Volunteer Hub

Welcome to our Volunteer hub.
All BCN volunteer activities are detailed here and are progressed online via this volunteer hub area - this approach not only helps minimise costs, but also keeps admin overheads at a minimum, ensuring we can dedicate a maximum of time and money to our cause.
In practical terms this means we are reliant on you to work unsupervised, to be proactive, and to provide regular ongoing input.


​Become Carbon Negative is only possible with your help - all of our content, from our blog articles to our social media graphics is created by volunteers. We're grateful to receive any assistance you can offer with:
Increasing our brand awareness
Increasing our social media audience
Increasing traffic to our website​​

How do I start ?

1. Follow us on social media:  
3. 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

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

​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 (eg by posting about us on their social channels) - preferably without them requiring any form of payment!

​​Promote us
Identify organisations like environmental causes, nature reserves, animal sanctuaries, zoos etc that might be sympathetic to our cause, and appeal for their help in spreading our message (eg by posting about us on their social channels, communicating our cause to their customers/supporters/employees/etc, advertising links from their website to ours, etc)

​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.
Content Creation

Help improve our written 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.
Graphical design
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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 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
Any content received will be hosted on our website and potentially shared across our social media channels.
​Other
​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.
​
​Promote our volunteering opportunities
​If you have any friends, family or colleagues who might be interested in helping us please send them our way!

​Help improve our digital presence
Please review any of our competitors websites (see FAQ below)  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) 

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 ?
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
See also our full graphical content guidelines
What are our social media channels ?
Can I put BCN on my CV?
Yes, of course, and we're happy to provide a reference if/when required.

Calendar*

Jan
1 - Veganuary
Feb
14 - Valentines day
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Mar
2 - Our birthday !!!
3 - World wildlife day
​21 - International day of forests
​26 - Earth Hour
​Jul
1 July - Plastic free july
11 - World population day
28 - World nature conservation day
Aug


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Sep
5 - Amazon day
7 - International Day of Clean Air for blue skies
22 - Car free day
​TBC - Bike to school week
Oct
4 - World Animal Day
TBC - Family Learning Festival
21 - Apple Day
31 - Halloween
Nov
1 - World Vegan Day
​5 - Bonfire Night
Dec
1 - Treecember
5 - World Soil Day
​25 - Xmas
31 - New Years Eve
* Events with hyperlinks already have content created/scheduled to be posted. Events without hyperlinks need content creating...
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