Video is a fabulous way to spread awareness, so think about blowing the dust off your YouTube account next time you want to drum up support for one of your organization’s programs.

International Medical Corps is an organization that’s spreading awarness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and it’s been tremendously successful with thousands of views and thousands of comments.

Are you planning some kind of event or have a fund drive that you can get help for by putting online?

Everybody knows YouTube is full of pimply 15-year-olds lip-synching to pop songs and babies who laugh funny. Right? Wrong.

Those people are all there, but there’s a different audience than you might think. Interestingly, the age breakdown is pretty even among all age groups. Surprisngly, the 55+ sector is a little bigger than the 18-and-unders, according to research from Nielson/NetRatings:

What this means is that YouTube is relevant to all kinds of people who are interested in non-profit causes, synagogues or churches. It certainly was relevant during the last election. Your people are probably already there. Are you?

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Hi, Friends!

The world, as they say, is atwitter about Twitter. It’s amazing, considering that last November, when we surveyed Massachusetts non-profits to see how they were using social media, no one even knew what a microblog was! Now everybody is Twittering.

That’s why we’re presenting the Talance community a 30-minute free webinar on Does Twitter Matter for Non-Profits?, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 from 2-2:30pm Eastern, presented by Talance’s own Monique Cuvelier. Learn how you can make sense of this madly growing tool and how it applies to you.

We’re keeping the presentation short – so you still have time to eat lunch – but we’ll stick around for 20 minutes for a Q&A session and also be scheduling free follow-up web strategy consultations for anyone who wants them.

»Register for this free webinar now!

Talance offers a new security service to evaluate and fix security vulnerabilities in client websites. The Talance Security Update Service (TSUS) monitors the Drupal community for discovery of any threats so you don’t have to. We help protect your website, web information and users against the latest security threats by delivering immediate and ongoing updates for various vulnerabilities as soon as they’re discovered.

One year of unlimited monitoring is available for only $49. If you’re interested in this package and having Talance monitor and update your website, please contact us.

»Contact us to sign up now!

Are you one of our many clients who are ramping up their social media strategy but haven’t yet integrated it into your website? If so, you’ll love this.

We’re offering a stylish and effective collection of social media links and icons to keep your constituency plugged into your ongoing social media marketing efforts. This little upgrade is fast and effective.

»Contact us to put this on your site now!

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Spring Clean Your Website – Part 1
Three things to prep for your week of good housekeeping.

Spring Clean Your Website – Dead Links (Part 2)
Find and remove your dead links.

Spring Clean Your Website Copy (Part 3)
As time passes and your goals and objectives evolve, so should your website copy.

Spring Clean Your Website: Refresh the Design (Part 4)
Make sure your site looks like a cohesive piece and still looks up to date.

Five Great Takeaways from Church Websites
Tweaks that can make your church or synagogue site better.

Killer Church Websites
Websites that engage and create community

Working Your Out-of-Office Reply While You’re Away
Get a little fancy with this message and do a bit of promotion while you’re at it.

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I’m asked many times by clients what kind of social media they should invest in. It’s a tough question to answer, largely because it depends on what kind of social media makes sense to the people who you’re trying to reach. That’s why the best idea is to ask them directly.

Put together a survey, either printed or digital, and distribute it to your constituency or congregation to see where they’d like to hear from you in terms of social media. Ask them what kinds of social media they currently use, and then ask them how much and often they use them. It’ll give you a good idea of their capabilities and tendencies.

You can also make a pretty good educated guess. If your constituency is made up of largely older people, you’re probably best off seeing if you can transition from a printed bulletin to an electronic newsletter. If your audience is young and hip, hit them where they go: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube.

Also check out our social media survey.

One of the things I like best about exploring Twitter (I’m @talance) is watching it evolve and change so quickly as people use it and discover new uses.

But it’s still easy to feel left out and confused, which is why I think it’s a good exercise to look back at the very first messages up on Twitter. It can make you feel better to see how unsure everyone is when they delve into a new technology.

A few randomly selected examples of first Twitter updates:

Figuring out if this is really something I want to do
We’re finally live! Sorry to those who have been waiting so long.
trying to figure out twitter…
is learning to twitter…

So watch and learn. Ideas and applications will occur to you.

Recently, someone from a UK firm putting together a glossary of social media jargon asked me to contribute. The world of social media jargon is immense, but I realized I’ve been hearing the word “ping” in a sense that didn’t really make sense to me.

Ping, v. This is something you send to a computer for an automated response. I’ve heard it (erroneously) as a synonym for “e-mail” or “instant message.”

You can look at more social media jargon from their glossary.

Preparedness is never easy, which is why so many of us get caught out when something goes wrong. With technology, the tiniest thing can misfire and blast your plans to oblivion.

I was happy to come across blogger Rob Jackson’s post Confessions of a Live Blog Failure, where he talks about trying to report an event on his own, live, and it didn’t go as he expected.

“I was trying to keep up on the content with my keyboard, snap still pics with my digital camera and capture footage with my handycam. CAPTURING it all was too much for one person let alone reporting it back to the all the readers/visitors,” he says.

Best of all, he spells out his mistakes so you can learn. A quick run-down of his recommendations for trying to use social media during an event:

• Get a back-up Internet connection, in case the local connection fails
• Bring back-up battery and cables
• Test the system

I feel for the guy, but I’m glad he decided to share his tragic experience for the greater good.

One of the nice benefits of our Talance’s Massachusetts Non-profit Social Media Report is how many conversations it’s opening up about how non-profits are actually using social media – or struggling with how to use it.

Someone in one of my networks said her organization doesn’t use social media precisely because it does work. This is a charity that receives loads of requests for services, but that’s sorely needing donations. She’s afraid if she does start a social media program, she’ll be overwhelmed by more requests for service that she can’t handle.

My suggestion to her and anyone thinking about a social media program is to focus your efforts. Social media shouldn’t be a distraction. You’ve got to fine-tune what kinds of programs you’re using and what results you hope to get from them. If you need donors, then you don’t need to focus on awareness campaigns. You need to focus on fund development campaigns.

Make sure you know what you want to get out of any marketing program before you start one. (And of course, the best place to start is by reading the benchmarking survey.)

A free preview is available at: Talance’s Massachusetts Non-profit Social Media Report A few little gems:

• 80% consider social media important for peer-to-peer networking. By contrast 31% find social media unimportant to their business and marketing strategy.
• The great majority (85%) are not using social media for online giving.
• More respondents plan to use online video than those who plan to use blogging.

Plus, some great background for those new to technology.

Starting a social marketing effort is certainly time-consuming. It’s important to think about how much time you’re willing and able to feed into a new 2.0 project before you start one. All those abandoned Facebook pages and blogs are sad and arguably do more harm than good.

But knowing how to arrange your time budget is hard if you have no frame of reference. That’s why I like this posting from the Museum 2.0 website, How Much Time Does Web 2.0 Take?

These guys break it down into a useful timeline and formulae so you can make a pretty good estimate as to how much time you’ll need to free up to dedicate to your new online project.