What we’re reading this week:

10 Examples of E-newsletter Footers and Headers with Social Links
While working on a redesign of his newsletter, Ben, a blogger for e-newsletter service MailChimp, collected standards and best practices. Here’s what he found.

How To Split Up the US
A very cool visualization that represents how relationships develop across geographical boundaries in 210 million public Facebook profiles. It helps understand how your social network forms and travels.

Measuring Type
“A selection of the most commonly used typefaces were compared for how economical they are with the amount of ink which they use at the same point size. Large scale renditions of the typefaces were drawn out with ballpoint pens, allowing the remaining ink levels to display the ink efficiency of each typeface.”

Articles on Nonprofit Marketing and Communications
Long list of helpful articles on how non-profiters can market. Via kylacromer on Twitter.

This is a guest post from some of our favorite clients: Lauren Dean, Manager of Communications & Public Awareness, and Allison Smith, Highland Street Ambassador of Mentoring, at Mass Mentoring Partnership. We asked Lauren what blogs she turns to regularly for help running her job at a major non-profit.

Top 5 Blogs

1. Nonprofit Tech 2.0
Bookmark this on your favorites right now. Every non-profit interested in using social media or actively using it should be reading this blog that is dedicated to “helping nonprofit organizations utilize the Internet as a tool for social change.” Its creator, Heather Mansfield, is the owner of DIOSNA|Communications and has over 15 years of non-profit fundraising and online community organizing experience. She brings it all to her blog, introducing new social media tools beyond the normal Facebook and Twitter, and thinks outside the box with fresh ideas to spice up your non-profit’s Web presence.

2. Beth’s Blog
I really enjoy good and informative graphs, therefore I read Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media. Beth Kanter is a tour de force when it comes to social media, having written on the subject extensively, and it is no wonder why she was named one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media.” After being introduced to her blog early on last year, it has been a mainstay on my top visited Web sites.

3. Something for the Ladies
Every day needs to have a good soundtrack. On the days when I am bored with my Ipod I turn to “Something For the Ladies” for music. It is a great showcase of music that I wouldn’t necessarily hear if not for this blog. And since I am a lady, it is seemingly appropriate.

4. Mashable
These people are Web gurus! Really. The site neatly packages Web 2.0 and social media news for your consumption – a quick rundown of today’s posts on the home page include business deals, free offers, job postings, trends, and commentary. Whew! Best of all, this well-rounded collection of posts is aimed at every social media audience imaginable, whether you’re an early adopter or enthusiast; business person or non-profit worker; marketer or engineer.

5. Kath Eats Real Food
OK, so this is not work-related. But this food blog mesmerizes me! Kath lost 31 pounds through transforming her eating habits and adapting more exercise, and her blog is dedicated to her daily consumption and activities…and she takes some pretty good pictures of her food. I like it because she is such a varied, healthy eater and the blog gives me new ideas of foods I should try. While she might eat healthier than most people, she also eats rather normally – the girl likes her snacks! She’s on her way to becoming a registered dietitian because of her new-found appreciation for healthfulness, as well as a desire to help others.

Based in Boston, Mass Mentoring Partnership is the only statewide organization solely dedicated to strategically expanding quality youth mentoring in Massachusetts. As the umbrella organization for more than 165 mentoring programs across the state, we provide them with training, technical assistance, networking, advocacy, recruitment support and resources. Read more on the Mass Mentoring blog.

[Photo credit: 10 by Phae, on Flickr]

It’s the second month of our 10th year anniversary bash, and we’ve just kicked off a new deal. From now until February 28, get 10% off anything.

Yup, anything.

This one only lasts for a month. Click here and start saving. Hurry!

Free Web stuff has never been more available nor more overwhelming. It’s easy for a budget-conscious non-profit or other small organization to glom on to any of the thousands of freebie apps out there and out of eventual frustration, opt for a paid service.

On the flip side, it’s easy to be deluded into thinking free services can do anything a paid service can do. That’s one mistake that can get expensive. It’s important to pull out the cash when it’s worth it. Even if you save a bit, it helps.

I’m always scouting around for free services and use a litany every day. I can’t name them all here, but here are five of my faves that I turn to regularly.

Free Apps

1. Netvibes is a personal Web browser start page that corrals RSS feeds, news updates, to-do lists and more.

2. Clicky is streamlined and easy-to-use Web analytics software.

3. Remember the Milk is a cute, simple and effective way of managing tasks. Nice for keeping track of web projects.

4. “Google Notebook helps you collect notes and information from the web for anything you might be doing—researching a trip, planning a purchase, or putting together a dinner party.” Useful when bookmarking won’t do.

5. Fax Zero lets you upload and send faxes for free.

Want more?

Monique Cuvelier will be sitting on a panel about free and cheap online tools at the eBiz Symposium in Arlington, MA, on Friday, Oct., 23, 8:00am – 4:30pm. Hope to see you there!

Too many websites ignore accessibility. But the ability to let people with visual or other constraints (like people using iPhones who can’t see Flash) certainly notice when they can’t use a website. The upshot: they never return.

Here are three sites you can use to help make it easier for people to use your site:

Colour Contrast Check
“The Colour Contrast Check Tool allows to specify a foreground and a background colour and determine if they provide enough of a contrast “when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen”

WAVE
“Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.”

Browsershots
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers.

Have we told you lately how much we love you?

Well, let’s fix that right now by telling you July is the kick-off of customer appreciation month at Talance. Pick up your $150 gift card to use for any new or existing development or design on a Talance website. Use it either on its own or apply it toward something bigger.

We’ll keep sharing the love on our Facebook page, so join the fan club so you can get deals, specials and giveaways throughout July.

Hope you take us up on our offer. It’s also transferable, so pass it on if you know of someone who needs the help on a new project.

Number crunching is the kind of art you don’t appreciate fully until you have to do it. As we were analyzing the data from the social media report, one of the biggest challenges we had was finding the right kind of chart to represent the trends we were seeing.

A big help would have been Chart Advisor, a little experiment from Microsoft Office Labs. This division plays around with prototypes and ideas that you can try before they’re fully released. Chart Advisor, according to the website, “ … was created as a concept test to explore new ways Excel users can create graphs quickly and effectively. Based on the data in your spreadsheet, it identifies, ranks, and displays an array of charts most relevant to you so you can make the most out of your presentation.”

Give it a shot and see if it helps you crunch your numbers.

This Halloween I might dress as the economy. I can’t think of any scarier. You’re right to be scared too, especially if you’re a nonprofit and beholden to funders, because you’ve got to make the case why you need a good website.

Hold on. Reality check: you aren’t thinking of cutting funding for your own website, are you? That would be a grave mistake. Websites are not only the public face of your organization, but the best tool you have to information and create a community on a budget.

Now that we’ve got that straight, let’s look at the top 10 things your website should have so that it gives you a good return on your investment. And just hanging in there won’t cut it. People will stop visiting your site – and thinking about your organization – if they don’t see some worthwhile action happening online. This is one of those times you need to invest.

In no particular order (because they’re all important), here are 10 things your website simply must have and that will wind up saving you money.

1. Contact form. You can always post your e-mail address on your website, but be prepared to be overrun with spam. Avoid this by putting a contact form on your site to make it easy for your website visitors to reach you and to avoid spammers at the same time. You might also think of adding a Captcha to your form.

2. A place for feedback. This could be a contact form, but better yet, let your website visitors leave comments. This might be on your blog, on news postings or on articles. You can also allow ratings, which lets people cast their vote.

3. Consistent navigation. Make sure people know where to go on your site by putting your navigation in the same place everywhere.

4. Regularly updated information. Freshness keeps people coming back. At the very least, make sure you’re cycling through new content on the homepage on a weekly basis. Blogs and Twitter accounts make this an even easier way to create an online community through content.

5. Analytics. Try a tool such as Clicky or Google Analytics to find out when people are coming to your site, where they’re from and a whole load of other stuff. Analytics tools are way more powerful than a counter.

6. Donate now button. If you’re a nonprofit that accepts donations from a constituency, make it clear and easy.

7. Address front and center. A street address. With a phone number. Do it.

8. Search tool – for your site, not someone else’s. A search box will help your visitors find exactly what they need. But don’t make the mistake of putting a Google search box or a search tool from another site on yours. You just make it easier for people to leave.

9. Really good URLs. This starts with your web address (I know nonprofits are swimming in alphabet soup, but don’t make everyone else guess your acronym). Then make sure you have Clean URLs installed throughout.

10. A CMS. A content management system will make these things a bajillion times easier to do if you have a publishing system in place. Here’s how we do it.

If you use GrandCentral for free phone call service, you’ll be happy to hear Google is releasing Google Voice. It’s only open to GrandCentral users currently, but will be open to a wider audience soon.

A few highlights of Google Voice:

• A single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones
• Voicemail
• Transcripts of your voicemail
• Archive and search text messages you send and receive

Check out the features to see how it works: https://www.google.com/voice/about

Usability is one of my favorite subjects, because it’s so often ignored yet it’s so utterly necessary to the success of any online project. If someone doesn’t understand how to use your website, what use is it? Your web projects have got to be easy, easy, easy for visitors to use.

You should be thinking about user-friendly design from day one, but you should also be continually refining what you’ve got. There are numerous online tools out there you can use to help you evaluate the usability success of your web projects, but here are five I recommend for learning more about how people use your site. You can also check out previous postings on usability.

1. SUS – A quick and dirty usability scale (Word doc). One of the best ways of finding out how people feel about your web project is to simply ask them. This template from the Usability.gov website is a great place to start when thinking about questions. You can either distribute this document or turn to a tool like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang to ask for feedback on your site.
2. Color Contrast Analyzer Juicy Studio. Many more people than you probably think have trouble picking up all colors, maybe as many as one in 10. Make sure your design has high contrast colors – no black on blue or yellow on white. Try a tool like Color Contrast Analyzer Color Analysis to choose the right colors for your web site.
3. AnyBrowser.com. We all become used to looking at websites on our own computer screens, but they’re not all set at the same resolution. It’s a good idea to test your site on various browser sizes so you can see how it shows up for others. This site helps you do it easily.
4. BrowserCam. This tool lets you see what your site looks like if you’re viewing it from a Mac, PC, Blackberry or any number of other operating systems or browsers like IE or Firefox. Extremely useful to view your site through this before you launch.
5. StomperNet Scrutinizer. Organizations with big bucks have the money to spend on eye tracking programs, where they actually record where people look on a webpage and are able to figure out what people are seeing or aren’t seeing. StomperScrutinizer is the poor man’s alternative, which is a browser that tracks the mouse and forces the eye to look at the location of the mouse.