One of the best ways to get people to use your website is to ask them. As simple as that. Of course you can, and should, personally ask people to use your site. Tell them it’s there and ask for feedback. But there’s also a frequently overlooked widget that does the job for you.

A Share toolbar or button (see ours at the bottom of this blog entry) is adept at asking people to brag about you. You can plug it into your website, blog, or social networking page, and give people one-click access to share your best resources with their connections.

It’s a fast, cheap and easy way for you to boost traffic to your site.

Advertising people will tell you that before anyone will act on an ad, they have to be reminded 18 times. That’s a lot of dead-horse beating. It’s all the more effective if you can find online and offline places to promote. To get you started, here are 18 ways you can tell people to visit your website:

1. Put your website address on your return address labels
2. Mention your website on your voice mail recording
3. Add your site to your e-mail signature
4. Mention any new development any time you talk to someone
5. Update your business cards with your address
6. List yourself in directories
7. Ask partners to display literature with your website
8. Open a Facebook, MySpace and Flickr page and send people back to your website
9. Create a custom background on Twitter and make sure it has your website on it
10. Wear your web address – have it printed on T-shirts, hats, bags or even cheap buttons
11. Put a custom magnet on your organization’s car
12. Send out press releases
13. Encourage paper newsletter subscribers to read issues online
14. Send an e-mail with your new website to everybody you know, and as them to forward it to anyone they know
15. Have a website launch party/fundraiser
16. Start a blog – more pages means better online coverage
17. Add a Send This Article to Friends button on your website
18. Hang posters with your web address

[Photo credit: Megaphone. by Mal Cubed, on Flickr]

Twitter messages (aka tweets) may be limited to 140 characters, but have an impact greater than your typical sentence. Follow these tips to make sure your efforts aren’t the equivalent of online mumbling. (Curious about what Talance is saying? Follow us @talance.)

Make sure people are listening.

Just because you’re tweeting doesn’t mean anybody knows about it. Make sure to tell them. Announce it in your bulletin. Mention it during meetings or services. Upload your contact lists to see who in your network is using Twitter. Take steps to make sure people know about your Twitter initiative.

Say something worth saying.

Even if everyone in the world is listening, they’ll tune out if you don’t say anything worthwhile. Plan what you’re going to say, and make sure it’s worth saying. This doesn’t mean you need a daily Twitter script, but it does mean you should think about what topics you’ll be covering. I keep a sticky note on my monitor that has a list of the topics I want to make sure to cover in Talance’s communications.

Repeat your tweets on your website.

Your website should be the central hub for all your communication. This means that any Twitter, Facebook, e-newsletter, etc., project you have should lead back to your site. Since you can keep deep stores of information on your site, this is your opportunity to point people there for more details. In terms of Twitter, this means showing your most recent tweets show up in a Twitter feed, and also providing a link back to your Twitter account on the homepage.

Repeat your tweets everywhere else.

Most social networking services, including Facebook, Delicious, LinkedIn, MySpace, Wordpress blogs, all have Twitter plug-ins, which allow your most recent tweets to show up on those services. Use them!

Energized?

Start bragging about your tweets by telling us about it in the comments box below.

The blockbuster conference for the Union of Reform Judaism was a somber affair, the JTA reported. Namely because synagogues are suffering attrition, budget cuts and shakier unions (the URJ was recently restructured).

Now is time for congregations – no matter the faith – to take a lesson from the conference, delivered by URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie. Set up a blog:

A big aspect of the URJ restructuring involves greater reliance on the Internet. In his Saturday sermon, Yoffie asked Reform congregations to set up their own synagogue blogs, which he said should be used to stimulate real conversations between members “and not be just an electronic version of your temple newsletter.”

I’m so glad to hear this directive come from the top, because if you were to devote yourself to only one social media tool, make it a blog. This is true for just about any nonprofit looking to build a wealth of knowledge and resources for its community, but it’s especially true for any congregations.

They’re useful because they give you a forum for writing articles. Each article gives you the chance to expand on your synagogue or church’s mission while soliciting comments from your community.

But knowing you’re going to do it and doing it are two different things. Here’s a quick overview of how to start.

1. Define your audience.
2. Decide what you’re going to write to your audience. What makes you unique?
3. Decide who will write blog postings. It doesn’t need to be a single person. Share the load across your organization.
4. Review other successful blogs to see what you like.
5. Choose a good blog name.
6. Choose a good domain name.
7. Choose a reliable web host (like Talance!).
8. Decide if you’ll be hosted on a service like Wordpress or through your website.
9. Work with a designer for a professional design, or integrate into your existing website
10. Place an RSS icon at the end of single posts
11. Organize your categories
12. Offer email subscriptions
13. Add Google Analytics or Clicky and track your stats
14. Stick with it! Blogs take time, but they become more valuable with the more dedication you give them.

[Photo credit: AVP Volunteer 2 by yuan2003, on Flickr]

As any charitable organization knows, volunteers are superstars. They give love and expertise and don’t ask for a dime in return. They can be especially helpful if your organization has a website. Bearing in mind that an entire Web development project is long-term and requires dedicated knowledge and commitment that you’re better off hiring someone to do (upshot: it’s easier to fire someone whose work you’re not happy with), there are still plenty of other tasks you can assign out to people who want to help. Here are a few.

1. Social networking cheerleader
2. Add comments to blogs
3. Contribute blog entries
4. Participate in discussion on bulletin boards
5. Data entry (i.e., cutting and pasting info into a new site)
6. Website promotion
7. Adding your website to directories
8. Writing news updates about events
9. Website literacy workshops
10. Checking for dead links
11. Updating old content
12. Convert press releases for websites
13. Usability testing (i.e., make sure everything works in a logical way)
14. Bug reporting (i.e., look for and report errors or problems)
15. Identify requirements for new development
16. Browser testing
17. Taking pictures for the website
18. Formatting and uploading pictures
19. Making videos for the site
20. Uploading videos onto a service like YouTube or Vimeo, and adding them to site
21. Help manage wiki

Anything we missed? Add your ideas below.

Considering that about half the people on the Internet find you through some kind of search engine query, it’s vitally important that you show up everywhere you should. Such are the intricacies of search engine optimization.

Improving your SEO is an on-going task, but here are five mistakes you can make to really kill your SEO strategy.

1. Use images for headings

Some people think regular old text is too boring for headings, so they use pictures instead. A major no-no. Search engines like header tags (< h1 >, < h2 >, etc.), so use these instead of graphics. You can always change the style of them through CSS if you don’t like the way they appear.

2. Leave image tags blank

This mistake is incredibly common, but it’s also incredibly easy to fix. Whenever you have an image display on a page, make sure you fill in the so-called “alt tag.” It’s a handy place to stash keywords (search engines figure anything you illustrate is important, so they pay attention), and it helps with overall accessibility.

3. Bad spelling

Search engines are skeptical of crummy spelling. Get a dictionary.

4. Flash only

Flash is, well, flashy, but it’s not incredibly usable. It’s hard for people to navigate, and also hard for search engines to catalog. Provide an HTML alternative so make everybody happy. As an added bonus, anybody using a hand-held device (like an iPhone) will have an easier time reading your site.

5. Ugly URLs

URLs with a string of nonsensical text does nothing for your site. They’re confusing, you can never type them into an address bar and search engines hate them. Instead, make sure you’re using real English in the address. Check out this article’s address for an example.

Too many of the non-profits and religious organizations that come to us think of their communications strategies as one-way streets that never intersect. While they may send messages through their website, Twitter account or Facebook Page, many never ask for feedback or take steps to build a conversation. Instead, they’re focused on one-way announcements of ticket sales or special initiatives.

Usually, those messages never intersect with a blended communications strategy. You may see that a church has a Facebook account – but only if you happen to come across it on Facebook.

The important thing to remember is that someone who might be really interested in what you do might not be a Facebook or Twitter user. So that means that if you put all your energy into Facebook or Twitter or any other singular thing, they’ll never find you. Spread it around.

Here are a few good examples of how to blend different communications initiative:

Detailed Twitter Background

Add a custom background on your Twitter page that has information on how to find your website or subscribe to your blog. Check out ours.

Double-Duty Tweets

Send messages on Twitter that point people to useful information on your website or blog. Rather than, “Did you know we have a blog?” try something compelling like a snippet from a recent blog post or initiative, “We’ve placed a bounty on Michael Vick. You read that right. Get details.”

Use Facebook Connect

This plug-in, which works with Drupal and Wordpress, in addition to other websites, lets members log onto your website using their Facebook login and share information in both places at once.

I was recently researching an article about declining congregation numbers at synagogues, but most of the information I found was anecdotal. Those anecdotal stories are powerful, though. Someone I talked to from a synagogue in Florida has a membership that went from 200 to 50.

With that in mind, how is your synagogue faring? Is it growing or shrinking? If it’s shrinking, are you doing anything with technology to boost your membership numbers?

Share your answer below, and then tell your friends. I’ll share results here in the near future.

[Photo credit: Small things that makes a big impact in Life, by man's pic, on Flickr]

Help search engines list you more easily. Even a simple tweak can yield a big results in the number of people who find your website.

Title pages so humans can read them.

Each page should have a logical name that makes sense to the people reading it. This page, for instance, is titled “Small SEO Tweaks with Big Impact.” It’s not “SEO, search engine optimization, search engine changes, search engine tweaks.”

Write pages so humans can read them.

The above is also true for the text of any given page. Search engines – and people – consider it a turn-off if you pack pages with keywords you think search engines are looking for. Use natural language.

Give every image an alternate name.

This means using the so-called ALT tag, if you’re working with HTML, or specifying an image description if you’re using a content management system.

Use a sitemap.

Sitemaps, which list every page on your website, are useful for people as well as search engines. These make it easier for search engines to find and index every page of your site in a snap.

Building a website is only half the job – promoting it is the other half, and it never really ends. Luckily there are several things you can do to make your site promote itself, freeing you to do more relationship-building and hands-on promotion.

Here are some things you can add to the site to encourage people to visit and share what they find there.

Add a Tell a Friend feature

Sure, you can encourage people to tell their buddies about your site, but you might as well make it easy for them. Create a tell-a-friend feature that makes it simple for them to forward your site or a resource they found there to a multitude of readers at once.

Add a Link to Us page

Empower your visitors to create links to your site, replete with your site icon, on their site with a Link to Us page, available on every page. Provide the HTML coding they’ll need, and make sure it includes well-formed SEO links (including a full title, alt and anchor text). Put together a variety of text links, images of different sizes and everything someone would need to link back to you.

Maintain an engaging blog

The single best way to build engaging information on your website that attracts a following is to start a blog. I mean, you’re reading this right now, aren’t you? So give people a reason to keep coming back. Just make sure it’s tightly focused and worth reading.

Encourage people to follow your social media

Once you’ve got a blog, tell people how to follow it. The beauty of blogs are RSS feeds, which let people receive updates of articles as soon as they’re posted. (See how to get updates of this blog.) This is the same for Twitter updates, which is really a microblog, and any social networking accounts you have, like Facebook.

Present tools for sharing

If you have an article-rich site, give people tools for sharing your resources with their friends. Try some little buttons like this:

Ask people to spread the word

Remind people, again and again, to tell their friends about you. Sooner or later, they’ll act on your request.

Add a calendar

Show people you have stuff going on that’s worth tracking. Your calendar might have trainings, appearances, fund drives, special events – surely you’re doing something that people can react with.

You should never stop promoting your site once you’ve built it, but invest smartly in tools that do the heavy lifting for you. While you focus on other promotional activities, your investment can multiply.