[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

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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!

Want to pick up quick tips and resources on technology and web strategy for your non-profit?

»Follow us on Twitter.

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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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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.

People frequently ask me why it’s worth it to start some kind of social media program, such as beginning a blog, setting up a Twitter account or establishing a Facebook group. I can go through case study after case study to show why it can offer a good ROI, but I came across this useful analogy on the WebWorkerDaily blog yesterday:

You would never leave a business meeting, lunch, coffee, etc., without exchanging business cards with the other party, would you? Even if it’s a sales call that wasn’t particularly promising, you leave the card, and hope your name comes to mind when they need something down the road.

At the very least, having a social media presence makes you available. Why not show up where people are looking?

Twitter is both addictive and inescapable. I’m always talking with fellow Tweeters I know to figure out how to use it best (like by keeping up with friends and colleagues) without having it take over my every waking minute (like by reading every post about what someone’s eating for lunch).

Paul Boag from writes a nice post on Smashing Magazine’s blog that has a few tips on how to use it well.

Oh, and if you’re not already, you can follow me on Twitter too.

I spend so much of my time on social networks that it’s hard for me to remember that not all nonprofits use them. But you should! Social networks, like those below, are an ideal way to create community, distribute information and learn from others. Plus, these are all free services, and free marketing is a nonprofit’s best friend.

So, as part of our end-of-the-year-top-five-blow-out, here are our five favorite social networking sites:

1. Facebook: We love Facebook is the community-based Pages and Groups. But we especially encourage charitable organizations to set up a Facebook Cause. This lets you easily spread the word about important issues and lets you take donations online. (See Talance on Facebook.)
2. MySpace: What we love about MySpace is its size. It’s the third most trafficked sites in the United States according to Alexa, so it’s a great way to make connections and send out buzz. Non-profits can use the blogs to distribute alerts and updates.
3. Twitter: Twitter wins our hearts because it’s so fast. This microblogging site lets people follow updates without the bulk of a blog. Nonprofits are using it in great ways – such as sending out calls for blood donations. (See Talance on Twitter.)
4. Flickr: Sharing photos seems innocuous enough, but there’s power in those images. We’ve seen church groups post compelling images of their missionary work and nonprofits post images of their events, which can create interest in future events.
5. YouTube: If photos are powerful, videos are even more so. We love the way YouTube brings images and sounds to your network. Look the Living Darfur official music video, which has received more than 2 million views. Activist Naomi Klein has created a powerful network for her Shock Doctrine. Movies are powerful things.

The world of technology is hard enough to keep up with – never mind all the new vocabulary that continually arises. That’s why we decided to launch an occasional new feature, the Friendly Web Tools Blog Word Watch. We’ll keep our ears open for new words and define them here so you can see what’s new on the scene – and more importantly – what it means.

Today: tweetup, n. A spontaneous meeting among connections who follow each other on the microblogging service Twitter. Friends usually meet, but more often strangers are participating in these ad hoc meetings too.

As in: “Impromptu Tweetup Tonight @ Apple Bar: 17 Waverly Place, NYC 6:30-8pm. Hope you can make it!” (source)

Wondering what Twitter is? Take a look at blog entries I’ve tagged with the word Twitter.

In the next few years, we’re going to be hearing even more about so-called microblogging. So it’s not a bad idea to start reading about it now. Besides, many organizations are using microblogging with products such as Twitter to great effect (follow me on Twitter, if you’re curious).

An article in BusinessWeek talks about how airlines are using Twitter to handle customer support. Look at this example from the article:

Christofer Hoff tweeted his displeasure with Southwest (LUV) on Apr. 28, when his flight was delayed and his luggage disappeared. The next day he received the following message from Southwest: “Sorry to hear about your flight—weather was terrible in the NE. Hope you give us a 2nd chance to prove that Southwest = Awesomeness.” In a blog post about the incident, Hoff wrote that it was “cool and frightening at the same time.”

Think about what parallels you might be able to draw between Southwest and your own organization. Can you use a microblogging site to …

• Notify your community about a successful fund-raising effort? (E.g., “Hurray! We just hit the $8000 mark! Help us get to $9000.”)
• Update volunteers on an upcoming opportunity? (E.g., “Friends of the Burlington Library: we still need four people for the book sale. Bring a friend on Saturday.”)
• Bring about social action in real time? (E.g., “Help us protest for fair wages. We’re meeting at 4th & Filmore. Bring your T-shirts and pickets.”)

Twitter or another microblogging site might not be for you and your organization. But it doesn’t hurt to educate yourself. Zappos (the company that sells shoes online) has a handy quick-start guide to Twitter, which is a pretty good intro for anyone.

How do you reach your constituency when they’re teenagers, don’t use e-mail, aren’t on Facebook and the cost of texting is prohibitively expensive? It’s a good question that came in to me today.

One option is to set up a Twitter account and start promoting it to your audience. This is a service that you can access from your PC and send short messages that your teens can subscribe to. Think mini-blog. Check out this handy list of questions from Twitter’s site.

Otherwise, most cell phone providers give e-mail addresses to their subscribers, with their cell phone number at the beginning and their provider name at the end (something like 1235551212@verizon.com). It’s generally free to receive e-mailed text messages for them and free for you to send them. Ask your teens who they have service with, and this will go a long way to connecting with them.