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

It’s happening ever so slowly, but more and more synagogues are beginning to experiment with Twitter. Check out who’s there now by going to http://twitter.com/synagogue. Churches and non-profits have cottoned on to Twitter a while ago (check out this recent article from Time magazine), but it’s been moving much slower and with more contention in the Jewish sphere.

Twitter, for those of you who haven’t yet decided to fiddle with it yet, is a utility that lets you send a 140-character message to your community of subscribers. It’s a bit like how Reuters news service delivers stories to newspapers around the country, but you’re the Reuters, and the newspapers around the country are anybody in the world who’s interested in what you have to say. If you want to see it in action, you can follow Talance at http://twitter.com/talance or @talance.

Like any social media tool, Twitter can be useful as long as you think carefully about how you’re going to use it and work it into your overall communication plan. You can find it’s useful for attracting volunteers or promoting events.

We’re wondering how many of you synagogues have thought about how you’re using Twitter, so we put together this poll. Take a few seconds (it’s super short) to answer why you’re using Twitter. We’ll post the results here when the poll is up.

If you’re NOT using Twitter, use the comments below to tell us why you’ve decided to give it a pass.

[Our clients at Talance ask us web strategy and tech questions all the time. In the spirit of giving, we’ll be answering your reader questions here in the blog every week. Have a question you’d like answered? Use the comments form at the bottom of this page or click here. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

John K. asks:

How are people finding me on Twitter? I keep getting messages that people are following me, but I don’t know how they found me.

First of all, John, congratulations on your burgeoning Twitter network! The fact that people are finding you proves your account is doing what it’s supposed to do: connect you to more people.

There are a few ways people might be finding you on Twitter, including these common methods:

Someone looked for you on Twitter. If you click Find People in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, you can use a variety of methods to find people you know. The first option is a search, where someone could have searched for your username, first or last name.

Someone uploaded their address book to their Twitter account, and you were in it. If you allow it, Twitter will fetch your address book from Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail or MSN and perform a quick match between the people in the that address book and the people who have Twitter accounts.

Someone they know is following you, or vice versa. You can see a list of followers on any profile page on Twitter. So if you’re following your local dog club’s Twitter account, anybody who looks at the list of followers on the dog club’s page can find you, and follow you, from there.

Someone saw a post you made. Any time you send a post to Twitter, it’s marked with @ and your username, such as @talance. So if I made a comment on my dog club’s Twitter page, anyone can click the @talance next to my comment and follow me that way.

Send us your tech questions by using the comments form at the bottom of this page or click here. We’ll review your question before posting, and get back to you with a response. Oh, and you can follow Talance on Twitter too: @talance

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.

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.

It’s not often that yours truly gets to share the stage with anyone, much less a fancy pants like poet laureate Robert Pinsky. But here I am, helping my friends at non-profit JBooks.com, try to garner money through a YouTube video plea. (Look for my Oscar-worthy eye-roll.)

Watch and enjoy: