This is a guest post from one of our favorite clients: Jenny Aisenberg, Knowledge Development Manager at JESNA and JESNA PDC, an organization that provides Jewish educational coordinating, planning and development. We asked Jenny what blogs she turns to regularly for help running her job at a Jewish education non-profit.

In my role as Knowledge Development Manager at JESNA, one of my key responsibilities is to keep my finger on the pulse of the Jewish world in social media. If there’s a resource on the web for Jewish educational and lay leaders, I wanna know about it—and share it with you! Every week, I update our Sosland Online Resource Center with the newest in blogs, tools, websites and more for the benefit of Jewish communities near and far. These top five picks are just the tip of the iceberg! I hope you’ll enjoy exploring them, and email me your ideas for other resources we should know about at jaisenberg@jesna.org.

1. Innovation in Jewish Education Blog

This is the blog of the Office of High School Programs at Brandeis University, drawing on BIMA and Genesis, their two summer programs for high school students, as living laboratories. I love seeing the thoughts and reflections of a whole panoply of educators who work with teens here, on topics ranging from “Self-perception and Participant Investment in the Intentional Community” to “Jewish Education and Family Priorities.” Plus, who wouldn’t love these tags?

2. The Alban Roundtable

A self-proclaimed “virtual meeting place for congregational leaders,” the Alban Roundtable blog is the social media hub of The Alban Institute, founded in 1974 as a major resource for American congregations facing the challenges of a changing society. As a leader in my own congregation in Park Slope, Brooklyn (I’m the chair of the 20’s/30’s social group and a former Hebrew School teacher) I have a deep appreciation for this kind of resource, where I can learn from others who face similar challenges, yet aren’t part of my daily grind.

3. Jew Point 0: The Darim Online Blog

Darim Online is the home of “Internet Strategies for Jewish Organizations and their Communities,” and their blog, run by our good friend Caren Levine, first launched in August 2008 as a place for Darim staff to share useful nuggets that arise from both their work and personal lives. This is a particularly succulent knowledge-sharing resource for anyone looking for guidance in the use of technology and social media in Jewish settings.

4. Jewcy

Most progressive young Jews under 30 know about this emergent online media outlet/blog/social network/brand by now, but it’s too, well, juicy to leave off my list! First launched in 2006, Jewcy is a forum for discussion of politics, culture, sex, religion and lifestyle in the Jewish world today. It has been called “the social media hub of the Jewish hipster movement” by The New York Times. Gee, and I thought I had a lock on that title…

5. Storahtelling Blog

This one is near and dear to my heart, and a wonderful resource for Jewish educators and community leaders interested in bringing new vibrancy to Jewish ritual and synagogue life. Storahtelling fuses storytelling, Torah, contemporary performance art and traditional ritual, both here in Manhattan and at synagogues around the globe. On their blog, you’ll find everything from the weekly drash, Storah-style, to tales from the road as they visit and perform at synagogues near and far. If you’re up for a trip to Boston, check out their summer educators’ training, StorahLAB.

If you’re trying to sell a house, update the kitchen and bathroom. If you’re trying to get people to use your website, do it with these easy upgrades.

1. Most recent blog entry.

Some organizations have a blog, but hide it. An easy way to bring your words closer to your visitors is not only to provide a prominent link to your blog, but to also let the first few entries display on your homepage.

2. Twitter feed.

If you have a Twitter account, you should provide access to it on your website. It’s surprising how many organizations have an account, but you’d never know it by visiting their site. Treat your Twitter updates just like your blog updates, and show the most recent ones on your website.

3. Big Share buttons.

Any time you publish something worth sharing, you should encourage people to do so through e-mail or a social network. Big buttons encouraging people to share do better than small ones.

4. One-click donation.

It’s a pity if you miss out on donations simply because no one can figure out how to donate on your site. Make sure it’s easy to donate by clicking just one link.

5. Search.

If you have more than five pages, include a way to search your website. And make search easy to find. No hiding it in the lower regions of your site.

6. CMS (Content Management System).

If you’re struggling with keeping a mass of single-file pages looking the same, give up and get a CMS. Your visitors will respond to the organization.

7. Call to action links.

Tell people what you want them to do whenever you provide a link on your site. If you want donations, name your donation button “Give.” If you want people to register for your newsletter, call your newsletter link, “Sign up for the newsletter.” People will respond if you make it clear.

8. Home link.

Always, always provide a clearly labeled link that says Home.

9. Feedback form.

If there’s no way for people to respond to you, they won’t. Make it easy with a feedback form.

The best thing you can do for your website is to keep thinking about it. Keep tabs on what people like and what they ask for. Make upgrades on a regular basis, and you’ll notice a difference.

Most organizations will spend most of their time designing and maintaining their website’s homepage. And that’s fine. You don’t want to neglect what’s there – the majority of your website’s visitors will see this page before any other.

But thanks to the social media functionality that makes it easy to share individual pages, such as to an event you’re putting on or the bio of someone on your site, it’s increasingly likely that a visitor might use Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon or Facebook to sneak in around the homepage.

Make sure you think of every page as a potential entry point for website visitors. This means that you may have to adapt internal pages so they make sense to a visitor. From every page, make sure a visitor

• Can access your menus
• Can easily contact you
• Knows they’re on your site – make every page harmonious with every other one

As a test, choose any page at random, and see if you can flow through your site without thinking too hard. Did you know what to do next? If not, jot down what confused you, and make sure you fix it.

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.]

Mondays can always use a little softening, so today is an excellent day to remind you that July is Customer Appreciation Month at Talance.

What does this mean if you’re already one of our beloved clients? It means you can cash in on all kinds of things, like graphic design, widgets or save $150 on a bigger project.

And if you’re new to the Talance family? It means you can save $150 – just like that – off any new website.

Nice deal, no? And it’s all because we love you.

Get started by clicking here.

Don’t forget these gems from a year ago, June 2008, on the Talance Web Tools Blog:

Technologically Impaired
How many of the nonprofits we come into contact with are struggling to keep up with technology

CMS Surveys
A few good ways to find out how and why other organizations are using CMSs

Meet AskMeFi – My Favorite Forum
Nothing says “huge brain” to me more than MetaFilter

I really like NTEN (check out this article I wrote for them), so I was glad to see they’re giving scholarships to the conference in San Francisco from April 26-28. They’re also collecting unused frequent flyer miles so you might score a free airline ticket as well.

Apply at: http://nten.org/ntc-scholarships

Good news! I’ll be making an in-person appearance at the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network conference on October 24 at Bentley College. Talance will have a table, and I’ll also be giving a mini-presentation on Web Mistakes That Could Cost You.

Let me know if you’ll be there (the comments box below is handy for this), and we’ll connect.

Jill Friedman Fixler, one of the country’s top experts in helping nonprofits work with volunteers, has just published a book, bound to be a hit: Boomer Volunteer Engagement.

It shows organizations step-by-step how to engage Baby Boomers as volunteers to build organizational capacity. It’s a great idea, especially because nonprofits can expect a growing Boomer workforce to start pitching in.

Check it out!