Almost Time for Back to School

At Solutions for Progress, The Benefit Bank website offers free information on FAFSA!

Why FAFSA is so important

• The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a required form for any student who is applying for financial aid distributed by the federal government.
• Colleges and universities use FAFSA information to determine eligibility for federal student aid including grants, loans and work-study.
• Federal Student Aid has billions of dollars available to help pay for college and we want to help as many students as we can receive the funds they need.

Find out more information about the difference between grants and loans. Grants do not have to be paid back but loans do.

Read “7 Myths of Financial Aid”. My favorite is;

1. 1. I make too much to qualify for aid.
   Sure, your annual income is considered in the aid calculations, but so is the price of the college. You probably won’t get aid if your child will go to a public university in your state and your family’s income exceeds $80,000. But you might qualify for nearly $25,000 in need-based aid from one of the most expensive private colleges even if you earn $150,000 to $200,000, says Myra Smith, executive director of Financial Aid Services at the College Board. In fact, a family with household income just under $450,000 could be eligible for aid if they have three or more children, with two of them in expensive colleges.

Solutions for Progress helps low-income families determine the benefits they can receive through their online service, The Benefit Bank.

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StumbleUpon Aims to Help Non-Profit

StumbleUpon wants to bring awareness to Non-Profit organizations through its “discovery engine” that shows items on the web based on the users chosen interests.

Earlier this summer, StumbleUpon started this idea by launching an ad campaign for World Food Programme. This is World Food Programme’s video thanking StumbleUpon.

Stumbling for Good plans on working with three organizations a month, choosing them based on the passion of its employees. They will help advertise and promote specific assets of the company to try and drive more traffic to the organization.

To read more about “Stumbling for Good”, go here.

Take a quick quiz to test your knowledge about the drought in the Horn of Africa and A CHILD WILL RECEIVE A WARM MEAL!

Quiz

Solutions for Progress helps low-income families determine the benefits they can receive through their online service, The Benefit Bank.

Check out SfP and TBB through their social media outlets…

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What’s up with Google+?

I haven’t jumped on the Google+ bandwagon yet but have been interested in seeing what people are saying about it…

Random fact: Google+ managed to get 20 million users in the first month of its launch. Facebook claims to have 750 million users.

Google+ is another social network website. It has its pros and cons..

Pros

• Google+ lets you categorize the people you are connected to into specific groups. Now, Facebook can do this to but Google+ makes it a lot easier. Google+ refers to this as “circles”. Your profile already comes with some circles for you to use like family, friends and acquaintances.
• +1, the way you let people on Google+ know you “liked” something, can be done anywhere on the web so you don’t have to post or share it on your wall for your friends to see.
• What you share can be limited to your circle of friends. This can be done on Facebook as well, but is much easier to do on Google+. This, I believe, helps eliminate some of the problems that can be presented when sharing TOO much information on your Facebook.
• Notifications will show up on any of your Google pages or products. If you in Gmail, using Google Maps or editing something on Google Docs, notifications about Google+ will show up.
• Google+ “Hangouts” allows you to connect with a bunch of people in real time by video chatting with up to 10 people at a time.
• You can “mute” posts. If you commented on somebody’s photo but don’t care to hear about what other people are saying about it, you can “mute” that post. That option is far easier than the way Facebook does it.

Cons

• If a user of Google+ comments on a post, that will jump to the top of the newsfeed which can be annoying if you are trying to view the most recent post. You will have to scroll through old news to get to what you would like to see.
• As of now, there is no way to advertise for your business. Google+ is strictly for people. You can not make FanPages.
• You can only search for people and not posts. That is something Facebook has had for a long time and it would be great to see a new way of searching since Google+ is new and should be offering some sort of advanced search other than the typical that Facebook already has.
• You cannot join Google+ with a Google Apps account.
• Google+ doesn’t have “groups”. In Google+ when you send out something to your “circle”, yes it goes to those individuals but if one of those individuals respond, it does not go out to everyone in your “circle”. Their circle has to mimic yours in order for those people to receive it. Facebook groups give a centralized location to share with everyone who is in that group.

Google has made it clear to users that they want to hear users feedback. Some people really think with Facebook being 7 years old now and having the time to really pick it apart, Google+ should have more to offer. They have changed a lot in the month of it being launched and have had there share of downfalls but these things need to play out for Google to really see the flaws and fix them.

The only way ANY social network really succeeds is when it has a vast amount of users. It is too early to tell what will come of Google+.

Only time will tell…

Facebook Insights & Google Analytics

We use both for the Benefit Bank Facebook page and I have been trying to research the pros and cons of both. It has been difficult to find out what one offers opposed to the other but this is what I have gathered.

Facebook Insights can be found by the administrator directly on the Facebook page. Facebook seems to give you the simple stuff like how many likes you have received, unlikes, your monthly users etc. etc. The biggest thing I think it has to offer is it tells you basically what your target group is. Based on gender and age, you can see who the majority of the people viewing your page are. For example, age 30-35 female. That is great for marketing!

Google Analytics can get very in-depth if you know what JavaScript codes to put into the pages. With these codes you can tell what people who are viewing your page are Facebook users vs. non Facebook users. Google Analytics can be used for all of your websites under one Google ID which is very convenient. The big thing Google does is trafficking, which lets you know where the people are coming from to get to your website. They also let you how long a user has been on a specific page.

View the Benefit Bank Facebook page and check out our social media outlets!

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Tip on How to View All Images on a Webpage

During my time here, I have been tracking what has been being used on the Solutions for Progress and The Benefit Bank websites. I produced an excel spreadsheet of every document, PDF, image, video etc. on the website so the company could have a better idea of what could be archived or trashed within the computer. This is our attempt at becoming more efficient when it comes to Document Management.

We discovered a great way to see what is being used on a certain webpage when it came to images…

1. Right click on the page.

2. Click on “View Page Info”.

3. Click on the “Media” tab on the top.

This shows you every single image that is being displayed on that webpage. Even down to the things that are hardly visible to the eye. If an image shows up twice on that webpage, it will only show up once in the catalog. This has been very useful to us. The only problem we have had with it is that when trying to keep a running tab of every page within the websites, there are often repeats of images from page to page. It won’t repeat an image that is seen twice on ONE webpage but if it used again on another webpage, it will show up again.

You can copy all the images or just one and save them anywhere you want to in your computer!

Hope this comes in handy for you!

Check out SfP and TBB through their social media outlets…

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Beat the Heat with LIHEAP!

Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, aka LIHEAP provides assistance with not only keeping your home warm, but cooling it down.

Check out the LIHEAP page on the TBB website for more information and tips on how to keep your home energy costs down.

These are my favorite from the list!

• Drapes and curtains made of light-colored fabrics reflect much of the sun’s rays and help reduce heat gain. The tighter the curtain is to the wall, the better it will reduce heat gain. Two-layered drapes are most effective for both summer cooling and winter heating.
• Run dishwashers, dryers and washing machines during the evening hours (after 7 p.m.) when energy consumption is lower.
• Don’t place lamps or TVs near an air conditioning thermostat. The heat from these appliances will cause the air conditioner to run longer.

Check out SfP and TBB through their social media outlets…

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Blogging: A Great Marketing Tool

Blogging can be very beneficial to Marketing because it is  interactive and collaborative. Companies can use it to receive feedback from customers while customers can use it to find out about features and pros and cons about a product or service.

57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.

Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.

Check out the full article with more statistics about the internet and marketing: 12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

I will be blogging all about my findings with my time at Solutions for Progress and hopefully, you can explore how The Benefit Bank can help!

Setting up a blog on WordPress is easy. All you have to do is sign up and start to write! There are great features to change the look of your blog on the left, under Appearance. Using the icons above where you are writing, you can insert hyperlinks and embedded videos.

One thing I am having trouble with is my header. None of the ones I have tried to upload will fit! Small, medium, large- it doesn’t matter!

Check out SfP and TBB through their social media outlets…

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