Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 301. How Your Online Presence Can Create Business Value for Your Nonprofit through SEO - Rafi Norberg

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301. How Your Online Presence Can Create Business Value for Your Nonprofit through SEO - Rafi Norberg · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Jonathan McCoy: Today's episode is sponsored by our friends at Feathr. Feathr helps nonprofits of all shapes and sizes build powerful campaigns that help you reach new fans and find new donors, wherever and whenever they're online. We love them because their tech makes creating and optimizing your paid ads strategy super simple.
• 0:14
  Jonathan McCoy: And no, yeah, they just happen to be amazing humans too. Sound like better might be a fit for your organization? Learn more today feathr.co. That's feather without the last e dot co or follow the link in our shownotes.
• 0:30
  Jonathan McCoy: Hey, I'm Jon.
• 0:32
  Becky Endicott: And I'm Becky.
• 0:33
  Jonathan McCoy: And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
• 0:35
  Becky Endicott: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:44
  Jonathan McCoy: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:53
  Becky Endicott: So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:04
  Jonathan McCoy: So let's get started. Becky, headed to the ATL again.
• 1:08
  Becky Endicott: Headed to the ATL with somebody who like discovered us when we were a five month old newborn. And so supportive. I'm excited today.
• 1:19
  Jonathan McCoy: I am to like, I mean, I feel like there's occasional times on the podcast when we get to go meet the wizard behind the curtain, you know, like, we all didn't know think we know how the world works and the internet works.
• 1:29
  Jonathan McCoy: And today we're going to break down one of the myths, you know, like getting on the front page of Google seems kind of mysterious, like we don't really know how to do that. But we have the honor today to talk to Rafi Norberg, who has kind of like dedicated his life to helping vendors specifically in the social impact space, rank on Google and get to the first place because in today's world, when you're searching for something, and you go to Google, you trust that it's gonna be right. Rafi does that baked in equity he loves. It has an incredible team behind him at Nexus marketing. And we've learned a ton from them. They just the way they show up is very much of a servant heart.
• 2:01
  Jonathan McCoy: And they kind of teach as they go. And we've been hugely blessed by just kind of hanging in their orbit and learning from them along the way. But I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Rafi we're excited to have him on the show. He's the president of Nexus marketing based in Atlanta. They do content marketing, search engine options, optimization. So if that's a new word for you, that's that SEO word that we talk about all the time. But this agency works with mission driven businesses that sell to nonprofits, schools, faith based organizations and associations.
• 2:27
  Jonathan McCoy: He's originally from Bethesda, Maryland, but he's lived in Atlanta for the last 12 years, started this agency eight years after being a consultant at Deloitte. And he is engaged.
• 2:36
  Jonathan McCoy: This is like our favorite factoid about him. The day we're recording. We're just like eight days out from the day.
• 2:41
  Becky Endicott: We're literally eight days away from getting hitched. Natalie, congratulations. We're so excited for you guys.
• 2:46
  Jonathan McCoy: And so he is an avid runner. He's a fitness enthusiast, a local eater and a jerky maker, and he's an Enneagram. Three, you know, we care about the Enneagram around here. So Rafi, welcome to the podcast. We're just delighted to have you here.
• 2:57
  Rafi Norbert: Thank you so much.
• 2:57
  Rafi Norbert: And it was such a nice introduction. I'm really excited to chat with you guys. And I'm just so excited that you added my Enneagram there. I know at Nexus we will be thrilled about that. Because we're constantly talking about Enneagram types.
• 3:09
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, well, if you don't know that means he's the achiever. So listen for the achievement aspects throughout here. We're excited to dive in and learn from you today. But we always like to start just getting to know Rafi like, what was it like for you growing up?
• 3:20
  Jonathan McCoy: And what are some of the formative experiences that brought you to want to serve the social impact sector in this kind of special way?
• 3:27
  Rafi Norbert: Yeah, so I know so many people were they had their career planned out from the start. They knew they knew as soon as they were in high school, that they were going to be an amazing fundraiser or they are going to be an amazing lawyer or Doctor, what have you.
• 3:39
  Rafi Norbert: I think my career journey has been very organic and how it's unfolded and how it's led me to where we are right now. So when I went to college, didn't know what I wanted to do. I had an inkling that maybe I wanted to be a lawyer or I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. And what ended up happening is that I didn't love either of those fields. I tried them through various experiences in college and just didn't enjoy them, and ended up actually teaching sailing over the summer, my entire college career. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that and give that as advice to people who are looking to land a job out of school, but that's what I did. So I spent every summer teaching kids on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. And by the end of college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Nothing had changed over those four years. So I was fortunate I had some friends who advised me and said, If you don't know what you want to do consulting is something that hires people who don't know what they want to do. That's what they specialize in. So I was fortunate enough to get a job out of school. And within that, really found that I had a passion for both marketing and also some of the social enterprise work that Deloitte was doing. So the core of the job with most consulting firms is you're doing big projects at random businesses you never think about that are huge. So it's like the law Just power company in the Northeast needs a new payroll software installed and they need to hire an army of people to come do it. But Deloitte also does a lot of really interesting things around helping local organizations in the communities that the that the consulting firm is embedded in, just operate more efficiently. And I really found myself more attracted to that work than I think my my core job, which was working at the large power company. So the way I ended up with Nexus and starting Nexus is at the time, I was living with a bunch of different roommates in Atlanta.
• 5:32
  Rafi Norbert: And one of my roommates actually was in the mission driven software space, and knew that I was doing consulting knew that I liked it, but didn't love it, and knew that I had an interest in digital marketing and had some done some work helping some friends with their websites. And he said, Hey, I know some other folks in the space who might need your help and be interested in in and if you liked the nonprofit space, this could be an interesting space to spend some time in. So he introduced me to the folks at Donor Search.
• 6:03
  Rafi Norbert: Do you know the folks at Donors Search?
• 6:04
  Becky Endicott: Oh yeah, we were clients of Donor Dearch back in the day. So hi, Nathan Chapelle.
• 6:10
  Jonathan McCoy: Nathan's been on the podcast too, so yeah.
• 6:11
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, they're great.
• 6:12
  Rafi Norbert: I love it. So Bill, and Sarah and Ryan, who are their executive team, were really the first people I ever pitched on the idea of Nexus, I said, Hey, I've got this idea. I think that we can help you get in front of more nonprofits in a way that where the nonprofits find you, versus you calling them in a way where you guys get to showcase your educational expertise in prospect research and wealth screening. And if you guys give me a shot, I think I can do it. And I remember it. So distinctly. Bill said, well, we'll do it for three months.
• 6:42
  Rafi Norbert: And if it doesn't work, we'll stop it.
• 6:44
  Becky Endicott: No pressure.
• 6:46
  Rafi Norbert: Good enough for me, we just got started. And it's weird. I think there's a mentality out there when you start a business that, that if you believe it's going to fail, then it's going to fail. And you can't have any doubt in your mind about your idea. And I was listening to your interview with Mark Pittman, he was talking about the power of doubt and how important that is. And the funny part is, I doubted the entire time whether I would be doing this, if he would be talking to me, right? When we started it, I'd say, Well, I'm gonna do this for six months, and it's probably going to fail, and then I'll be doing something else.
• 7:13
  Rafi Norbert: But it didn't. And we ended up retaining Donor Search. And then they really acted as sponsors for us within the mission driven sector, and really mentors to us and introduced us to a lot of their colleagues. And because of that the agency has grown. And it's just ended up over time becoming a bigger and bigger organization serving more and more companies in the space and helping them figure out how to tell their stories to the nonprofit sector in a way that is educational and useful to nonprofit professionals versus pushing information in front of them that that they may not want to see. So it really just has been an organic journey to get where we are today. But um, you know, I love where we are. And I'm so happy to send it up that way.
• 7:55
  Becky Endicott: I there's so many cool themes in your story.
• 7:58
  Becky Endicott: And one, I love that you just tried stuff coming out of college. And I love that you've landed in this marketing and SEO space. And I want to be clear with all of our listeners, you don't specifically and directly serve nonprofits. But I love that you're empowering the vendors and the providers that are serving and you you can honestly have such a bigger impact. And I think it's kind of speaks to the to the nature of our sector, that it's sort of all hands on deck. And we cannot all do everything. And we can power into each part in the way that we have gifts aligned there. So I do not know SEO, and I know a fraction of it. And when, you've done a really good job of educating our team about the power of just getting your message in front of the right eyeballs. So can you kind of walk our listeners through an overview of search engine optimization and the opportunities that exists now when you start to leverage this really powerful tool?
• 8:57
  Rafi Norbert: Absolutely. And I think I appreciate kind of everything, everything that you shared about my story. Thank you for all the kind words here. And I think what's interesting about search and organic search engine optimization is that it's really a universal skill. So whether you are a marketer trying to reach a nonprofit audience or someone at a nonprofit, a marketer at a nonprofit or a fundraiser at a nonprofit who is really trying to tell your story to your supporters, I think this is a really critical skill that it's just useful to understand on a on a basic level. So SEO in and of itself is when someone is searching something, how do you get your website to show up at the top of Google's organic search? So if you're looking at Google, you know, we search things every day, or a lot of people do. You've got the ads at the top, they normally say ad in the little corner, and then you get below that and you've got the organic results. So oftentimes people will like skip through the ads, get the organic results, and SEO is all the practice of how do you get to the top of Google search results. I think one of the things that I like to talk about with SEO is that there's a lot of myths around it. And I think it's one of those things that oftentimes, unfortunately has a negative connotation. It's like the magic and the almost the dark art of getting to the top of Google, which is so unfortunate, because I think for a while, that was very true. If you talk to people who've been in the SEO industry for 20 years, they'll talk about the days where you would do weird things like change the have hidden words behind the text of your website, where you just put your keyword 1000 times and that was the trick to getting to the top of Google search.
• 10:30
  Becky Endicott: Oh my gosh.
• 10:30
  Becky Endicott: Never heard that.
• 10:32
  Rafi Norbert: But one of the cool parts about, you know, Google getting smarter is that it's harder and harder to fool search engines, and really inflate your brand in ways that are fake or malicious. So I think a lot of what you guys talk about, which is this idea of authentic brand building, I actually think is tied in directly with SEO, which is if you can do a good job of telling your story on your own website, and then telling your story to the broader industry, while just having a couple of different considerations around SEO in mind. I think every organization, whether you're a nonprofit, or a vendor is set up to really build a hyper successful foundation of SEO, and you don't need a vendor to do it really well. I think that so long as you keep different elements in mind, and I'm sure we'll talk about them on the podcast today. You can you can start in a really successful place and have a lot of really great success just just by doing some very simple things that all get down to this idea of authentic brand building.
• 12:01
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, yes, thank you for breaking that down. Because I do think it's, it needs to be demystified. And we need to realize that we all can play an active role in this because probably today, if you Google your organization name, hopefully, that's getting you to the top and the same is true for We Are For Good. But the reality is, if people don't know you, and they don't know, you know, they haven't found you yet.
• 12:23
  Jonathan McCoy: You've got to, like think more holistically of like, what are the people that do want to come to you? Or what are they looking for? What are the kinds of things that they're thinking about? And that plays into the strategy? So I just love the strategic mind that you have.
• 12:32
  Jonathan McCoy: And I wonder if you would just kind of keep taking us down this path of like, how is SEO different than the other ways that people show up to you know, maybe paying per clicks or maybe advertising in different ways like that? How is this uniquely different? And kind of break it
• 12:47
  Rafi Norbert: Yeah. So if I'm thinking about the different down for us?
• 12:49
  Rafi Norbert: marketing modalities that oftentimes come up, when we're talking to either vendors, or we're talking to nonprofit professionals, I think you've got, you've got trade shows, which everyone understands, he's showing up at an event or trade
• 12:59
  Becky Endicott: Go for it. I mean, I'm so leaned in and I show, you've got email, which is sending folks to your email list, the people who oftentimes already know you or have chosen to opt into the story that you're telling. You're, you've got some sort of paid advertising. So the vendors are often paying per click, if you're a nonprofit, you're using probably Google grants or something of that nature, where there's some sort of subsidy there. But the bidding on a certain term that people are searching for, and where SEO is differentiated is, is really, when someone is searching something related to your to your organization, the things that are coming up at the top are what Google deems to be the best potential answers for whatever the intent is of the searcher. So I'll give you an example of that in the vendor space, and also in the nonprofit space. And I think we'll we'll talk about the vendor space. So if you're searching for something like best prospect research software, or best how to do prospect research, how to find donors, what Google wants to show people as information that's really going to answer that question. And I think if you are someone who, who is has a lot of ideas of how you solve that problem. By telling that story in a thorough and comprehensive way, on your website, you're giving Google something to show someone who's searching via their platform that is going to answer their question, if you are a nonprofit, for instance. And let's say that you are an animal shelter, based in Atlanta, what you do is you probably help people learn how to adopt pets in your local city. So when someone searches, how do I adopt a puppy in Atlanta, that is something that they're not searching for your direct name, they might not know you exist as an organization, but they've got this problem of I want to adopt a puppy. And as an organization, what you want to do is have that information in a comprehensive way, live on your website so that Google can understand what your site is about. And then when someone is searching for that, Google understands that your organization should be shown because you have the solution to that person's problem. And then when they see someone click into your site, they can see that they're interacting with the content.
• 15:00
  Becky Endicott: They're staying on the page.
• 15:03
  Becky Endicott: They're clicking through the different great dog pictures feel like I am 42 years old, and I just figured out like how to that you have. And they're very engaged with what's what's on your website. So that is how I would describe SEO. And if you guys want, I can sort of break it down into kind of the three big pillars of what of what folks need to think about.
• 15:19
  Becky Endicott: do this. So please put the playbook together for us and give us those steps.
• 15:31
  Rafi Norbert: For us, the way we talk about SEO and try and demystify it for individuals, it really boils down to kind of three big things that your organization can do, or your business can do in order to be successful via this channel. The first piece is just have a really, really good website.
• 15:46
  Rafi Norbert: Okay, what do we mean by good website, I mean, a website that loads really quickly. So if you think about a lot of the people who might be searching, especially if you're a nonprofit organization, they may not have the fastest internet. So if you're, if your website loads really slowly, or if you don't have the fastest, you know, 200 gigabit or whatever it is internet, it's going to take 10 seconds to load, that's a really negative experience that Google's want to get going to want to show other websites. Is your website accessible? Like, have you made it easy for people who are browsing with in different ways that require a level of accessibility? Do your images described in a way that makes sense to someone who is who is actually using those descriptions on the images to understand what the page is about versus seeing them? Did the links work? So if someone's clicking through your website, or they take into a page, or they take into some sort of, you know, broken page, so just very simple things around? What's the experience you want to have, when you're on a website, whether you're a business or an organization, that's really what you want to create for your end users? And that's kind of pillar number one. It's what's oftentimes talked about as as tactical SEO, but it's really just having a website that is easy to use for people.
• 16:53
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, can I throw ourselves under the bus on this? I mean, because Rafi's, he was so nice looking at our website, as we're trying to figure out SEO for our specific business. And I mean, quickly, I just think we know what's there.
• 17:07
  Jonathan McCoy: We know the contents there. And he's like, Hey, you realize you have like 182 broken links on your website today. And it's like, this is something you have to manage, even though maybe the day you built it, it wasn't broken. It's like the web is this dynamic place. And I think that's one thing that is super annoying as a user when you go somewhere, and a link doesn't work. And it's something that Google cannot tell you, you know, through the power of kind of back end, Google Analytics, or maybe some other processes or systems. And you like, open my eyes to that. And that's just one of the examples. So I think everything that Rafi is saying, like, truly make a list and start working through it, because we have a list that we're working through too. But these are like gold as they kind of stack up over time. And they're things that you can do to get started. So I just want to affirm you and cheer you on on that.
• 17:50
  Becky Endicott: I gotta piggyback off that and just say like the word that's coming up to me as you talk about this as optimization. And I think that I was thinking too linearly and too focused about SEO, I thought, you know, it was what you do in search engines and ads and things like that, it's actually what you're saying is so much bigger than that. I mean, you've got to optimize your website, you got to optimize your content, like it is almost like a cleaning of house. I mean, it is spring, let's do some spring cleaning, you know, to be cheeky, because I do think that there is a time we need to set on our calendar every year to go through and make sure the back of house is clean on the website, because we are literally missing 10s of 1000s of people who could potentially be coming to our sites because they simply can't find us. So I think this is great. Rafi just keep going.
• 18:42
  Becky Endicott: So so if you if I'm if I'm a person out of business in this sector, or I'm a person at a nonprofit organization, it's like what do I do? How do I get started on this technical piece, the the thing I would do is Becky, to your to your point, I would say once a year or once a quarter, do a quick crawl of your website to try and fix any major issues there. There. There are a lot of great tools out there, we get questions about which tool is the best tool, they all kind of do the same thing. So you don't need to worry too much about that. The ones that I would toss out would be things like Moz, M O, Z, SEMrush, S, E, M, R, U, S, H, and Ahrefs. So A H R, E, F S. So And we'll put them in the, in the show notes for anybody that those are all really good SEO tools.
• 19:23
  Becky Endicott: wants to check that out.
• 19:24
  Rafi Norbert: Those tools all have the on demand crawl capabilities, where for a relatively small, monthly monthly fee, and a lot of these tools, I think are $50 a month, or maybe even less than they may have some certain discounts. If you're a nonprofit organization, you can identify where the technical issues are on your website. And a lot of them you'll be able to fix yourself.
• 19:42
  Rafi Norbert: Some of them might require more technical resources. But for the ones who can fix yourself, that's just a really good place to get started. So good.
• 19:50
  Becky Endicott: I love this. And I think it's really bringing me back to one of the 2022 trends that we've identified this year, which is investing in digital.
• 19:57
  Becky Endicott: And if you are somebody who has put money and time into your nonprofit budget to do this one, pat yourself on the back, because I'm super proud of you.
• 20:09
  Becky Endicott: Because you're not missing the moment that is standing here that is so rife for us to jump in. But I think that people are going to ask about like, how do we gather people like how do we get that inbound traffic? How do we bring them in? And I would love for you to just talk about advice that you have for listeners of how they can grow traffic because I don't think it's enough to just grow, you know, general traffic, we want the right people coming to our websites and engaging with our missions. Can you talk a little bit about how someone and to me it's like a digital qualification, or you're trying to truly trying to warm somebody up and get them in your house, I would love to get your counsel on this.
• 20:53
  Rafi Norbert: Absolutely. And that's a great segue into the other two elements that I think make really good search engine optimization for every site out there. The first is on site, really in depth on site information that answers what your target end user is looking for. So if you think about the pages on your website, you want them to be the best and most comprehensive pages on whatever topic it is that your organization is an expert on. So let's just stay with the example of the animal rescue based in Atlanta. So if this problem that you're solving for your end users is helping people find pets in Atlanta, what you want is you want a page on your website that goes into a ton of depth around the adoption process for animals in Atlanta, because that's exactly the cause that you are helping to solve for the people who are finding you. And by putting that really educational information on your website in a way that is accessible, and Google can see it and users can find it, that's going to position you really well to get in front of those people. Where I see organizations and businesses quite frankly, go astray a lot is there was a lot of noise out there for a long time around just publishing as much content as you can or trying to publish a blog post every single day.
• 22:09
  Rafi Norbert: And this was the advice that a lot of different folks were putting out there. And in many ways, it's actually really unhelpful, because what ends up happening at both nonprofits and businesses is that they're stretched thin, you only have one person who can write or you're trying to juggle the the responsibility of writing across multiple people, and everyone does their best. But you end up with a ton of information that is okay, on your website, and you end up with a website that's full of okay pages that could go more into depth, but there wasn't just enough time to do it. And what ends up happening is Google sees that and you're not really doing an A plus job of answering any questions. So what happens is your website's not going to get shown for anything. So what we often counseled clients to do is is published less, but when you do choose to publish, make it as good as possible. So really dive as deep as you can into whatever that subject is that you're trying to provide a solution for. So instead of having 100 pages on your website, with 250, or 500 words of text, have 20 pages on your website, but make them the best 20 pages that your end customer would ever want.
• 23:16
  Rafi Norbert: And that is really, I think the secret to good on site content.
• 23:20
  Rafi Norbert: And then how do you know the terms to look for people talk about keywords a lot, that's one of the the terms that we use a lot in search. Again, I think if every organization and business out there just had a subscription to to a Moz, or SEMrush or Ahrefs, you don't need an agency to get started a lot of the research into the keywords you can do yourself.
• 23:38
  Rafi Norbert: And it's fairly straightforward.
• 23:38
  Rafi Norbert: Again, going back to the animal rescue example, if you look up animal rescue in X city, there are only so many different associated terms that you need to be thinking about. So you're not going to be there's an overwhelming number of things that people can search for. But when you think about the core of what you do, you can probably boil it down to a couple things, or at least get started with a couple of things. And then making sure that your website reflects comprehensive information on those topics. So that's how we think about that second piece of really, really great on site content.
• 24:08
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, and I feel like the output of that is going
• 24:08
  Jonathan McCoy: And if I can zoom out and be very visionary in this, how we look at this, this allows you to deliver and live out your mission in a different way. Because there's to be so much bigger than what you thought you may have had an gonna be people that are going to learn from you and engage with you. And if you're that animal rescue, you deeply care intent to bring people in to gather donations, but what you about animals like yes, you want to also adopt not the pets, but the fact that you could be this beacon of information is like a may get, as a result of optimizing in this way, you're whole new way that you're activating. And that you could going to be attracting believers, not just those find a funder that wants to help you do that. Because becoming a top rank page that's teaching Atlantans how to better take care of their pets could be a huge aspect of your mission. So I just, I love like the greater good aspect of creating ridiculously great content, you know, that serves.
• 25:03
  Jonathan McCoy: donors, again, people are going to look at you for education, they're going to an expertise, they're going to look for tips, they're going to look for, you know, feel good, you know, photos of the puppies coming in.
• 25:13
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, it's almost, it's going to be something that they're just going to be a magnet to come back for. And that, my friends is how you start to build digital community. It's not just about the donation. You have to be asking a bigger question about how do I gather people, and I'm just so geeked out out that making the and I think they're little shifts.
• 25:36
  Jonathan McCoy: That's what you're talking about Rafi. I mean, these are not massive overhauls to your website, it is not bringing in a consultant. And having them do, you know, a huge contract to get you up, these are just 1% shifts that we can make that can make such a difference.
• 25:54
  Rafi Norbert: Yeah. And the other thing I would toss out is you guys do a really good job of talking about this idea of syndication of content. So just having your content stack. Using your content in multiple ways.
• 26:01
  Rafi Norbert: And I think for a lot of businesses and organizations, if you're creating email campaigns already, if you are creating social content already, if you're creating videos, or taking pictures of the impact you're having in the community, all those things fit into having really, really great content on your website. So it can go both ways, right, you can take your existing marketing materials, and use them to create some comprehensive content on topics that can just be expanded. Or it goes the other way, where maybe you create that really comprehensive piece on your site. And then you break it out into a bunch of little small marketing pieces that can serve different outcomes.
• 26:34
  Becky Endicott: We are here for any level of syndication talk.
• 26:37
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:39
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, so you have pillar three, right?
• 26:41
  Rafi Norbert: Pillar three is, is I think the the one that is oftentimes the biggest stumbling block for people, but is one of the most important and it's this idea, going back to something you guys talk about all the time is digital brand building within your market and industry. So how do you demonstrate to Google and to users that when you're publishing information on a topic that your organization or company is an expert in, that information is authoritative and should be listened to? So to give you an example, out of the mission driven space, if you think about medical information online, that's a space that is highly, highly, highly regulated, and one of the big projects at Google is trying to figure out how when people search for medical questions, they are served information that is authoritative. So I don't know if anyone's noticed a change in this over time. But actually, within the last two years, Google has started really preferencing information from certain types of sources. So if you search for health questions, you'll often see information from .edu domains like a, like a Harvard blog on basic health questions. And it's because it's an area that Google really wants to get right. And they want to make sure they're serving people the most accurate information from authoritative sources. So important. And it works the same way for any industry, including the mission driven sector. So what you want to be doing as an organization, or as a business is just stacking on top of the brand building that you're already doing. So there's, there's a lot you can do in this area. And for the sake of kind of going from zero to one, which is really where I want to focus this conversation, I don't actually think you need to do that much differently. So if you think about being a business in the sector, oftentimes, if you're attending trade shows where you're doing webinars, or you're doing different co-sponsored research with other providers, it's taking that same marketing activity you are going to be doing, but making sure that you make it easy on the person you're working with, where maybe you give them a press release to publish that points back to your website. So you actually include a link back to your website that they're publishing on their site, and you're getting that, you know, reference back from from their site, their backlink in SEO words. And if you're a nonprofit organization, let's say you're having a big impact in the community, you're ending up in news stories, or you're receiving an award for your work in the impact of the community.
• 28:50
  Rafi Norbert: Just make sure that when people talk about your organization that you drop in that little thing there, you say, Hey, could you just point back to our website and just include a little hyperlink back to our homepage? And literally, that alone will take your organization from zero to one.
• 29:03
  Rafi Norbert: So don't do anything new. Just take everything that you were doing in the industry that's off your site, and just make an extra request to ask people to add a link back to your website.
• 29:11
  Rafi Norbert: And that's how you can do that third piece of starting to build the digital brand, via this process of off site backlinking.
• 29:18
  Jonathan McCoy: Okay, you talked about that so simply, but this is like powerhouse information.
• 29:21
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, if you've got board, think of all the board bios that are on all these random websites of people talking about organizations that they serve on, just talking to your board members, and having them actually turn that into a hyperlink times 20 or how many of your board members you have in activating the community, because what Rafi is talking about is this building this backlinks builds this authority.
• 29:41
  Jonathan McCoy: And I love that the authority could be this grassroots movement that can happen without any company it's like really just using your grassroots believers that Becky's talked about to really activate this like I'm so you know excited thinking about this. If you've been on our podcast, please backlink, because this will help us too, to your interview. But I just think of this is how we point traffic. This is how we can all do our 1% shift. What content do you have authority over in your own domain that you could point to to lift other people? So this is something everybody can get involved in love it.
• 30:14
  Rafi Norbert: The other thing I would toss out is I think going back to myths about SEO and I think where SEO is going I think this idea of getting people to point back to your organization or your company ultimately should be helpful. So for instance, if the idea is if people are interested in what you're doing if they're reading a story about animal shelter helped a adopt 100 puppies or something, and they're interested in adopting a puppy.
• 30:36
  Rafi Norbert: By getting that link back from the news story to your organization, you're actually helping a person find the information that they need. And it's the same with a company if you're interested in educating someone on a certain topic, and you're linking to one of your educational resources, that is ultimately really, really helpful. So one of the things that I just want everyone to keep in mind is that when you think about this process of building the digital brand, gear yourself towards trying to get references that are ultimately really useful to your end audience, if you try to force it in a way that's not useful, it's not going to be the right type of brand building, it's got to come from a place of trying to educate your end user who you're really trying to get on your site.
• 31:13
  Becky Endicott: I just feel like Dr. Norberg is in the house like professorial, teaching us how to do it. And I just have to say, as someone who is been, you know, one of Jon's Best Friends Forever, he is having the best time and this conversation get online. Look at Jon's face. I mean, it's like Christmas to Jon, and I can tell you're geeking out on this.
• 31:35
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, I mean, I'm eating it up, because I just think it's practical. And, you know, I had a, I've always had kind of consulting on the side for all these years, and I built websites. And there, there would be times when clients are like, hey, I want to pour into SEO.
• 31:47
  Jonathan McCoy: And so I had lunch with different people that tried to get to know people. And I just always thought it was mystical, like you talked about. And it's really not until we've started We Are For Good that I'm like there's more to this. And it's actually comes from a really pure place of trying to curate the best content. And so from a value alignment perspective, it just like lights me up, that we can be part of that, you know, as storytellers, as ethical storytellers, to be the answers that people are seeking, like, it really is geeking out, I'm sorry, I'm gonna try to tone down my excitement.
• 32:18
  Becky Endicott: No, I love it.
• 32:18
  Becky Endicott: And I love the connection back to storytelling. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to build human connection to our mission. So I kind of want to like go into how to convert traffic like into leads. I mean, once you've grown your online presence and inbound traffic, Rafi, what kind of advice do you have for how to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, or customers into donors? How do you keep them longer?
• 32:47
  Rafi Norbert: Man, that's a great question. I think the ultimate question when it comes to any kind of digital marketing is how do you how do you monetize or convert the individuals who are on your website into into supporters, donors, customers, whatever your end goals are, and there's a lot you can get into it. But I think where the advice is most helpful is oftentimes just going from zero to one, how do we get something up there, that's going to make us 1% better today, versus versus trying to get as deep as we possibly can at everything you do, and it almost becomes overwhelming. And then if it's overwhelming, it's useless. So when I talk to most both businesses and organizations, really the thing that I would I would focus people on is kind of did two things that you can do. The first is just give people different reasons to engage and leave information and engage with your with your brand, in a way that meets them where they are, in whatever funnel the level of like the buying funnel that they're at. So in marketing, we talk about awareness consideration decision, I know that there's a very similar kind of funnel with people think about becoming a supporter of an organization, a donor of an organization, kind of, you know, supporter, annual fund, major gifts like it, it kind of goes down like that as well. And I think just by using different resources to give people different reasons to engage with you some at the at the free level, some that require some level of sponsorship, and make those easy to find on your website. I think that's that's the simplest way to get started. So for companies, it's things like having a newsletter, or having an ebook about what you do. And the solutions that you solve, maybe having a free trial at the deeper level, maybe having a webinar in between there, and just making those interspersed across the different pages that people are arriving at. And for a nonprofit, I actually think there's a ton of commonality, right, it's having a newsletter that people can subscribe to, it is maybe having some sort of impact report of the good that you did within the community about your cause that people can download and understand, maybe it's, you know, attending an event as a volunteer, so engaging with the organization for free, and then you get into becoming a donor or becoming donor with a recurring commitment. So I think just making it easy for people, no matter where they're at, in relation to their understanding of your organization, to get involved and leave some information is is the best thing you can do. So just tactically, it's on the pages that get the most visitors just give people multiple ways to leave their information, some at a free level, some at a paid level. And that's that's all you need to do to get from zero to one.
• 35:12
  Jonathan McCoy: And I love that advice. And I practically speaking I shared this on a previous episode, but you know what you would call like pillar content or like really core content, these pieces that you're writing. If people are searching for this on Google, we talked about like someone searching for human trafficking, right now, The Exodus Road is like one or top one or two because they want to teach people about what's happening in the human trafficking world. If you go to that post, they have their donation form, like embedded on that page. Like it's so beautiful that it's like if somebody's coming there, there's all this information and they can immediately make a gift. And I just love that transferable idea of like, converting people that are curious into immediate donors, so, okay, Rafi, I mean, we could talk to you for hours, but we don't want to take up your beautiful time. And we would love to kind of circle back to we love philanthropy around here. It's it powers us, it powers, the missions that you get to work with too, and a lot of ways. And I wonder if there's a time in your life, you could take us back to a story when philanthropy has really impacted you that you would share with us today.
• 36:09
  Jonathan McCoy: Yeah, so one of the organizations that I, I love that's based out of Atlanta is an organization called, called
• 36:16
  Start: ME it's run through Emory and what they do is they basically are embedded accelerators in different communities in Atlanta, the one that I was involved in is in Clarkston, which people may not know this if they're not from Atlanta, but but Atlanta actually has one of the largest refugee communities in the country, based in based in Clarkston, which is right outside of the city. And you have a lot of really, really smart people who come into the country, but have no network or no idea how to start a business, if they're if they're new to the states. And what this organization does is they basically take all of the small business owners or people who want to start small businesses, and they run them through a multi-week accelerator where they get exposed to both more mentorship, but also educational, educational information about things that are fundamental to business operations. So accounting, law, marketing, and what is really, really cool is that oftentimes you think about accelerators as only serving basically the most privileged businesses out there.
• 37:12
  Start: It's like the people who already have the connections, the people who have easy access to money.
• 37:18
  Start: And what's cool about this organization is they're taking that model, but they're using it for businesses and business owners who don't have that same kind of access. And as a consequence of that they've helped dozens of businesses basically get started in the city of Atlanta by refugees, as well as just other different members of the community, and generated a lot of jobs through that generated,, generated a lot of income in different communities that stayed in the community. So I, as you can tell, I love entrepreneurship, and I love social enterprise. So it's one of those organizations that's close to my heart just because it's in the city I live in. And I feel like it's so important, because I happen to be really fortunate, and that I came from a background with a ton of privilege. So a lot of the questions that I've had, I've had people who I can go to who I already knew, and wow, what a blessing that is. And I didn't realize it was such a blessing until I started working with this group. And someone would tell me, yeah, you know, I came over from this country last year, and I taught myself English. And then I started this business where we refurbished old electronics, and I actually don't know anyone who can help me incorporate it. It's like, whoa, this is this is something that you're so much smarter than I am. And if we just need to help, I don't know, connect resources, where they're going to be really useful. And I feel like this organization does a great job with that.
• 38:33
  Start: And how amazing that you're able to channel now your experience, your expertise. I mean, this is something we can all get involved in locally to how can you use your talents, not just money, like I love that you share that story, it's beautiful.
• 38:44
  Becky Endicott: And it's such like a natural alignment to the things that you care about in life. And that is what I think is so cool about the nonprofit industry, you don't have to have this singular, animals or singular, you know, racial justice, it you can pour in anything and lots of things in different ways. And I just feel like Rafi, you've really brought an empowerment conversation to the podcast today. And I hope people who are listening, I hope it like ignites a little bit of bravery to just try this. Try some stuff. We talk about this all the time, I think you've broken down a lot of the fear, at least of me for SEO, because it's really doesn't seem as scary as it actually sounds. And I think that we can all try something. So speaking of one thing, we got to get to the one good thing to talk to us about what would be your one good thing you would offer up to our community today, whether it's a piece of advice or something you live by.
• 39:41
  Becky Endicott: I love, and I love talking about, but this is going to zoom out a little bit. One of the things that I think I didn't realize the power of until very recently is the power of values within an organization. So actually setting values within an organization and talking about them and trying to embody them in what you're doing. So for a while, when early on in the business, we didn't really have values. And one of the things that I've realized as we've grown a little bit and also just brought on new people is how critical values are to people understanding the right things to do in certain situations that are really important for the organization.
• 40:21
  Becky Endicott: So I'll give you an example of one value that is really I resonate a lot with and we talk about a lot in our business is this idea that indecision is the only wrong decision. When I was a camp counselor I remember, we would take the kids camping every single week. And some, we'd drive school buses, like full size school buses full of kids. And we were young at the time. So I think I was I was the 18 year old on this on this excursion. And the 22 year old leader was leading the excursion, and we had a bus full of kids. And we were driving down to this campsite. And it was like this windy, windy, little road. And we were driving down. And it was this was like pre Google Maps being live. So we didn't really, we had a Mapquest but we were...
• 41:03
  Becky Endicott: I was gonna say Mapquest that you've printed off, I remember.
• 41:07
  Rafi Norbert: I remember that, we got to this point where there Man.
• 41:10
  Rafi Norbert: was where there were like two sides, we could go, but the bus was so large that no matter which side we went down, we couldn't turn around, like we had to just make a decision. And we're freaking out. And I remember the leader I was with at the time just said, indecision is the only wrong decision, and just steered the bus to one side and we went down, we ended up being the side with the campsite so we were fortunate in that, but for some reason, that moment is like etched into my mind. So that's one of the when we rolled out values, like two years ago, that was one of the values that we rolled it out with. And I think it's been really cool. Because now as a team, when when there are different decisions, people are just making decisions, and they're saying, let me go for this, I think I've got a decent shot at being correct, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do it. And I think it's allowed us to get a lot more done. So I just, I really, I really have seen the impact of having good values at an organization. I'm hoping we can continue to iterate on our own but but I feel like that's important. And I didn't see it was important when I first started this thing.
• 42:03
  Becky Endicott: I mean, I literally just think it's so interesting one, I'm geeked out.
• 42:06
  Becky Endicott: And I love that your one good thing is something you brought back to your core value of your company. And you talked about the importance of how it has changed culture. And I love that this one value has created a culture of initiative for you, where people do not feel chained down, to go to take all that time to march up the hierarchy with ideas, and that you've really, I mean, built this culture of empowerment and go for it. And to me, that is just a culture of innovation. You're just trying stuff all the time.
• 42:44
  Becky Endicott: And if you feel like you're supported at the top level, to go and innovate and be creative.
• 42:48
  Becky Endicott: Wow. I mean, for I'm I'm heartwired, creative. And so I just think about, you know, what could happen, and the genius and the discovery and the curiosity that comes from that. And I just think that was a really genius, one good thing.
• 43:06
  Jonathan McCoy: I mean, I can't top that, but Rafi that's, that speaks to the type of leader that you are and the type of team that we've experienced on your team. So I mean, let's let's hear how to connect with y'all. And, you know, point is to the ways you all show up online, how can we follow you online pointers to all the things?
• 43:20
  Rafi Norbert: Totally. So if you are interested in learning more about Nexus, check us out on on LinkedIn, we're pretty are pretty focused in on LinkedIn, I think if you're, you know, if you are a member of the nonprofit community, I think, you know, feel free to reach out to us, we'll probably point you to some of our awesome partners within the who are serving nonprofits directly. And if you're part of the larger mission driven vendor community, feel free to reach out we've got a lot of really educational, a lot of really interesting educational opportunities focused on educating nonprofit professionals that we're trying to connect people to. And then, you know, if you need help with SEO, happy to chat about that, as well. But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find us.
• 44:03
  Jonathan McCoy: Amazing. And I'm also going to call out because I know a lot of our listeners are consultants in this space. And I think there's a lot you can learn and lean into here as you think about your own web presence and how you're partnering with content everywhere. So, so much here.
• 44:15
  Jonathan McCoy: Rafi this has filled my heart completely and has actually added to my to do list also. So thank you for both those things.
• 44:22
  Jonathan McCoy: Just really appreciate the way that y'all have shown up in the sector. Really appreciate you.
• 44:24
  Becky Endicott: Yeah, happy wedding day.
• 44:26
  Jonathan McCoy: Seriously, eight days.
• 44:29
  Rafi Norbert: Thank you guys I appreciate you having me on it's been such a pleasure and you guys are so cool. I just I think what you're doing is amazing with this podcast and the traction you guys have seen in such a short amount of time I think just speaks to how authentic you guys are, how positive you are, me like we always talked about whenever we get off a call with with the We Are For Good team is just smiling ear to ear because because you guys are just such a positive force and I just really liked what you're doing and feel so blessed that you offered to have me on and just thank you thank you for all the kind words and thanks for just being being a voice out there. I really do like the content you guys are putting out and it's just a really cool organization you guys are building.
• 45:07
  Becky Endicott: Thank you.
• 45:07
  Becky Endicott: Always rooting for Nexus. Take care.
• 45:13
  Julie Confer: Hey, friends, thanks so much for being here.
• 45:15
  Julie Confer: Did you know we create a landing page for each podcast episode with helpful links, freebies and even shareable graphics? Be sure to check it out at the link in this episode's description. You probably hear it in our voices but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before. We'd love for you to join our good community. It's free and you can think of it as After party to each podcast episode, you can sign up today at we are for good.com backslash Hello. One more thing If you loved what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating and review? It means the world to us and your support helps more people find our community.
• 45:46
  Julie Confer: Thanks friends. I'm our producer Julie Confer and our theme song is Sunray by Remy Borsboom.