darim online

Anyone remember the Burger King campaign last year -- defriend (or unfriend) 10 people on Facebook and we'll give you a burger?

(This is the second of five posts on creating a Fan Page for your Jewish Organization. The first part can be found here. Subsequent posts will cover your Page's picture, what information to include, what content to create and which applications to use.)

Unlike Abraham, Moses and Madonna, our organizations cannot simply go by just a one-word name.

How can you use social media to get people to walk in the door?  It's a great question that I'm often asked.  It's  big question, with many responses, but I'll tackle one thing here:  Understand your user.  Who is the audience that you're trying to reach, and why AREN'T they walking in the door yet?  Once you understand what stands between them and you, you can develop a social media strategy to help.  A few examples:

1) The Puget Sound Blood Center launched a social media campaign to engage new donors in thei

It's amazing that in this economy, and in a time when we here are Darim are continually advocating for increasing staffing and capacity around media use, that these openings pop up!  What luck!  Might they interest  you, or someone you know?

BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL NEXT: DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

(excerpts from a post on ejewishphilanthropy.com)

With an emphasis on community organizing and grassroots mobilization, Birthright Israel NEXT empowers all Taglit-Birthri

Welcome to the second in a series of posts based on the Darim Online Learning Network for Synagogues webinar with video guru, Michael Hoffman of See3 Communications.

Think of your organization's online presence as your “channel.” As such, consider how to integrate online video into your overall organizational strategy. Online video can be an effective means to strengthen connections among your community's members. Remember, people relate best to other people, less so to institutions.

Twitter, the "microblogging" platform where users can post updates of 140 characters or less, in making inroads in the Jewish community.  Many organizations are using this tool to open communication channels with their constituents, building relationships and in some cases making the case for funding through their regular posts.

I've written in the past about Twitter (IDF and

It’s Chanukah, a time for telling stories about our heritage, our history, and our families. It’s how we pass along our values, our beliefs and rituals, and our legacies. At my family’s annual “cousins” Chanukah party – a tradition that is close to 50 years old (if not more), my aunt made sure to point out to the three generations present that the cookies she had baked for everyone were based on my late grandmother’s recipe.

To the uninitiated, the cookies appear rather simple.

Taglines are incredibly important in today's era of information overload.  Studies show that as we are inundated with more and more information, we develop skills to sort through the volume to pay attention to the most valuable content. Young people who grew up with the internet are the most adept.

Effective branding is an important factor for gaining and retaining people's attention.  Many organizations' names don't really convey what makes them unique, and for many of us, the explanation takes enough words that we lose a good percentage of our audience before they are hooked on our programs and mission.

Part of our goal in this blog is to turn you on to great stuff, and we've just set up an aStore through Amazon.com to provide even more recommendations. The aStore allows you to set up your own store with your recommended products that Amazon sells. Any organization can do this, and through your affiliate relationship, get a percentage of each sale. The real value, however, is that you can turn on your constituents to the products you think they'd most enjoy or benefit from.