It’s the gift that keeps on giving: a new online marketing and promotion tip every week. As part of our year-long birthday festivities, we’re celebrating by giving away a new e-newsletter.

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One short and sweet tip each week, all year long. What could be easier?

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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

1. They’re not all using their desktop computers.

Seen all those people trying to meld with their Blackberries? They may be looking at your site on that thing, so make sure it looks good.

2. They have the patience of a puppy chugging espresso.

Get to the point. Fast.

3. They like pretty things, but value efficient navigation more.

Designers do funny things when they get hold of sites. They make them look beautiful, but don’t always think about what they’re supposed to do.

4. They don’t always like slide shows.

Slide shows often go nowhere. Sometimes they want to get directly to the meat.

5. They love trusted recommendations.

Think of what partners and relationships you can recommend that actually do your users a service. It’s karmic – it’ll come around to you.

6. Pop-ups.

They make them go away and hate you a little bit.

7. They adore before and after stories.

This should set off little bells amongst fundraisers.

8. Forcing behavior.

Listen, people will sign up/donate/attend if they want to. Don’t slap them around with a request.

9. iPads, iPods and anything that handles apps.

Do you have an inner app? Think what apps provide, and see what something similar might do for your website.

10. Egotism.

Talk about your capabilities and successes, but don’t go on and on about why you’re the best. Total turn off.

We talk a lot about discovering who your audience is and talking directly to them through your website. If you’ve been a faithful reader, you know by now that it’s an exercise in self-aggrandizing to focus the website on the big wigs at your organization. However, you should also be looking at less visible audiences.

Let’s say you’re a social services agency, and you say, “Our audience members are the people who come in for treatment or services.” Good start, and your website should make it clear to those people how to do things like book appointments and give feedback on services they’ve received. But you have more work to do.

If you’re that social services agency, think about what you can add to your website to address these additional audiences:

Local and regional governments.

You’ll want to swap information with them and also receive client referrals. Make it easy by providing clear channels and maybe even building networks on the website to facilitate the flow of data.

The locals.

Social care businesses occupy an important segment of the community, so remember to engage the people around you who may one day depend upon you. They are one of your strongest sources of new clients, so think about how you can make it easy to include them.

Partner organizations.

The other social care, transport, hospitals, education, law enforcement, housing services, leisure services and benefit entitlement services all depend on you for information and vice versa. Create a strong connection to them through technology, and you’ll serve yourself better, as well as your clients.

Your staff.

I’m not talking about putting biographical information on the staff pages. I’m talking about how your website should support your field staff in their daily activities.

The key is to think about your website not as just a way to push information to your primary audience, but to also think about it as a connecter throughout your community. This is the kind of thinking that will help you and your website reach out to new people and make them better cared for while making your website a worthwhile investment.

You’d never throw a party without sending invitations. Who wants to sit alone with four dozen spinach triangles and a couple cases of beer? (If you just answered, “I do!” then you might want to get out a little.)

That’s effectively what you’re doing if you’re like one of the many people I talk who aim to have an “interactive” website but don’t kick-start the festivities. They expect people to start participating, yet they don’t tell anyone what’s happening or make it a destination worth visiting.

It helps to think of your website as a venue where the party never ends. An always open house. How do you do this? By applying some of the same principles you would to any bash you host.

1. Send out invites.

If you know how to reach them online, you can invite them through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, listservs or however you normally chat with them. Are your partygoers the type to read a paper invite over an electronic one? Put it in the mail. The point is to invite them. Check out 18 Ways To Promote Your Website for ideas.

2. Keep inviting.

Remember, you website isn’t the one-time event of the year. It’s the ongoing event of the decade. Inform people they’re welcome to drop by any time. And then keep inviting them. People forget, have dentist appointments, get interrupted, so you need to keep the invites coming.

3. Plan something fun.

You don’t have to whack a piñata every time you throw a shindig, but people minimally expect snacks, drinks and good music. Why would they come to your website if there weren’t some kind of payoff? Make it worth their while, and they’ll keep coming.

4. Take pictures.

You know how weddings nowadays have disposable cameras in the middle of the tables? It’s because everybody likes to see themselves and their buddies participating. That transfers to your website too, whether it’s actual photos of the people you know or representations of them.

5. Make it pretty.

Picking up the dirty socks from the sofa and doing the dishes translates into fixing broken pictures and links and correcting typos. Read our Spring Cleaning guide so you can get everything sparkling before the party starts.

6. Plan for amounts.

In the event-planning world, you need to know who’s attending your party so you rent a big enough space, have enough canapés and staff appropriately. If you have the kind of website that’s likely to receive a surge in traffic, make sure you’re expecting it. If you aren’t, people might receive a message that the website isn’t available. Up your hosting account, talk to your webmaster about planning for what happens if 100 people try to click the same thing at once.

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

Never one to turn down a free bagel, I sent away for a coupon from my friendly neighborhood bagel shop. They e-mailed it, as promised, but without any regard for the way most e-mail programs by default disable images. Because the entire thing is an image, I couldn’t tell what arrived in my in-box, and I almost deleted it before recognizing the subject line.

Here’s what I was looking at:

What happens if you go picture-bonkers

The lesson? Use images judiciously in your outgoing messages. And always make sure you use ALT text in case pictures don’t display.

One of the first questions we ask during the kickoff of a new project is, “Who’s taking ownership of this project?” It’s incredible how many times that answer is, “Nobody.”

Unless you plan to let your website turn into a ghost town, put somebody in charge. Appointing no one as the website manager will have one of two outcomes: no one will do anything and your site will rot, or someone will do everything, but you’ll never respect or realize the amount of work they do.

Being a website manager is a big job. Bigger than you may realize. This is often the go-to person for all questions and updates for the website. If anyone wants something done, it falls to them. And the job doesn’t end. When the web development project is over, you take over updates and maintenance.

OK, now I’ve convinced you that you need to appoint someone as the website manager, and that their job is an important one. But who to appoint? Look for someone who …

Knows a little (not not necessarily a lot) about how web pages are built

Contrary to popular belief, whoever manages your website does no need to be a techno-wiz. If you need any heavy lifting done, it’s usually easier and cheaper to ask your web development company to help out. Of course, providing you have a good relationship with them. The majority of updates to your site will be tweaks here and there, which are mostly text changes. It is helpful if your web manager knows what a P-tag is and has monkeyed around with a content management system or two.

Is wildly organized

To work well with a computer, it helps to think a little like a computer. I’m still talking carbon-based life form, but that life form should be very organized. This person should be keep schedules and be good at documenting methods for updates and changes. They should have systems for organizing copy and pictures. They should remember passwords. They should be good at follow-through.

Is a good promoter

Your manager extraordinaire should also be savvy about promotion. Even if you have a marketing person on staff, your manager should know something about how to submit your website to search engines or repost blog entries. It’s helpful if they’re familiar with Facebook or Twitter, because they can help broadcast your message to a wider public. They can also be looking at new ways to promote your mission beyond what you might think up.

A good web manager can pay for themselves several times over. You’ll be glad you started taking this position seriously.

The good people at JFFixler Group know that the entry point to your organization is your website. That’s why they asked me to contribute an article to their blog about the 7 Best Homepage Updates you can do. They’re quick, they’re easy, they pay off. Check it out:

7 Best Website Updates on JFFixler Group blog.

Wikipedia is ranked the 6th most popular in the world (fifth most popular in the US), so it might come as a surprise that it has only a staff of 10, and the rest of it’s enormous success is built on volunteers. Wikipedia is a non-profit. (Cash-strapped non-profits: think about that next time you’re wondering how you’ll get everything done on your current budget.)

Of those 10 employees, almost all of them are focused on keeping the website up and running. They manage the site, handle design, manage servers, babysit the network – generally make sure that the information goes where it needs to. The volunteers, on the other hand, feed the site, make sure the copy is correct, handle bite-sized tasks, which in the aggregate, are enough to make Wikipedia one of the biggest sites on the planet.

The important lesson here is not just that you can accomplish great things with volunteers, but that they need to be applied to the correct task. If something is as integral to your organization as your website, pay for it. You’ll free up volunteers for other tasks that meet their individual skills without weighing them down with such a complicated task as a website, but you’ll never be emotionally beholden to someone who’s donating their sweat (and possibly tears) to your site.