[Photo credit: Vintage Wedding Postcard ~ Bride & Groom, on Flickr]

So you’ve decided to start a blog – good for you! Blogs are important ways for you to build a faithful following and enrich your site with valuable content.

But before you open up your first free Blogger or Wordpress account, think about how that blog will integrate with your overall communications strategy and online presence. Websites and blogs should support each other, not compete. Too many efforts are siloed, the blog hanging off the side like an extra appendage, or vice versa.

A few ideas for integrating them more closely:

Publish blog entries directly into your website. If what you’re writing in the blog relates to your site, make it show up there. Vice versa, if you’re creating content within your main website that could be useful for your blog readers, republish.

Share tags. Tags, or categories, can be shown on both website material and blog entries. Link them together.

Make the blog appear within the framework of your website. The Talance blog is actually on Wordpress while our website is on Drupal. But we’ve made them look the same so you never really feel like you’re leaving our website.

Create a related links section at the bottom of blog entries that refer back to related material on your main website.

Create a Feedback page on your blog that links back to your website feedback page.

Advertising people will tell you that before anyone will act on an ad, they have to be reminded 18 times. That’s a lot of dead-horse beating. It’s all the more effective if you can find online and offline places to promote. To get you started, here are 18 ways you can tell people to visit your website:

1. Put your website address on your return address labels
2. Mention your website on your voice mail recording
3. Add your site to your e-mail signature
4. Mention any new development any time you talk to someone
5. Update your business cards with your address
6. List yourself in directories
7. Ask partners to display literature with your website
8. Open a Facebook, MySpace and Flickr page and send people back to your website
9. Create a custom background on Twitter and make sure it has your website on it
10. Wear your web address – have it printed on T-shirts, hats, bags or even cheap buttons
11. Put a custom magnet on your organization’s car
12. Send out press releases
13. Encourage paper newsletter subscribers to read issues online
14. Send an e-mail with your new website to everybody you know, and as them to forward it to anyone they know
15. Have a website launch party/fundraiser
16. Start a blog – more pages means better online coverage
17. Add a Send This Article to Friends button on your website
18. Hang posters with your web address

[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.

When people at an organization start sharing information about their website, they’re generally surprised at how much their ideas differ. That’s one of the key reasons you need to assemble a reliable website committee to guide your organization through the process of building or redesigning your website. These people can help you decide who your audience is, clarify the purpose of your site and determine how it meshes with your organization’s mission.

Put together a group of people that represent different parts of your organization. Maybe this is the executive director, volunteer coordinator and office manager, along with whoever is part of your communications committee. Don’t have a communications committee? Get one.

Having a Web dream team helps you gather feedback in an organized way, without everybody’s opinion overwhelming you. But remember that it’s imperative for successful projects to have one person who can give the nod on development, and then have one person who can give the nod on an ongoing basis. Make sure you appoint a leader to your dream team who is a master of organizing and moving things forward.

Volunteers are great members of your dream team. Frequently, your supporters know how to do more than you think. I guarantee you have marketing, communication or technology specialists who are fans of what you do. Recruit them to help.

All (successful) development projects work with a team of people who are able to work together on a single goal. They’re the keepers of the project and can steer it in the right way, so borrow from what works.

Small businesses and nonprofits are in the unusual position of being executive staff, mail room clerk and chief technologist all at the same time. Everyone can lick an envelope, but not everyone feels comfortable taking the role of CTO with no tech background. Yet that’s just what happens when you embark on a website project. Here are a few things you can do make sure the development of your website goes smoothly.

1. Decide what you need. This is a good time to start polling the people you work with, because people at your organization may have different ideas about how the site should work than you do. Start with a needs assessment, and put all the feedback and ideas into a big list.
2. Prioritize. The needs assessment will help you compile a wish list of what you want on your website, but now prioritize. If you don’t define scope, your project could go on forever and cost more than you have. Divide your list into three sections: Must Have, Will Need, Nice to Have. Be prepared to take out a clean sheet of paper for any additional items you think of during the project. We advise our clients to set aside an additional 15% of the budget for these unforeseen issues. Anything else you can get to these items during round two. Six months from launch is a good time to think of scheduling this round two.
3. Appoint a traffic cop. During your project development, you need someone to be the central command between your organization and the development team. This traffic cop doesn’t need to know about technology, but they should be organized, good at delivering information and have the ability to call the shots when needed.
4. Create a feedback forum for employees. It’s nice to have a web form or survey somewhere where people can drop comments and ideas during development and beyond. Websites should always be in motion, so use feedback as way to make sure your site does what you want it to as your organization evolves.

Most of my co-workers are a little freaked by the economy, but one of my nonprofit clients said something troubling to me the other day. He said many of his colleagues are reluctant to spend money on technology because they fear the recession.

I don’t always believe you have to spend money to make money, but in this case it’s really true. Some nonprofits have such horrendous websites that they pretend they don’t even exist rather than face the task of fixing them. They don’t understand that by having an ugly public face they’re actually hampering the advancement of their goals and sustainability. (NB: We’re hosting a presentation on usability on Sept. 2, 2008 at 2 Eastern – you can register for free.)

You don’t have to believe me. Jakob Nielson, the widely respected king of usability, wrote a wonderful article called “Do Government Agencies and Non-Profits Get ROI from Usability?” He says:

Although the gains don’t fall into traditional profit columns, there are clear arguments for improving usability of non-commercial websites and intranets. In one example, a state agency could get an ROI of 22,000% by fixing a basic usability problem.

Did you see that number? It really is 22,000 percent. Staggering. I don’t know a single funder that wouldn’t gasp at that kind of return and justify the funds to improve a website. Yes, people might read something about you in The Chronicle of Philanthropy or The Nonprofit Times, but people learn about your organization by going to your website. And they won’t learn anything if it’s not usable.

New websites don’t come free, but to have an unusable website and do nothing with it is a complete waste of money.

So today’s friendly Web tool is actually a whitepaper from ZD Net that will help you calculate the ROI (return on investment). It’s for a CRM system, but it can be applied to a website as well. Read it and get to cleaning up your website!

A client called the other day wondering why more people weren’t using their brand spanking new synagogue website. It was a nice site, all the bells and whistles, and there wasn’t a very good reason I could see that no one was using it. But it didn’t take long to figure out what the problem was.”Well, do the people in your congregation know about the site?”

“We sent an e-mail when it launched.”

“Do you mention it in your monthly bulletin?”

“No.”

“Do you have the URL on your business cards?”

“No.”

“Do you tell people during services that they can find more information on the site?”

“No.”

“Do you have a message on your voice mail about the website?”

“No.”

And that’s the problem with many websites – synagogue or otherwise. Just building it isn’t enough. Just mentioning it once isn’t enough. The marketing begins with other channels – and you undoubtedly have many available. Think about all the ways you touch your community, and make sure you use them to mention your website and its benefits.

Eventually they’ll come, and if you do it right, they’ll keep coming back.

Here’s another good reason for you nonprofits to set up your own websites: Google Grants. If you have 501(c)(3) status, you can apply to receive free AdWords advertising on Google – this is worth it! As cited on the Google site:

Google Grant recipients use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic. Three of our award recipients have achieved these results:

* Room to Read, which educates children in Vietnam, Nepal, India and Cambodia, attracted a sponsor who clicked on its AdWords ad. He has donated funds to support the education of 25 girls for the next 10 years.
* The US Fund for UNICEF’s e-commerce site, Shop UNICEF, has experienced a 43 percent increase in sales over the previous year.
* CoachArt, supporting children with life-threatening illnesses through art and athletics programs, has seen a 60 to 70 percent increase in volunteers.

Check out program details to see if you qualify. Google Grants recipients are selected every quarter, and they say you’ll know within six months whether or not you receive one.

Good luck!

Which would be the smarter way to run a project:

1. Leave all decisions-making power and creative control to a single person with a genius IQ, or
2. Share decisions and idea-making among a team of interested people?

There may be some power-hungry geniuses who could effectively argue the first choice, but my money is on a shared responsibility. No matter how well I know something, I can’t honestly believe I’ll think of every angle, and that’s why it’s important to gather feedback.

Yet many organizations – very often nonprofits with limited staffs – will leave construction and maintenance of a website to a single person. What a mistake!

When we work through projects with clients, we encourage them to discuss ideas together before coming to us. They’re usually surprised at how much their ideas about the site differ. This is one of the key reasons why you should assemble a reliable tech team to guide your organization through the process. I believe this is doubly true if your nonprofit is a church or synagogue or otherwise serves a large community.

Why build a tech team?

• It helps solicit feedback from your audience/congregation in an organized way
• Helps draw out other’s talents to achieve organizational goals
• It works!

When creating your tech team, make sure you have all areas of your organization represented, and make sure you know who’s in charge. Everyone has to have a voice, but it’s imperative for successful projects to have one person who can give the nod on development, and then have one person who can give the nod on an ongoing basis.

Once you’ve got your prospects for a tech team, run this checklist by yourself:

• Does your tech team adequately represent everyone in your audience/congregation?
• Is there a single person in charge who’s good at leadership?
• Have you decided who’s in charge on an ongoing basis?

Now you’ve got your dream team, you can put them to work on discovering what should go into your site. Best place to start? A needs assessment.

My friend Aaron Spiegel from the Alban Institutes’s Center for Congregations dug up an interesting commentary on the sins of church websites, “10 Easy Ways to Keep Me from Visiting Your Church Because I Visited Your Website,” which he sites here.

The original post was written several years ago, and while some church websites have redeemed themselves, I’ve seen many, many synagogue sites that need serious overhauls. Same goes for any nonprofit.

The important thing to keep in mind is that people make judgments about your organization based on your website. Calendars are extremely useful tools, for instance, but I’d rather see no calendar at all than one that’s outdated by a year. Ignoring your site is worse than having no site at all.