How to Reach a World Audience for Free

General Topics: 

There are large and small service projects around the world.  Those involved with all these projects usually agree that there are benefits from reaching a world audience with their message.

One obvious benefit is attracting allies and even financing for the service project.  But simply informing about these projects adds to the world's collective awareness and is part of the gradual, incremental process of social change.

So if informing the world about our service project (or even the need for a service project) is a good thing, how does one go about doing that?

To answer that question, first let's consider how information reaches people today.  There are really only 2 ways:

  1. Information is discovered "accidentally," via mass media:  For example, you "heard it on the news."  This includes most information received via television, radio, and newspapers.
  2. The information is sought out.

For most non-profit service projects, use of mass media (#1) is not an option due to the expense.

So let's look at #2, "information is sought out."  In the "old days," to find information you would go to a library and look for books and magazine articles on your subject of interest.

Of course, not many people do this today.  In modern times, people (hundreds of millions of people around the world every day*) turn to the Internet search engines to find information on a topic of interest.  This has allowed huge amounts of information to be available faster and easier and at lower cost than ever before.

It follows that to get your message to the world, all you have to do is get it published on a webpage with high search engine rankings.

If your message involves service to humanity (which includes topics such as environmental protection, animal protection, sustainable development, peace negotiations, etc.), this website is an excellent, free resource.  Theoservice.org has outstanding search engine rankings for almost every article we publish.

Take for example the subject of help for Tibetan orphanages.  This is one of TOS-USA's service projects.  Even though TOS-USA is not devoted to orphanages, as-of Dec. 31, 2010 our article maintains the #1 position in Google for a search on the keywords "help Tibetan orphanages" (no quotes):

For a search on Yahoo, the ranking is #2:

It is not necessary to become a site member in order to post articles.  You can submit articles by emailing the administrator.

* Google gets over 2.5 billion searches a day.

see all For the Love of Life issues
see all Publications