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Yesterday the Footnote Maven introduced Wordle, described as:

a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Genea-bloggers have been complaining that they aren’t getting any work done and showing off their wordle creations.

Here’s the Wordle I created for the California Genealogical Society:

I’m still working on a post about some of the lessons learned at Jamboree but I wanted to share a tool that Jane, Carolyn and I used last weekend.

As the chair of the Marketing Committee, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to promote the California Genealogical Society and Library.

My blog-mentor, Jasia, of Creative Gene, suggested the use of society business cards in her post, Two Plans for Marketing Your Group:

What you’re going to do is give a dozen or so to every member in your group. Include them in initial membership or renewal packets or pass them out at meeting with the instruction to ‘become an ambassador for the organization.’

Members should be encouraged to pass out these cards to anyone they have a casual conversation with when they’re at the library doing genealogy research, chatting with someone at the bus stop, or even leave one with a tip for their favorite waitress. The point is to use these cards like a mini brochure for the organization. Ask group members to talk up the group whenever they get the chance… and pass out those business cards!

The card above is a generic one, created for use by anyone at the society. In addition, inexpensive personal cards are on order (from VistaPrint) for some board members and a few others with specialized jobs at the society. The cards proved indispensable at Jamboree.

Jasia admonishes:

Remember, genealogy is a people-based hobby if ever there was one. Word of mouth advertising by your members is a very personal and powerful resource. Use it!

If you are a member of CGS and you would like to have some cards to use to promote the society, please e-mail me or leave a comment.