency I was disappointed not to be able to attend, maybe next year I am sure I will be able to make it now they (AWM) have extended our teams contract until December 2008, excellent.