Here are some free or cheap tech tools to increase your productivity (or just make things easier)

The thing I enjoy the most about the holiday season is gift giving. But in today’s tightened economy, many of us are facing reduced budgets and looking for easy gifts to give family and colleagues.

So in the spirit of the season, here is a roundup of some of the best, free or cheap online tools I have discovered in the past year and incorporated into my work and life. Each one has helped with productivity, collaboration or otherwise just getting stuff done.  Enjoy.

• Screen Sharing – join.me – Many non-profits and small associations have to share a Webex or GoTo Meeting account, or don’t have one at all.  Well, here’s your free alternative. Simply go to http://join.me and click on the orange share button to get started and voila… you are sharing your screen with a member 500 or 5 miles away.
• Screen Capture Video – Screenr – But what if you can’t connect in real time with that member? Meet Screenr.  This web based screen recorder lets you record a quick 5 minute screencast and then creates a link that you can send to someone.
• File Collaboration – DropBox and Box – Emailing is so 2009.  Real collaboration happens in the cloud and these tools make it easy. Simply create an account, store your files and email a sharing invite to your team.
• Online Applications – Google Docs – Google is the king of free online productivity tools. If you need a basic word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and more, here’s the place to start.
• Building Online Forms – Wufoo – For many websites, creating a form to capture information or do a quick poll requires a call to a developer. Enter Wufoo. Simply build your form, grab the embed code and drop it into your site.
• Note Taking – Evernote – With everyone taking iPads and laptops to meetings, it seems like no one is using paper anymore. That’s good because Evernote makes note taking easier. My favorite features include multiple notebooks, tagging, notebook search, multimedia support and plug-ins available through the “Trunk”. But the best part is cross device synchronization. Take notes on your iPad in the meeting  and when you get back to your computer your notes will be there.
• Diagramming – Gliffy – Flowcharts, venn diagrams, sitemaps, network layouts, org charts and more used to require a designer. This basic online tool enables you to get the work done quickly and you can even share your designs online and collaborate with others.

For you Mac users, here are some task specific apps that I have started using as well:

• Timekeeping – Stone Hill Time Card – Anyone that has ever worked in a billable situation knows how hard it is to keep track of your time. This desktop app makes it easy to switch between tasks and keep track of your time.
• Link Checking – Integrity (Mac)– Webmasters and content specialists need to know when there are broken links on their websites. These tools make it easy to find and fix broken links. (For you PC users there is Xenu Link Sleuth as well but I found the UI of Integrity a bit easier to use.)
• Brainstorming – MindNode – A great mind-mapping tool with a free trial that offers limited functionality or a full featured version. Great for ideation and connecting ideas.

Many of these tools are built on a Freemium model – free version with basic functionality and then paid versions with more options. It’s a great way to try out a tool out and see if it works for you.

I invite you to check them out and let us know what you think.  If you have other tools to add, leave a comment so we can check out your favorite new tools.

In preparation for the session we created a quick one-question survey and sent it out to all online community managers that we know. Paul and I wanted to not just deliver the voice of us as vendors, but also that of our clients who are working with online communities in the trenches everyday.

The question we asked was:

If you could tell an association venturing into creating a new private online community for their members one thing to keep in mind, one thing that would help them succeed. What would it be?

It’s our hope their insights will help you as you venture forth with your community.

Thanks to each and every community manager that participated. Their responses below.

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One thing?! Yikes. I guess it would be that if you want your new community to succeed, you need to commit it. I know your members love and are used to your org’s existing listserv or discussion boards, but if you do not sunset them and transition all members to the new community platform, it will fail. Nobody likes change, but for the new platform to succeed you need to make it the ONE community platform for your org and help people make and get used to the change.

- Maggie McGary, ASHA

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Just one?? Be patient. There will be a number of naysayers at the beginning who will criticize and want the old way back but be patient and work with them as they’ll become your strongest supporters as they obviously have a passion for the community.

- Patrick McGary, American Society for Parenteral & Enteral Nutrition

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Focus. Start with a simple and singularly focused objective that will allow you to build off of for the future.

- Jeff Price, BOC

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It’s about how your members feel about it, not about how you feel about it.

- Robert Barnes, Fitness Australia

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It doesn’t happen overnight or without strong staff support.

- Teri Carden, FSAE

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Test, test, and test again. Do not assume that your members want what they say they want. Test so that you can uncover what they really want.

- Cathy Stegmaier, Alliance of Cambridge Advisors

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Understanding that this is not a “quick” project but will be an ongoing learning time for both members and staff.

- Linda Chreno, Marketing General

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Make sure to keep the conversation lively and fresh.

- Cecilia Sepp, Association Laboratory

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Be prepared to spend time and effort to get the community self-sustaining.

- Terry Coatta, AssociCom

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Don’t underestimate the resources required to facilitate the community. Whether a staff person or a member (ideally the latter, or several of them), that person needs ongoing development and must commit the time to foster the community.

- Bob Farrace, National Association of Secondary School Principals

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Be prepared. You need to monitor conversations all the time and have the full commitment of the entire staff to respond in a timely and effective way. It’s takes resources to help them talk to each other. And, don’t get distressed if it doesn’t take off quickly. Give it time to grow, but be prepared to help nurture that growth. And, have fun!

- Jim Way, Association of Corporate Counsel

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While the association may want the community to succeed and is willing to put unlimited resources towards it, ultimately the members must REALLY want it (to the point of being willing to openly engage and keep the community vibrant) in order for it to be truly successful.

- Matt Ott, National Grocers Association

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Don’t reinvent the wheel, use exisiting platforms, consider LinkedIn and FaceBook.

- Virginia, CFA Chicago

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I would recommend two things: 1) Transition your membership and educate its members about what the private community means and can mean to them. 2) Educate the membership in regards to all the features that the community can bring and the advantages over the public communities and social networks.

- Marianella Moreno, Percussive Arts Society

We will cover a number of elements of web redesign PM best practices including managing expectations, timelines and project management tools.

As a sneak peak of our session here are 5 CMS Tips co-speaker Kathryn Hamilton is sharing as one of our session handouts:

1. It takes a village. Building your site is more than just one department’s task. What’s important to one department is peanuts to another, and there’s value in building a team of key players and clearly defining roles. People need buy-in, and there’s no better way to get it than giving them (or at least someone in their department) a voice.

2. Don’t go too big. The capacity and functionality of CMS are often more than you’ll ever dream of needing. Understand your requirements before you start shopping, and plan for some growth, but don’t buy the Maserati if you don’t have the skill to drive it.

3. Your CMS won’t do magic. Sites can’t write or manage their own content, edit careless writing, or make strategic decisions. Professional skill drives the CMS bus.

4. Consider the unknowns. What’s lurking in the back-end of your site? What are the murky integration points? Be prepared to stumble upon these mysteries in your site evaluation – best done before you get started on your CMS.

5. Timing isn’t everything. Don’t rush your planning and implementation. It will take longer than you expect! Stay away from aggressive timelines and planning to launch your site at an annual meeting. Plan a soft launch with room for your timeline to expand!

When the Vanguard Technology team talks with our clients working on association website redesigns these are very important points we review throughout every phase of the project.  This succinct list provides a great reminder of things to consider and remember when starting off a website redesign project.

We hope to see you at our session and the conference.  If you make it there, we look forward to connecting with you and hearing your stories and experiences.

Kathryn Hamilton is Vice President for Marketing and Communications at NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. Email her at hamilton(at)naiop.org.

Ray van Hilst is Director of Client Strategy and Marketing at Vanguard Technology. Connect with him @rvanhilst or rvanhilst(at)vtcus.com.

I’ve heard how blogging is dead or that organizations just don’t get it.  Well, I’m here to tell you that they are wrong.  In a content driven world where “in bound marketing” drives new members and non-dues revenue, blogging is one of the most powerful tools an association can leverage to drive site traffic, share thought leadership and stand out on the (ever increasingly) crowded internet.

But what are a few things that associations should know before jumping in?  Here are a few quick topics I anticipate we will cover tomorrow:

Blogging is just part of your content strategy – I’m sure we’ll talk about the kinds of content that is best for blogs and how to weave it into an association’s overall online presence and content strategy.

Association blogging is about managing people, not technology – The technology has gotten easier and easier (and if you want to we can talk about it). The hard part is finding, motivating and maintaining your content providers (the good news, is that blogging opens up that process to many more people in your organization).

Blogging is a marathon requiring commitment – Just like deciding to publish a magazine takes an investment, so does blogging.  There needs to be a commitment from the organization to support the blog and its authors.

I know for sure that we’ll wax poetic on these topics and more.  And for anyone interested in figuring out how to start or manage a blog for their association this will be a room packed with experts including Lisa Junker, Deirdre Reid, Jay Daughtry, Maddie Grant, Maggie McGary and more.

Self Promotion Alert – I’ll be presenting a case study about how the National Wildlife Federation reinvented their blog and turned it into a content machine that drives online engagement and actions.  Take a sneak peak by reading it at blog.nwf.org.

If you’re curious, hurry up and register. There’s still space and time to get there.  And if you can’t make it, be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter (hashtag #progressu).

Email and Social Media go together like Yin and Yang

Yesterday was the kickoff of Informz’s first Users Conference.  The day was jam-packed with rooms full of Informz users and partners learning and sharing best practices relating to email marketing for associations and non-profits.  Topics included messaging, design, deliverability and other typical email marketing topics.

However the big idea I walked away with was how closely email marketing and social media are aligned and coexist successfully.

For all the talk of social media being the death of email, it’s clear not only is email marketing stronger than ever, but it is now permanently connected to social media efforts.

Social AND Email are built for Sharing – Let’s start with the fact social is all about sharing.  However according to a recent study, email is still the #1 way that web users share content with others and in 2010, 86% of you did it shared a piece of content through email.  Let’s face it, that impulse to hit “forward” on a funny or relevant email isn’t going away.

“Social and Email are BFFs” – It’s not often that you can use the phrase “BFF” in a business email so maybe it’s better to say “have a symbiotic relationship.”  Several speakers spoke of how they compliment each other.  Here are a couple of examples:

• Email can drive success in social media.  Make sure to promot your public outposts (e.g. Facebook and LinkedIn) and that content in your emails to increase engagement (and followers).
• SMPS showed off their promotion encouraging members to add content and resources to their mysmps.org private online community… through an email campaign. With each email send, content was uploaded to the community adding member value through both social and email.

Email should be part of your Social Media Guidelines and Policies – While you are worried about social media policies and risk, have you considered email?  (Frankly, this one was my “A-HA moment” of the day.)

Organizations go to great lengths to document policies and guidelines about can be shared online and how to interact in social media, but little thought has been given to adding email to these guidelines.  Given how quickly and prevalent sharing of content is though social media this seems a no brainer, yet I’m sure many associations haven’t considered this in their guidelines.   If you don’t know where to start, check out this Social Media Policy primer from Socialfish – and then ask yourself where does your email marketing and outreach efforts fit into this.

Of course there were more great tips and takeaways. Here are a few memorable ones :

• Transactional emails get opened since people are expecting them – use that opportunity to cross-promote other content.
• More and more emails are being opened on mobile devices.  Design with mobile in mind by keeping your width to 600 pixels wide and not using sidebars.
• Keep the HTML in your email simple.  This isn’t web design.
• Embrace the power of “Diamond Writing” – Put the most important content at the top AND bottom of your email

The reality is that email marketing always has been and will be about great content.  The goal is to drive members and users to your website (and get them to do something). It is still the most powerful tool organizations have to reach out to their members and drive that traffic.  Use it wisely and you’ll be rewarded.

Associations are natural thought leaders and like to be known as the “go-to-expert” for their niche.  However when I ask web users, “How do you research something related to your work,” their answer is almost always “Google”.

Not “I visit my association’s website.”

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving with new technologies helping web users find the right websites.

Yet every day I see association websites lacking SEO basics that could help them be shown in more industry related searches.

For all intents and purposes, Google doesn’t even know the site exists. So where should you start?

Your acronym is not a search term.

Many orgs assume the best search for their site is based on the acronym.  But if your acronym is AWA, do you want to be found as the American Water Association or Applied Widgets Association?

Start with a look at your industry and key terms that apply to your area of expertise.  List the most relevant ones covering what you do and your content.  Here are just a few sources and considerations:

• Use the full name of your organization including the industry.
• What are the hottest topics at your conferences or in your publications?
• What search terms help you find your competitors – whether it’s another association or a vendor offering education?
• Look at your website analytics, what terms are already delivering traffic?
• What are key terms the media uses about your industry in either mainstream media or business trades?
• If your organization is regional, include what area you serve (state, region, city, etc.).

There are many tools to explore search terms including the keyword tool that is part of Google AdWords as well as paid tools and services.  Spend some time with them to build a concise list.

Lastly, avoid jargon.  Remember, how you refer to a subject may not be what outsiders type into Google.

Meta Tags – Love Them. Use Them.

Meta Tags tell the web browser about the page you are reading including the page name, description, and the keywords for the page.  It’s also the first data a search engine reads when it finds a web page and stores it in the search engine database.

And yet many websites don’t have any Meta Tags on their pages.

Modern Content Management Software (CMS) systems easily add tags to your website.  Go back to your list of keywords and make sure you are adding them as part of the process of creating and updating web pages.  Include:

• Title Tag – Generates the title at the top of your web-browser.  Give every page a title that relates to page content and includes one of your keywords.
• Description Tag – Provides the description shown in the search engine results page.
• Keyword Tag – Tells the search engine the subject of the page.

Write Great Content

Most associations do this well already.  However make it more search engine friendly by remembering:

• Use your key terms in the headline and body copy.  But don’t overdo it and make your copy unreadable.
• Don’t put all of your content behind your member login.  Make some content available to the general public – and search engines.

Links and URLs Matter

Even small associations can have well over 1,000 pages on their website..  As you create content, make sure it can be found and understood by search engines.

• Use “friendly” URLs in your site that describe the page content.  For example, instead of “www.yourorg.org/dynamicpage=?348dks&65$9” use a URL such as “www.yourorg.org/industry-reports/manufacturing-trends.”
•  With 1,000+ pages, you can’t expect a search engine to know which pages are relevant. Use links with descriptive anchor text in your newsletters, press releases and throughout your site to help readers (and search engines) find your most important content.

SEO is Everyone’s Job

Search Engine Optimization is not a one-time project.  It should be a priority for everyone adding website content.  Make sure they know the key terms, most relevant pages, and URL guidelines.

Most sites have a web content approval process.  Make SEO part of the content creation process by including SEO basics in the review.

Every day new blogs, websites, and social media outposts are created about your association’s subject.  The only way to stand out is to make sure search engines can find your site and your content.

Conclusion

Yes, you can turn to an SEO expert or agency to help you achieve the results you want.  But start by applying some SEO basics and get a jump on the process by yourself. You’ll help your website in long run.

Ray van Hilst is Director of Client Strategy and Marketing at Vanguard Technology. Connect with him @rvanhilst or rvanhilst at vtcus.com.

Many take the “if you build it they will come” mentality and overlook a key component of web content success – sharing.

Sharing Is Huge

A 2010 study found that 86% of people share content by e-Mail, with news articles and blog posts accounting for 53% of shared content. Despite rapid growth of social media platforms, traditional e-Mail remains the preferred method of communication by professionals.

However a shift is underway as AddThis’s infographic (below) sums up the state of sharing at the end of 2010.  Some key takeaways are that Facebook’s portion of online sharing grew by 33% in 2010 alone and web users are embracing more tools such as AddThis (now installed on more than 7 million domains)

Sharing Trends in 2010 from AddThis

This data doesn’t account for new trends such as the recent update to Facebook’s “like button” that shares the content on your profile.

The challenge is that as organizations and managers focus on developing social media channels, the core website is often overlooked as everyone chases the new social media “shiny object”.

Here are some “quick hits” to implement as you make sharing part of your online strategy

Build in Tools for Sharing

• Give pages unique URLs that can be shared
• Include sharing tools in web templates (e.g. Tweetmeme, Facebook like button, ShareThis, Forward to a Friend, etc.)
• Create engagement on the web pages by enabling comments (a feature in a number of new content management systems)

Create High Value Content For Sharing

• Go beyond counting “tweets” and “likes” and focus on creating high value content your members and audiences find useful and key to their success – and thus want to share.
• This includes events, press releases, association news, white papers and reports

Embrace the Power of A Blog

• A blog should be used as a central content hub that makes timely content visible
• Create time sensitive, relevant content
• Use keyword friendly content
• Link back to key pages your main site

Share Where Your Members Are

• Find out where your members “hang out” and give them the tools to share and engage in those areas
• Focus social content in the most important channels where you can make a difference instead of trying to cover each one
• Redirect links back to your site for highest value content

As you develop your online strategy make sure to bake in the tools your audiences will need to share what they find with others.  Not only will they thank you for it, they will drive qualified traffic to your association website which will result in increased membership and non-dues revenue.

Ray van Hilst is Director of Client Strategy and Marketing at Vanguard Technology. Connect with him @rvanhilst or rvanhilst at vtcus.com.

Oops! How do you handle a social media gaffe? (Photo credit: iStock)

Obviously, two of the most talked about tweets (at least in social media “expert” circles) in the past months are in this realm – the mistweets by @redcross and @chryslerautos.

In case you missed them, here are the back-stories on each: Red Cross Blog/Twitter Faux Pas and Jalopnik/Chrysler Loses Control of Twitter Account.

After the Red Cross mistweet, my peer network agreed the Red Cross’s response was classy and set the bar for others to follow.  Yet despite a case study in action with strong support for the Red Cross and the mistweeting staffer, we saw the exact opposite reaction from Chrysler ending in the firing of both the employee and agency representing the brand.

So other than content (for which using the F-bomb in a public forum is generally inappropriate unless you are a stand up comedian), what explains the radical differences in the responses and aftermath?  Let’s start with a closer look at the two organizations to understand how they arrived at such different reactions.

Fundamentally Different Personalities (and Missions)

The Red Cross is all about humanitarian care and relationships.  The staff is driven by a mission to help and nurture.  By contrast, Chrysler is a for-profit company focusing on the bottom line and shareholder value.  Quite simply: one gives, the other sells.

Beyond this skin-deep comparison are more important differences including the stakeholders and their investment in the organization, executive compensation (and thus motivations and drivers), and internal politics.  This creates two very worlds for social media activities to take place in.

But even more important is the difference in how the two organizations manage their social media – in-house versus out-sourced vendor.

The Red Cross has internalized social media management with active, full time internal staff managing social activity and engaging with all levels of the organization and their audiences.  This makes the platforms a key vehicle for engaging and informing supporters or those in need.

In contrast, Chrysler has outsourced social media management to an agency.  This approach says “social media is an expense item in the marketing budget to be managed just like any other media campaign.”  In fact, a scan of Chrysler’s tweets show a focus on tweets written to support promotional efforts.

I doubt the (outsourced) individuals managing the account are on a first name basis with a mix of senior level executives and line workers to get a deep insight into the personality and happenings of the company – and thus affects how deep they can truly engage their audiences beyond promotional “attaboys.”

Community Support and Response (or lack thereof)

After Red Cross’s mistweet, the online world had a collective giggle and understood.  Adding to the excitement, Dog Fish Head reveled in the exposure and helped drive donations to the org.

More important, the Red Cross’s community reacted with support for the employee and organization.  This reaction was made possible by Red Cross’s already established, open community who understood the error and stood strong in the face of something potentially embarrassing.  As a sampling, just look at the comments in Mashable’s recap.  Almost two months after the incident, #gettingslizzerd is synonymous with the Red Cross and how to handle a social media gaffe.

By comparison, the Chrysler tweet was met with borderline derision.  The website Jalopnik that initially reported on the error has archived it for all to see and comments on many blog posts about the issue range from feeling sorry for the employee who was fired to taking cheap shots at Chrysler’s entire company (one comment on Jalopnik even said “Our car company was compromised earlier this decade. We have been taking steps to resolve it.”)

Where one organization’s twitter persona has genuine relationships through real people the other is seen as a corporate mouthpiece for promotional purposes.

The Corporate Gaffe Response

When using the previous differences as a filter, the divergent responses then make perfect sense.

The Red Cross values engagement and support, so they reacted with honesty, humility and care for a hard-working staffer who made an honest mistake.  They had also banked “good community karma” so an errant tweet wasn’t the end of the world. And they understood that considering everything they deal with, an excited, good-natured mistweet isn’t a life-or-death event.

The reaction was a mix of humor, candor and then open admission of what happened – followed by an appropriate realization of what a good thing they had going which was leveraged into action to help the organization’s mission.

By comparison, Chrysler’s vendor-employee was a number on a spreadsheet who may not be known by anyone at corporate.  The reaction was not based on relationships and previous success, but on a budget number and potential fallout.  Additionally, Chrysler represents for many all that is wrong with corporate America and trying to shake the image of a greedy company who took a government bailout.  The political piggy bank is running low.

The first reaction was a lame “we’ve been compromised” excuse, followed by two small blog posts about the issue with “appropriate steps to ensure it does not happen again.”  The hammer then fell on the employee and agency. The end result? Cut the losses, move on and change the story as quickly as you can.

(I don’t buy the “we didn’t fire the employee, the agency did” line. I’ve seen big clients save an employees job before so clearly they didn’t want to intervene.)

While many of us took a collective GASP over Chrysler and hoped they would rise to the example set by the Red Cross, these key differences in the two organizations set the foundation for how they would react.  After taking a closer look at these, the reactions make perfect sense.

So for those of us working in social media on behalf of our clients, organizations and companies, what lessons can we take from this experience?  I’ll save that one for my next post….

Ray van Hilst is Director of Client Strategy and Marketing at Vanguard Technology. Connect with him @rvanhilst or rvanhilst at vtcus.com.

1. Title Tag

Help Google find you. The title tag of your page (the words that appear in the very, very top of your browser in the upper left) is one of the major elements that Google considers. It should include the keywords you hope people are putting into Google to find you. It shouldn’t just say “Home” or “About Us”. Make it like, “The best karaoke enthusiast organization in the United States,” assuming you believe people might be searching “karaoke enthusiast organization” in Google to find you. Simple fix, big results in your search engine ranking.

2. Lessen Copy

People don’t read the web, they scan it. Text-heavy pages are not read. A rule of thumb as shared by Steve Krug in the book Don’t Make Me Think is to take your existing copy and cut it in half. Then take that amount and cut it in half again. Then maybe you’re where you need it to be. Bullets are nice, too. If you’re information is important, why not put it in a format that your constituents will want to read?

3. Start A Blog

Go to wordpress.com or blogger.com and be up in minutes. What should you blog about? Who should do the blogging. Good questions. Check out this quick-read ebook to find out. All the “whys” are answered there.

4. Get Mobile-Friendly

It’s much easier to do than you might imagine. The key here is to make sure that members (or more importantly, potential members) are getting a good first impression from your organization on their mobile device. If you haven’t checked what your standard website looks like on a BlackBerry, I encourage you to take a look. It may not be pretty. To see how it’s done correctly, try the International Special Events Society’s website on a BlackBerry or iPhone (www.ises.com).

5. Make A Content Plan

If you’re managing your home page’s content on an ad hoc basis, you may be finding that you don’t have time to get to it as regularly as you’d like. Write a plan. Create a calendar. Assign people to the plan. Running solo on the website? All the more reason to write it down. Schedule a meeting with yourself in Outlook. Whatever it takes. Updates at least once a week ensure that returning visitors get a comfort level that the site is being attending to.

Five easy fixes without spending a lot of  money. Nice.

Feel free to comment below if you have any other ways you’ve spruced up your site on a dime.

Chris Bonney is Vice President of Client Experience and Marketing at Vanguard Technology. Connect with him @chrisbonney or cbonney at vtcus.com.