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.

[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.]

Last week, I mentioned one of the most frequently asked questions we receive is: “What is Drupal?” A close second is: “What’s the difference between Drupal and WordPress?” This is closely related to the frequently asked, “Which is better: Drupal or WordPress?”

Drupal, which you learned last week, is a content management system (CMS) that you can use as your website. It’s also great at handling big gobs of information, like contact databases, or handling things like online shopping. It can also have a blog in it.

WordPress, on the other hand, is a CMS that’s purpose-built for blogging. There are some pretty sophisticated WordPress sites that can do a lot, but it really excels at blogs. It handles new posts (like the one you’re reading right now) and comments excellent. It also has really great SEO.

In summary, Drupal is great if you want a scalable, easy-to-use, super-powerful website. WordPress is nice if your primary goal is to publish blog articles and develop some conversation around those.

[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 of the most common questions we’re asked here at Talance is: What is Drupal? It’s the technology that envelopes our every single day, but that doesn’t mean that everyone – or the common Web user – knows what it is. But it’s worth understanding, because a website built on Drupal can make your life a lot easier.

First off, let’s get the name out of the way. “Drupal” is a non-grammatical variation of the Dutch word “druppel,” which means “droplet.” It was invented by Dries Buytaert, who is Dutch, in 2001. It’s pronounced “DREW-pull.” Rumor has it he tried to call it “dorp,” which means “village” in Dutch, but made a typo when he registered it.

Drupal, in a phrase, is an open-source content management system. Now hold on, all of you now thinking, “But what do ‘open source’ and ‘content management system’ mean?” I’ll decompress that phrase.

Content management system

A content management system (CMS) is a used to manage the content of a website. It allows someone who may not know anything about how to create or edit webpages with languages like HTML, to manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a website without needing the expertise of a Webmaster. Most CMSs include publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search and retrieval.
(From SearchSOA.com Definitions)

Open source

Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available. It is intended to be freely shared and possibly improved and redistributed by others.
(From SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Definitions)

Those two definitions get to the core of what Drupal is. It’s a free piece of software that anybody can use to build and manage a website without being a technical genius.

The “free” part means that you don’t have to pay for license fees, as you would with a system built by a company like Microsoft. You only pay development costs, which boils down to much more powerful websites for much less money.

Websites built with Drupal aren’t any old brochure websites – you can really build on to these. Drupal websites incorporate blogs, forums, e-commerce functionality, contact management, donation management, social networking tools and a whole lot more. Here’s a sample of the things we regularly put into the websites we build.

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.

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.]

Getting your website to work for you doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul. Here are five small updates you can make without suffering.

1. Add a feedback form

One of the very best ways to get more use out of your website is to give its visitors a way to interact. If you add a contact form to your contact page (here’s an example), you’ll open up opportunities for accepting comments. It’s welcoming, will help limit spam, and can increase the amount of feedback you receive from your site. A pretty big payoff for something so small.

2. Make menus consistent

Clicking through the pages of your site should not cause motion sickness. Yet some websites have inconsistent navigational menus. Sometimes they actually jump around. Sometimes the options change. Sometimes they don’t even work. Make them consistent and reliable, and you’ll find more people will be clicking around.

3. Limit what’s on your homepage

You wouldn’t stuff all your house’s furniture into the foyer, would you? Same thing with all the content on your website. Put your front-page stories on the homepage, and tuck the rest of the information where it logically belongs.

4. Add some links to and from your social networking accounts

Many organizations have well-used Facebook, MySpace or Twitter accounts, but you’d never know it from the website. Do some cross-linking, and add some links on your site. (Note: Join for the Talance Facebook Fan Club, and we’ll give you some lovely social media icons.) People can learn more about what you do, and they can subscribe to your accounts and receive updates and reminders.

5. Launch a blog or microblog

Even if you update it just once a week, a blog is a great add-on to a website. It increases your chances of telling the world what makes you so great, and it keeps people coming back for more.

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.

[Image: Flickr user tarop]

If you’re anything like me, Fridays, especially rainy ones, are big days to look around other people’s blogs. I use it as a time to keep an eye on the industry, see what kinds of thoughts are out there and spend some thoughtful time learning. Not that I’m avoiding work or anything …

In a spirit of sharing, I’d like to present some of my most frequently visited tech-oriented blogs so you too can have something to do before 5 p.m. comes.

Enjoy:

Religious Blogs

Church Marketing Sucks: A good all-around marketing blog, but especially useful for congregations.

Center for Congregations: These guys are based in Indianapolis but do a lot of good work that congregations anywhere could learn from.

CO-STAR blog: A client of ours that explores synagogue life. The staff posts info on spirituality, collaboration and sometimes technology.

Web Design & Development Blogs

Smashing Magazine: I can’t get enough of this excellent resource for design. So, so many good ideas in here.

Read/Write Web: “Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.” Lots of non-profit worthy stuff on here too.

Productivity Blogs

Lifehacker: One of my favorite sources for useful tools and tips with an especially technical angle, but not completely.

Unclutterer: A blog about getting organized that’s useful for anything from the filing cabinet to the sock drawer.

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.

Never one to shy from a bit of self promotion, I wanted to share this list of 100 (Non-Design) Blogs that Every Web Designer Should Read. Friendly Web Tools makes the cut!

But I also wanted to mention it, because this is a tidy list of what really are some of the most useful blogs out there to do with the Web, even if you’re a web design newbie. Nice collection!

Also, check out my post on the blogs I visit most often.