Maybe you’re checking out this list as you amble out of one of the Chapter Leaders Sessions at Excellence in Journalism 2012. Or, maybe you’re a chapter leader who couldn’t quite make it to the conference, but are diligently checking up on everything SPJ while lounging at home in your pajamas on a Saturday.

Either way, here’s the list of helpful web tools that were shared during the session at EIJ12. Did we miss something? Was one of these tools helpful in a way we didn’t mention? Share by commenting below or sending an email – we’d love to hear it!

• Ticketbud - Ticket sales. Organizers pay a flat fee, regardless of the amount of tickets they sell (free events are FREE). Event pages can be customized and can be formatted to include an easy option for sponsorship. Random goodwill fact: any events benefiting cancer are FREE.

• MailChimp –  Easy to use, sharp looking, custom way to send emails to chapter members and other journalists in the community. Great Forever Free plan, which should suit most chapter needs. Plays nice with social media and has an incredibly cute monkey as a mascot.

• A blog – We’ve forever heard from chapters that it’s hard to get a website or blog going, but the reality is that the web is where current and future  members are going to find you. So try any number of these free (with paid options, of course) tools: WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Posterous, Snackwebsites… the list goes on and on. Something, if regularly updated, is better than nothing.

• Finances are complicated for us as individuals, let alone managing those of a non-profit organization of journalists (who aren’t inquisitive and curious at all…). As a leader, you obviously have to find what will work for your individual chapter, but checking into something like FreshBooks, a cloud accounting service, might be helpful. With this tool, more than one person can “see” the finance situation, creating better checks and balances.

• Meetup.com – Consider listing your chapter and events on Meet Up, a site for people to find connections by interest and location. Also consider using the tool to find similar journalism organizations in your area and suggest a partnership for an event or two.

These are just a few tools that  might help keep your chapter connected and cut down volunteer hours. Do you have a great suggestion? Share it with other leaders by posting a comment or email it!

Websites, Twitter, Facebook, E-Blasts… There are two schools of thought when it comes to tech tools and journalism – either you love ‘em or you hate ‘em.

In a recent conversation with Regional Directors, I realized SPJ is all over the board on this one. Some chapters choose to promote events almost exclusively through the use of technology, while others prefer the pen to paper approach. Neither is better than the other, of course, but in order for chapters to effectively reach members, it’s important to understand and implement both types of networking.

To make your life a little easier, I’ll try to post some tools  - software, websites, gadgets - on the Leading Edge more frequently. Hopefully at least one tool will be helpful in better communicating with your members and communities.

Be sure to share your own ideas by leaving a comment, or telling us how each of the tools worked (or didn’t) for you.

Wiggio
An amazing tool for chapters to use with their board. A feed keeps track of conversations without long email trains, calendars keep everyone in sync, files can be shared and stored, host virtual meetings and conference calls for FREE and group messages can even be sent via text. Best of all, it’s user-friendly.

IFTTT
Short for “If This, Then That.” There are a ton of channels (or actions, as it makes more sense to me) from Facebook to email, to small social networking sites, to phone and email.

Users pick a channel (example – Twitter) and an action associated with that channel (example – a new follower) and then another channel (example – Twitter) and another action (example – tweet “Thanks for  connecting! Find out more information about SPJ and join us today!”). Did I lose you?

Basically, you can set Twitter to automatically send a thank you note and links about joining, programs, your chapter website, every single time your Twitter has someone new follow it.

Doodle

This is a simple, easy way to schedule things (meetings, programs, etc.) for multiple people. Create an event, ask people to note which times work for them and view the time that’s compatible for the most people. Finally, we can get rid of those 50,000 emails back and forth with no end result, right?