Our summer project at Talance was imagining the perfect congregational website. We brainstormed, talked to clergy, examined traffic patterns and spoke to administration staff to uncover the most useful features and most necessary tools for growing community. And, it was vitally important to take these features and put them together into an affordable package that can keep growing.

The result was Synagogue Sites 1-2-3.

Our efforts were written up recently in The Jewish Week in their article Finally, Shul Web Sites Coming Of Age.

“Synagogue Web sites are — after an agonizingly slow start — coming of age. Rabbis are blogging and posting sermons on YouTube. Members are signing up and paying for classes online. And several synagogues have launched virtual yahrtzeit boards — complete with e-mail reminders.”

Read the whole article.

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.

It helps to see what other organizations are doing right to guide your own Web strategy. Here are six stand-out examples from non-profits that have a presence with websites, Twitter and Facebook.

Websites

10ThousandDoors.org is a gutsy move by the United Methodist Church to be a truly interactive experience. The whole site is innovative, but the Talk page is a new breed of discussion boards that has really opened up sharing and communication.

Take the Walk has a great counter on its homepage. They tally the number of miles supporters have walked to support fighting AIDS in Africa. The placement is perfect: front and center. This ensures the site is geared toward pulling in new supporters.

Twitter

Ashoka started promoting their e-book through Twitter and quickly built up a following. This multi-tasking post is smart, because they thank their followers, help everyone feel included and continue the promotion all in one Tweet.

The town of Richmond, VA, had a double-header of a good idea. First, they started a city wiki (others here), and then they set up an automatic Twitter feed that publishes any updates to the wiki. It gives you a real-time, accessible view of any changes that happen at the town level.

Facebook

Peta launched a Facebook Cause to raise funds and donations to protect animals. They’ve raised nearly $60,000 and have enabled others to recruit more supporters and raise funds on their behalf.

Synagogue 3000 claimed a great web address so they’d be easy to find on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/synagogue3000) rather than the ugly and hard to remember stream of numbers that Facebook adds to the end of your URL when it assigns one to you. Click here to set yours.

[Have a question you’d like answered? Use the comments form at the bottom of this page to submit it. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

One feature of a Facebook Page for organizations is a Favorites Pages block. This lets you bookmark other Pages that you like or somehow related to yours. It’s a great tool for cross-promoting and partnerships.

Facebook is long on features but short on usability, so figuring out how to use this feature isn’t perfectly clear. But here’s how to do it:

1. Go to the Facebook Page that you want to add to your Favorites.
2. Look at the logo on the upper-left-hand side of the page, and directly below it locate the link that says “Add to My Page’s Favorites.”
3. Click that, and it puts it in your Favorites box. Click it again to remove it from your Page’s Favorites.

If you administer more than one Page, you can choose which one to add it to.

Practice now by adding Talance’s Facebook Page to your Favorites.

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.]

Twitter updates come as fast as you can draw a sharp breath, but they may not be as spontaneous as they seem. Thanks to a selection of scheduling services, you can create tweets ahead of time and post them in the future, while you’re busy with something else.

Delayed tweeting isn’t the best strategy for building relationships with your followers (can you imagine having your half of a conversation an hour before you meet a friend for lunch?), but it can help when you want to deliver a message but aren’t able to.

For instance, if you want to notify everyone about a new project you’re launching on a set day. You can schedule the announcement to go out while you’re busy setting up said project. Or say you’re at a conference getting ready to speak. You want to tell your followers you’re about to step on stage so they’d better bustle down to the conference room, but you need to give the live audience your full attention.

Here are some tools you can use to set your tweets into the future:

• Hootsuite
• FutureTweets
• TweetLater
• Twuffer
• Calendar Tweet

[Have a question you’d like answered? Use the comments form at the bottom of this page to submit it. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

[Photo credit: A blue lock for George by Darwin Bell, on Flickr]

E-mail lets you send a message to one person or a list of people you select. A discussion board lets you post a message to a group of members (usually). Twitter, on the other hand, lets you post a message to anybody in the world who wants to read it.

This got a participant in our recent presentation Does Twitter Matter for Nonprofits? asking:

When you broadcast, can you broadcast only to people who are following you?

It’s a great question, and one that we’re frequently asked. The short answer is yes.

Twitter explains best with this passage (which I shortened a bit. You can read the whole explanation here):

When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option of keeping your account public (the default account setting) or protecting the account to keep your updates private. Public accounts are visible to everyone. Protected accounts aren’t. Only approved followers are able to see these profile pages.

To protect your profile:

1. Log in to Twitter
2. Click Settings
3. Scroll down and check the box next to “Protect my Updates”
4. SAVE your changes.

When you navigate to your home page after protecting your profile, you’ll see a notice reminding you that your profile is now protected.

If you have a public account and you protect it, all updates after the time of protection will be protected.

Congregations have been wild to know what Twitter can do for them, proven by the powerful turnout at two presentations I’ve given on the topic.

The uses are many, but here’s a quick run-down of what I’ve found in my work with churches and synagogues, divided into clergy members (rabbis, preachers), administrators and youth group leaders. Find more tips by following Talance on Twitter, and of course, send your own.

Clergy

1. Inspirational thoughts – quotes from scripture or elsewhere
2. Motivational thoughts – calls to action and service
3. Be available to those who need you, when they need you
4. Learn more about your congregants
5. Reach out to people who aren’t able to attend your services
6. Network with other clergy members
7. Gather ideas for sermons
8. Send prayer requests
9. Identify needs for support in your community
10. Get feedback on sermons and programs

Administrators

1. Call for volunteers
2. Notifications of schedule changes
3. Event notifications
4. Event follow-ups
5. Promote newsletter
6. Promote blog
7. Promote website
8. Find out about successful events at other churches or synagogues
9. Organize events by communicating with volunteers and staff
10. Poll members on success of programs and services

Youth Group Leaders

1. Reach out to texting-addicted membership
2. Drive people to your Facebook group or MySpace page
3. Send reports to parents while on youth trips
4. Send reminders to forgetful youth
5. Make it easy for teens and kids to tell friends about events
6. Tell kids about programs
7. Send congratulations and kudos to members
8. Make it easy for shy kids to communicate with the group
9. Share camp stories and pictures
10. Send birthday wishes

Come to the 2009 Massachusetts Conference on Service and Volunteering from the Mass Service Alliance June 4 in Marlborough, MA, and you can hear Monique Cuvelier of Talance, Inc., present on how to use YouTube in your volunteering programs. You’ll see some examples of organizations that are doing it well, and how volunteers can help spread awareness.

It’s the special session on social media at the end of the conference. We’ll also be doing a drawing for a $300 Talance gift certificate, which you can use for web development or web strategy consulting, and a copy of Jill Friedman Fixler’s excellent book Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow, published by Volunteer Match.

Plus you can pick up a free – yes, free! – copy of our 2009 Massachusetts Non-Profit Social Media Report at our table in the poster session.

Hope to see you there!

[Welcome to the Talance Friendly E-mail Newsletter. This is text of the issue our e-mail subscribers just received. Sign up on the lower right-hand side of the Talance homepage.]

Hi, Friends!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? And how much is that video worth if it travels virally, propelled by someone other than you, and saves you effort and boosts awareness of your organization?

In short, a lot.

Many of you have figured that out already. You turn to YouTube to learn about other organizations, for tutorials and movies from your friends and colleagues. And you’ve seen that free and wide-reaching video-sharing sites not only let you tell a story through moving pictures, but they open up the conversation to your fans. This means they can sing your praises for you, and you have a chance to build a stronger relationship with them.

We’re so excited to be presenting on just this topic at Massachusetts Service Alliance’s 2009 Conference on Service and Volunteering on June 4 in Marlborough, Mass. Learn more and register here: http://www.mass-service.org/

Our own Monique Cuvelier will be presenting the closing session, Using YouTube in Volunteer Programs. We hope you can come and learn a bit about engaging volunteers through video and share some of your stories. We’ll also be holding a drawing for a $300 Talance gift certificate and a copy of Jill Friedman-Fixler’s book Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow.

If you can’t make it, but you’re on Twitter, you can follow the discussion at #MCVS.

Remember that Talance is offering a 30-minute free webinar on Does Twitter Matter for Non-Profits?, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 from 2-2:30pm Eastern. Learn how you can make sense of this madly growing tool and how it applies to you.

»Register for this free webinar now!

Have a technology question? Ask it, and we’ll answer! We answer a reader question in the blog every week for the benefit of everybody. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking – no question is stupid!) and get back to you with a response.

»Ask a Tech Question

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Talance has helped clients launch scores of projects, ranging from websites to online newsletters to CRM projects. Please click here to schedule a time to talk about your next project or to request a proposal.

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