[Photo credit: Happy Birthday Candles on Angel Foods Cake by Rob J Brooks, on Flickr]

Do enough people know about your website? It can and should be your most powerful marketing tool, delivering a steady stream of new visitors and pushing your message to a wider audience.

Increase your cyber-reach without over-burdening yourself by performing one small task a day throughout March with our Task-a-Day Website Promotion Checklist.

This freebie is part of our year-long birthday celebration. We’re celebrating our 10th year by giving out presents to YOU. This one is coming at you from now until March 31. Hurry, though, because after the 31st, it will be gone. Make sure to check in for our April birthday surprise.

[Photo credit: unicorn by Totally Severe, on Flickr]

Conventional wisdom counts with building websites. Some techniques are proven and really will make your life easier and bring more traffic to your site. But there’s plenty of misinformation out there too. Watch out for these easy-to-fall-for myths.

1. Building a website is easy.

There’s “easy,” and then there’s “easy.” True, there are tools that can make managing a website easier, but that doesn’t mean going through the process of creating a site is a walk in the park. Successful sites contain heavy forethought and attention to detail, which never comes without hard work. Technical prowess aside, be prepared to sweat a little when it comes to planning and maintenance.

2. Fancier websites are better.

Everybody likes glitz, but it’s not always better. A four-page brochure can be infinitely better than a wham-bam Flash affair with movies and sophisticated animations. Before you put a bell or whistle on your site, make sure it has a good reason to be there.

3. Accessibility doesn’t matter.

It matters if you’re a potential member, volunteer or donor and can’t see the website. It matters if you’re looking at a website on your cell phone. It matters if you’re a web crawler from a search engine looking to catalog the site.

4. You can cut corners by copying the text and format of successful websites.

Plagiarism aside, you won’t gain anything by creating a copy of someone else’s site. You might find inspiration from some of their features, but successful sites should be built from the ground up. Otherwise, they won’t be unique enough to meet your goals.

5. Mission statements should be front and center.

I get the idea behind mission statements, but most of them are loaded with double-talk and jargon that mean nothing to the average website visitor. Include a link to your mission statement, if you must, but devote your website to the most important thing your visitors should be seeing.

6. The key to SEO is submitting to search engines.

You won’t see much of a bump in search engine rankings if you limit your SEO (search engine optimization) to this single move. SEO is a multi-step process that never really ends.

7. You never need to check your website in different browsers.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to web browsing, but IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (and the other guys too) go through changes over time, and so does your website. It’s a good idea to periodically see how your site works (or doesn’t work) in browsers besides the one you’re used to.

8. Design is design.

The person who designed your business cards might be a web designer too, but probably not. Designers specialize in print or web, because each craft applies different principles. Designers want work, though, so some over-promise and deliver websites that don’t make sense.

9. Usability isn’t necessary.

If no one knows how to use your website, they won’t use it. ‘Nuff said.

10. I need a webmaster to update the site.

Webmasters are nice to have, because they can handle updates and field questions. But if you assign responsibility wisely and have a website that’s easy to update, a webmaster isn’t necessary.

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Digging for Website Gold

Too many people think the best content they have to offer on their websites are event listings. Sure, those are helpful, but you almost certainly have something better you’re already producing that you can use to make your website a better resource. Here are some ideas to help you dig up hidden content:

Newsletter. It may be printed, or an e-newsletter you’re sending out via a third-party service, but chances are someone has written articles that can be used somewhere on your website.

Sermons. Congregations we work with are always producing some kind of spiritual thoughts worth sharing, including sermons and prayers.

Employee reports. Most companies have regular staff meetings where employees give status reports, and many of these reports center around special events and campaigns.

E-mail. Everybody writes e-mails, and some of the stuff you send out must be applicable to the people who visit your website. Look through your sent messages for treasures.

Training. Many organizations have manuals stacked on office bookshelves that contain useful information. Translate that online, and it can be more accessible to the people who need to see it.

Think creatively about where you look for content, and your website will be a richer place.

[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!

Many nonprofit organizations that are beginning to adopt Web 2.0 technologies consider them the “cool” part of their online communication. They look at them as a way to engage younger or larger audiences or to project an image of hipness.

But the reason social tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr have become so popular is that they make it incredibly easy for people to work together. Yet, if you look at the internal structure of many organizations, you’ll see that they communicate with one another through phone calls, printed notes and in-person meetings. True, there’s no substitue for face-to-face communication, but social tools can make it much easier to share information among your workmates.

For example, every time we have a meeting at Talance HQ, we have our intranet chat open to facilitate sending links or snippets of documents back and forth. We open a bulletin board for every project so the whole team can communicate about it, and we have a record of everything that was said. Our wiki keeps track of standard procedures and methodologies so we can access them any time, and make revisions when necessary. We use these tools in the office and with our team members who live across the country, and we do it because it’s entirely practical.

The majority of our social tools are built into our website (you do have a CMS, don’t you?). It’s the perfect place to build out a business, because everybody knows your web address, and it’s all centrally stored and accessible online.

Think about what you can do to make it easier for your employees to communicate with one another, and then give them the tools they need. You’ll very well find your organization runs better just by opening up new avenues of communication.

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.

[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.

[Photo credit: Mind Map covering the issues of Owning a Cat by MyThoughtsMindMaps, on Flickr]

Think about what happened the last time you really considered what should be on your website. Ideas and thoughts probably flowed in on your stream of conscious in no particular order, but rapidly:

• “We need to update the contact information.”
• “Oh, and Chris at the front desk needs to be added to the staff page.”
• “Didn’t someone say the other day they wanted a place to put articles about us?”

That’s a good thing. When you’re starting to plan a Web site, you want to consider every little thought or suggestion that’s come at you since the last time you updated your site. Your chief job should be to get everything down so you can process the information and make reasonable decisions when it comes to organizing the information on the site.

Here at Talance HQ, the best tool we’ve found to capture these early ideas is a mind map. “A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing,” says Wikipedia.

We’re very un-technical about it too. We take a big sheet of paper, or several scraps of paper, and write down everything we think of, drawing lines to connect ideas, or grouping the scraps of paper together.

The process is pure catharsis for website planning, and remarkably effective at helping you organize what seems like idea-chaos. Plus, since it requires no technical prowess, it’s a good activity for even the most technically challenged in your organization.

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.

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Hi, Friends.

Websites, you know, are never done. They’re as close as you can get to living and breathing for something made of lines of code stored on computers around the globe. Trends change, organizations’ missions change and outside forces change too.

One big outside force recently changed, namely Internet Explorer 8. Any time a Web browser receives a major upgrade, and people are encouraged to switch over, it means that old websites may no longer work properly. Even if you have chosen to let IE8 (which has its own host of problems) drift by without you, not all the people who are coming to your website have.

It’s important to take the time on a regular basis to make sure your website is keeping up with the technology around it. It’s a job that requires regular tending, but we’ve made it easier for you by assembling the Healthy Website Checklist you can follow.

http://talance.com/healthy-website-checklist

Bookmark it or print it out so you remember to keep making sure your website still works.

Of course, keeping websites ship-shape and Bristol fashion is one of our specialties at Talance, so give us a holler (888-810-9109 or use this form) if we can help breathe new life into your website.

Your Internet pal,

Monique

The Rachel Coalition provides services for victims of domestic violence, but its website was limited to a few informational pages and uninspiring design. Here’s how we helped.

»Read more

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