Have you heard of Google Voice? It’s a great free service that allows you to redirect as many phone numbers as you’d like to a single voicemail inbox. Essentially, all your calls can be directed to just one phone number (one that’s not tied to any phone company, just Google). There’s even an online inbox (that looks like an e-mail inbox) that will transcribe all your voicemails into text. The best part? Google just announced Monday that you can keep your primary phone number instead of switching to a Google number.

This video is a great summary of the service:

The benefits of Google Voice are numerous. If your association is spending thousands of dollars a year on your phone service from a local provider, consider switching. Google Voice will allow you to run your voice communications at lower costs and with more freedom.

Features include:

• An online voicemail
• Free automated voicemail transcription
• Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
• E-mail and text message notifications
• One number that reaches you on all your phones
• Call screening
• Listen in
• Call recording
• Conference calling
• Call blocking
• Reduced rates for international calls

Did I mention all of this is free?!

Calls to your staff’s phone numbers can be redirected to one number (each original phone number can have a customized voicemail greeting message). The forwarding service is flexible, so during non-office hours, you can set incoming calls to be immediately directed toward voicemail — the “do not disturb” feature.

If staffers can’t get to the office (for inclement weather, taking care of a sick child or any other reason), they will still be able to communicate using their office lines. Check out this video for even more information.

One note: if you live outside the U.S., you won’t be able to use your existing phone number with Google Voice yet. You’ll still have to get a new phone number, which can be a bit of a hassle. Hopefully will Google will open this feature internationally soon.

To sign up for an invitation, click here. Current Google Voice users also have invites, so ask around — maybe someone you know will have an invite to spare.

Don’t forget about our ongoing contest this week — you could win a free copy of Seth Godin’s “Tribes.” See this post for more details.

Imagine you’re an executive or staffer at the hypothetical organization XYZ. (Perhaps such an association does exist, but for the purpose of this example, I made it up.) Now, what if this tweet appeared on Twitter: “I had the worst experience with XYZ association. They are so unresponsive.” What would you do?

Maybe you don’t think too much of it — you’d reach out to the member and try and get to the root of his or her problem. But perhaps not enough of your members use Twitter for you, as a staffer at XYZ, to be too concerned.

Think again.

Wednesday, both Google and Bing announced they had reached agreements with Twitter to include tweets in their search results. Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer blogged yesterday about Google’s move, saying:

…We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.

Microsoft (which owns Bing) made a similar announcement yesterday: Working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now).

Now, even if only a minority of your members use Twitter, anyone who searches for your organization will see that negative (hypothetical) tweet in their results — and any others like it.

The social media game is changing the way we search and obtain information. Just last week, when little Falcon Heene was supposedly flying in a man-made balloon somewhere over Colorado, millions of people were tweeting about the subject. Imagine if all those tweets showed up in Google and Bing, today’s foremost search engines. The possibilities are astounding.

Maybe your members aren’t actively using Twitter yet, but they may in the long-term. Or maybe some other social network will come around and de-throne Twitter (which is entirely possible). It’s likely that social network will also be integrated into our search engines. No longer are the Web sites of news organizations and top-ranked blogs the only items that appear in our search results. The opinions and thoughts of real people — your members — will appear there as well.

Don’t be afraid to give up control of your online message, but be sure you, as an association executive or staff member, do everything possible to keep your members as engaged and positive as possible.

It’s time for the weekly grab-bag of association and social media blogs. Here’s what I found especially interesting on the interweb this week.

I Upgraded to HootSuite 2.0 Because It Works by Chris Abraham at socialmedia.biz. My Twitter stream was abuzz with this message Thursday as HootSuite, a popular Web-based Twitter service, released a new update. HootSuite lets users track multiple accounts and mentions, and the new release has a powerful monitoring feature. In the interest of full disclosure, I upgraded MemberClicks‘ HootSuite account, but haven’t gotten around to playing with it yet. It’s on my weekend to-do list!

Transitioning from Young to Young Professional by Aaron Wolowiec for ASAE’s Acronym. Aaron’s post really resonated with me — I think the dilemma he describes of young professionals trying to be taken seriously is a common one. Some of his tips are common ones (e. g. find a mentor, develop a network), but they’re suggestions we’d all do well to remember. “Being persistent” is the key.

10 Insights Gained From Spending 7,280 Hours on Social Networking Web sites by Heather Mansfield for Nonprofits 2.0. Heather is the nonprofit community manager for change.org, so she’s spent a lot of time on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Her insights are extremely valuable and are backed up by her many years of experience.

Google rules by Jeff De Cagna for SmartBlog Insights. Jeff, the editor at large of SmartBlog Insights, asks associations to question whether their point of view lines up with Google’s core beliefs about how the company should run. Google’s best practices referenced: “Google doesn’t need to control everything,” “Google doesn’t need to be evil” and “Google doesn’t need to be evil.” Great stuff here.

ASAE’s mobile hub for the annual meeting and expo is freakin’ awesome. Direct your mobile phone’s browser to http://asae09.org/m for the mobile version. Basically it aggregates information about the conference from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social networking sites. If you log in with your ASAE info, it connects to Twitter and will automatically add the #asae09 hashtag. Plus there’s a schedule of events and you can add stuff the “Contributions” tab to share with everyone.

Social Media Mavens: An Interview with Kodak’s Tom Hoehn by Mack Collier at The Viral Garden. Mack interviewed Kodak’s director of interactive marketing and convergence media about the company’s social media strategy and some of its best practices. There are some great thoughts here from a huge company’s “social media maven” – and many of them can be applied to smaller organizations.

Share your favorites blog posts or news articles in the comments, and have a great weekend!