Volunteer hub

How do I start ?

1. Register as a volunteer if you haven't already here

3. Follow us on social media:

5. View our BCN induction here

2. Familiarise yourself with our company website www.BecomeCarbonNegative.com

4. If you are willing for your photo to appear on our website as a member of our team (see here) please send a photo to Info@BecomeCarbonNegative.com

6. Join us
If you’re able to join our cause as a supporter as well as a volunteer, please do !

OK, How can I help ?

Volunteers are free to volunteer to help with any of the below activities - this can be based on either where you feel your areas of expertise would be best utilised, or where you would like to gain experience in new areas.
We will also be adding new activities over the course of time & communicating to volunteers when these arise.

Social & PR

Please share/like/retweet any social media posts you see from us
In addition to increasing the reach of these posts this simple activity further helps us as many social media platforms prioritise what their users see based on calculations of interactions such as these.

Share our content
We have a range of graphical an written content designed to be shareable on social media in order to help build awareness of our cause.

visit our range of shareable graphical content

visit our range of shareable written content

Create backlinks for us
A backlink is when another website links to our site. The more backlinks we have the better our search engine ranking becomes, and of course it is also free advertising!
Possible targets for backlinks can include forums, blogs, discussions, etc.
For further assistance, click here for help on how to create backlinks, or of course feel free to perform your own research on the strategy.

Influencers
Identify social media influencers that have some level of interest in environmental issues, so might be sympathetic to our cause, and appeal for their help in spreading our message (preferably without requiring any form of payment!)

view example approach letter

Content Creation

Help improve our content
Please select one of our existing feature articles located here, perform your own research on the subject, and review our article with a view to:

spotting any spelling or grammar mistakes
expanding on to add more content, particularly where the current article is short
finding opportunities for adding further links within, either to internal BCN pages or to external sources
Identifying where we have UK-specific references whether these can be replaced with more global equivalents, or more global equivalents added
Identifying any other suggested improvements

Author a new feature article
Choose your own topic (Environmental related) for publishing on our website and social media channels.
Alternatively, choose an event from our calendar section at the bottom of this page to author content about.

view existing content examples

view written content guidelines

submit written content

Graphical design

Create new infographics
Create sharable infographics to help position BCN as an authority on the topic of becoming carbon negative. Driving home simple points around the effects of being carbon negative, what you can do, facts/figures/statistics etc.

Create environmental meme's
Create sharable meme images based on environmental themes, to be shared socially, increasing awareness of BCN.

Create quote graphics
Create sharable graphic images containing relevant environmental quotes, to be (hopefully) shared socially, increasing awareness of BCN.

Create educational content
To be used by schools/other educational establishments, suggest this is based on:
a) The kind of educational content available from our competitors (see FAQ below)
b) Information drawn from our website
c) Your own research

view previous examples

view graphical guidelines

Submit graphical content

Any content received will be hosted on our website and potentially shared across our social media channels.

Other

Promote our cause
Identify organisations like environmental causes, nature reserves, animal sanctuaries, zoos etc might be sympathetic to our cause, and appeal for their help in spreading our message.

view example approach letter

Promote our partnerships
We are always open to partnerships with new business and organisations. Please review the partnerships page of our website and if you are a position to promote our partnership opportunities to anyone such as your own employer, or any organisations you are part of this would be appreciated.

Visit our partnerships page

Promote our volunteering opportunities
If you have any friends, family or colleagues who might be interested in helping us please send them our way!

visit our introductory volunteering page

Help improve our digital presence
Please source (FAQ below) any of our competitors websites and/or their social channels, familiarise yourself with these and then compare them to our own. If you're able to suggest any improvements to our digital presence we'd welcome them!

Help improve our SEO
Any suggested SEO improvements for our website are also welcome.

Help improve our events calendar
Any suggested additional environmental-related events are welcome (see calendar at bottom of page)

submit improvement suggestions

FAQ

Do we have a Blog ?

We do, but our "blog" is called "features". It is located here.
The reason for the naming convention is that our research showed that a "blog" is perceived by most people as being time-sensitive, eg if a viewer were to see a blog article that was months old (or perhaps even weeks old) they would think it out of date.
This would therefore lead to an increased workload for us to continually update/produce fresh content.
The advantage of calling it "Features" is that content can be evergreen, eg relevant for ever. A user could in theory stumble on one of our feature articles years down the line and it still be of interest, and there is no perception of being out of date.
All of which not only reduces our workload, but also helps our SEO with content being present for longer.

DO we issue a newsletter ?

Yes, we do issue regular comms to our subscribed supporters, updating them on their tree-planting progress.
No, we don't gather email addresses with the intention of issuing any kind of newsletter. Our view is that most people treat these kind of emails as spam and, even if it is something they voluntarily signed up to for, these emails are more often-than-not just instantly deleted by the recipient.
We decided that for the amount of effort it would take creating/managing these kind of communications, for it to just be instantly deleted by most recipients, that it really wasn't a very productive use of our time.
We thought our time could be better spent creating online articles, and social posts which can instead be there available online for anyone to read for eternity. And that for anyone interested in receiving these kind of communications then the ability for them to follow our social channels for posts linking to our online articles would be a better approach.

Are we creating any video content ?

We have explored this in the past, but it proved to be a very time-consuming exercise. It might be a strategy we explore in the future, but for the moment we are concentrating our efforts on graphical and written content.

Where can I find royalty-free images to use ?

We recommend Freepik, Unsplash, or Pexels

Who are our competitors ?

Treedom
Ecologi
carbonfootprint.com
One Tree Planted
Tree-Nation
The Tree Council
Carbonfund.org
ClimateCare

What are the key words/phrases we are targeting ?

Sustainable
Environment
Climate Change
Save The Planet
Sustainability
Global Warming
Eco Friendly
Environmental
Environmentally Friendly
Planet Friendly
Planet Earth
Ecology
Trees
Greenery
Pollution
Deforestation
Aim higher than carbon neutral
Give back to the environment
Making a positive impact
Making a positive difference

What are the key guidelines I need to consider when creating WRITTEN content ?

Content should be evergreen, wherever possible. IE it shouldn't be time limited and should be designed to still be relevant months/years in the future.
It should be aimed at a global audience, wherever possible. local (such as UK specific) references should be limited
Content should aim to include internal links to other pages or posts on the BCN website, and/or external links, such as to sources used during the features post's research.
It should aim to include key words/phrases from our key word/phrase list (see above)
Any references to our website should be in the format "www.BecomeCarbonNegative.com" (note the capitals/lower-case)
The abbreviation "BCN" should only be used internally.
Please do not use the term “Carbon Footprint”, please use an alternative such as “carbon impact” or “carbon generated” or similar.
Written content should be thoroughly checked for grammar, spelling, factual statements and working links

See also our full written content guidelines

WHAT ARE THE KEY GUIDELINES I NEED TO CONSIDER WHEN CREATING gRAPHICAL CONTENT ?

Images should be in a square format
Any images used should be royalty-free
All graphical content should contain our URL in the format "www.BecomeCarbonNegative.com" (note the capitals/lower-case) as part of the image

What are our social media channels ?

https://www.facebook.com/BecomeCarbonNegative
https://twitter.com/BecomeCarbonNeg
https://www.instagram.com/becomecarbonnegative/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/become-carbon-negative/
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/becomecarbonnegative/

Can I put BCN on my CV?

Yes, of course, and we're happy to provide a reference if/when required.