We’re covering the most important elements of taming your website copy in Keep, Cut or Kill: Writing for the Web webinar on September 2. We’ll reveal how to plan for a copy overhaul, how to be merciless with what you do have, and how to optimize what’s left. You’ll get practical techniques to purge and polish.

The 30-minute presentation is lead by our CEO Monique Cuvelier, who spent 20 years as a journalist and web editor. Here are a few ideas from the talk as a preview:

Know your audience first.

You need to be able to put yourself into your readers’ shoes before you know how to speak to them. Teens will respond to different language than Baby Boomers will.

Be merciless.

Website copy has a tendency to grow and expand, especially over time. Every once in a while, review your copy and be totally honest with yourself. Do you need it?

Clean up.

When you’ve cleared the website clutter and you’re left with the content that really should be there, make sure it reads well. Optimize for web reading, and people will respond better.

>> Sign up for the live event

September 2
2 p.m. Eastern
Online

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The more you know about the people who visit your website, the better. Creating a profile of the people who visit your organization site can help you make better decisions about what you can do for them.

Your website should be the central repository for this research. Here are a few tools you can add to your existing website to compile info on your users.

Feedback forms.

A simple feedback form can gather so much. Tuck these around your website soliciting comments, and you’ll start learning more about who your people are.

Surveys.

If you want serious feedback, host a survey. If you build this into your website, you can keep names, contact information and responses local to your website rather than a third-party service. You can also set it up so you receive e-mail alerts every time someone submits a response.

E-newsletters.

E-newsletters are good sources of information as well as good ways to deliver targeted information to your subscribers. Make sure you have a sign-up form on your website as well as archives.

Call (888) 810-9109 or e-mail if you want demos or pricing.

August Birthday Goodie: Free Webinar

We’re halfway through our 10th year and still celebrating. For August, we asked you what you wanted for a freebie, and you spoke. You want a crash course on how to write for the web. We’re taking registrations through August, so sign up now for this handy session on how to fine-tune your writing to appeal to online readers.

Keep, Cut or Kill: Writing for the Web is Sept. 2, 2010 at 2 p.m. Eastern.

>> Register now!

It’s true that your website should be a reflection of your organization’s goals and audience, but there are a few proven tools that we suggest again and again because they simply work. They make a more interactive website. They drive more support. They deliver information most efficiently.

I happen to be right, but you don’t have to take my word for it. I ran a check against some of best top non-profit websites out there – the ones that were official nominees for the 14th annual Webby awards – to see what tools they had on their homepages.

Here are the top eight and why they work so well. Keep reading and you’ll see the breakdown for Teenage Cancer Trust, ASPCA, One, SocialVibe and The Nature Conservancy.

Search

There’s only so much information you can cram onto your homepage. Search provides a way for website users to tap into your reservoir of information.

Donate button

You’ve got to earn money, and people want to give it. Don’t stand in their way.

Newsletter

Establish a regular newsletter and then encourage people to sign up. This way you can remind them that you exist and that what you do matters.

Slide show

Slide shows are an efficient way to display evocative, image-based content in a confined space.

Blog

Blogs not only keep your constituency informed of what you’re doing, but they also help fill your website with content. That gives search engines more to latch onto, and therefore drive more people to your website.

Social media plug-in

Whether you have an initiative on Facebook or Twitter or some other social networking platform, bring it into your website. It serves as a cross-promotional element and gives people other ways to interact with you.

Featured stories

Websites can go stale quickly, but a list of featured stories or news items can keep it fresh.

Here are the tools those top five non-profits are using on their websites. Look familiar?

Teenage Cancer Trust

• Search
• Donate button
• Slide show
• Latest news
• Newsletter
• Directory/support network

ASPCA

• Search
• Join now button
• Donate button
• Newsletter
• Highlighted stories
• Online shop
• Social media accounts

One

• Join now button
• Search
• Slide show
• Newsletter
• Blog
• Social media accounts

SocialVibe

• Slide show
• Newsletter
• Facebook link
• Twitter feed
• Blog

The Nature Conservancy

• Search
• Newsletter
• Slide show
• Interactive map
• Social share
• Social media accounts

Birthday Cake Cupcake by clevercupcakes, on Flickr

Writing is hard work! Make sure your blog posts aren’t tarnished by easily avoidable mistakes. Fret no longer with our free Perfect Blogging Checklist.

>> Get a copy of our Perfect Blogging Checklist now!

Tell your friends and colleagues to get a copy, and you can be reading better blogs too.

It’s all in celebration of Talance’s 10th anniversary. Check back every month of 2010 for a new birthday goodie.

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The best websites are organized websites. Plan your pages with a content analysis before you write one word. Here’s how to start:

Define your writing style.

You might appear in some of the most distinguished academic publications in the nation, but is that what your website visitors read? If they’re teens looking for activism opportunities, probably not. Think about the writing style (serious, academic, slangy, sensational) they’re most likely to respond to before you start to write.

Create categories.

Divide your existing or to-be-written pages into main categories. They may align with your menu options, but don’t think too much about that yet. Just group pages into the most important categories. Better to be general at this early stage than overly specific.

Make a content inventory.

Take a close look at the pages you already have and decide if they fit into your categories. If there are gaps, plan for new pages. Add all pages – existing or planned-for – into a spreadsheet. Add columns for categories, intended audience members, who’s responsible for writing each page, importance, topics, keywords or anything else you might notice.

This kind of analysis takes work, but it’s the best way to know that you’re saying what you need to say. It will also help you enlist the right authors and give you a clear understanding of the most vital – and outdated – information on your website.

Choice is something we think we want, but then when we get it, we feel overwhelmed and regret ever having asked for it. When it comes to social media, we are spoiled filthy rotten with choice. Talk about overwhelmed. Every day seems to bring a new networking tool, a new widget, a new piece of research. If you’ve put off learning about what social media can bring to your organization thus far, you’re likely to feel a solid understanding slip further away with each new day.

But learning about social media is not impossible, and you stand to gain so much by using social networking tools that it’s worth making an investment in at least understanding what they’re about.

Just to show you that you really can do it, we’re putting together a plan to get you from zero to “Oh, now I get it!” in five days. By Friday, you’ll have an understanding of the most useful social media services and the foundation for assembling your own social media plan.

Ideally, set aside an hour each day to dedicate to your one-week education. It doesn’t have to be 60 whole minutes at a time; feel free to break that up into four 15-minute chunks. You’ll probably find you know more than you thought you did and can breeze through our recommendations for the day.

Day 1: Blogs

Social media widgets may come and may go, but blogs are here to stay. They take dedication and work, but they offer the best payoff for your efforts.

Now take some time to browse through some blogs and think about how they’re structured. Don’t simply read the postings; page through them. Get your notebook out and jot down your thoughts on:

• >> Anatomy of a blog, from pages to comments to RSS feeds. How are your blogs structured? Where do the links take you?
• >> How is the blog published? Is it on a program like Wordpress or Blogger? How does it fit in with the publisher’s website?
• >> Pay attention to the postings that have comments, and the ones that don’t. Do you see any patterns?
• >> Note where the publisher is focusing their blog and to whom they’re writing, as all winning blogs have a tight focus and clear audience. Audiences need to know what they’re getting.

You may already have a list of your favorites, so use those as a starting point. If you need help finding some blogs, turn to Google’s Blog Search to look up topics you want to know more about.

When you’ve spent some time reading through these blogs, jot some notes on what you like and what you think works, because you can use these notes to structure your own.

Tomorrow: get ready to learn about Facebook.

[Read the other posts in our series 5 Days to Social Media Smarts.]

Establishing a social media marketing plan requires heaps of work. Of course you want to know how much you’re getting out of all the hard work you’re putting into one. But the trouble with boiling down ROI on a social marketing effort is, “… you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”

This is according to a helpful post from Jason Falls, who writes for Social Media Explorer. He says every session on measuring ROI in social media is a waste of time. That seems extreme to me – it’s only a waste if your “return” is monetary – but I understand his point. Embarking on a social media plan is more about getting out there and joining in the conversation than converting sales.

But it makes sense for churches, synagogues and non-profits, where the goal is to join in the conversation. The point is to figure out how you’re going to quantify your social effort.