Today’s tip: stop thinking that just sticking a web address on a leaflet is a good way to promote the local Liberal Democratwebsite.

Yup, you read that right. Certainly, leafleting can be a crucial tool for generating more traffic to Liberal Democrat websites. But simply sticking a web address somewhere in the masthead is an extremely poor way of going about it. My post from February explains why – and what you should do instead.

This is the last in the series of tech tips, but you can catch up on them all via this page. Got any other suggestions? Share them in the comments below.

Today’s tip: make sure your local website is listed in the main places.

Does www.libdems.org.uk list your MP/PPC’s website and your local website? (If not, contact )

Are they also listed in DMOZ? (If not, click the ‘suggest URL link’ and read the instructions)

Are any local Lib Dem blogs listed in Wikio? (If not, submit the blog here)

Are they also listed in the Total Politics directory? (If not, use the submit box on the right side of the page)

Answering yes to all four questions won’t result in millions descending on the Liberal Democrat sites in your areas, but it will give them a boost in various ways, such as via increased search engine traffic.

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, I forgot to include one of the most important pieces of advice if the site is a blog: get is listed on LibDemBlogs.co.uk.

Today’s tip: use NutshellMail.

I’ve eulogised about it before. I’ll eulogise about it again. But it’s simple: with NutsellMail you can easily keep on top of what’s happening on different social networks, all through one daily summary email. You can also respond then and there via links in the email.

It’s another free service that’s quick to set up. You then need to put in a little time to fine tune the options to suit your needs, but once you’ve done that it makes it much easier for a busy person to get the most out of Facebook and other social networks.

Today’s tip: use a feed reader.

Feed readers (also known as RSS readers or news readers) are a massive time saver. Rather than having to slog round different websites to see if they’ve got any new stories or blog posts on them, you subscribe to them via the feed reader. The feed reader then automatically tells you when there is a new story for you to look at. You look at the feed reader once rather than each website in turn. Time saved. Job done.

Google Reader is one of the most widely used feed readers and is free to use. There’s a small up front investment of time in learning how to use it and telling it which websites you want it to check for you. But once that’s done, you’ll benefit from the time savings week in, week out all through the year.

Once you’ve got an account up and running on it, take a look at Alex Foster’s post from July which suggests some useful feeds for local campaigners to start following.

Today’s tip: back up your data.

I used to share an office with someone who had a cartoon on the wall. It showed two tramps, slumped in an alley. One was saying to the other, “It all started to go wrong when I discovered the backup tape didn’t work”.

Things will go wrong. Data will be mangled or lost. But will you have a backup to save you when it does? And will that backup actually work?

So think about what your key data is and make sure it is being backed up in a way that will survive a mini-disaster. Backing up your EARS data on to a USB drive which is then kept plugged in to the computer won’t be much good in the case of fire or theft. Backups should be physically separate from the devices they are backing up; that way a problem with the device doesn’t kill the backup as well. Then check that your backups really work.

In some cases you can rely on others to do the backups. For example, if you have a website hosted by another company. But are you sure they do backups? Do they backup frequently enough to save you from not just their servers failing but also from you deleting a whole load of content by mistake?

Most likely your key campaigning data will be EARS, member/supporter records, email lists, website and/or blog and personal contact information. Many councillors and PPCs in particular rely on large numbers of phone and email addresses, all stored in the one electronic device with no backup ever made. It’s not a happy sight when it goes wrong, particularly if it’s just before polling day.

So make a new year resolution: start backing up and have a regular cycle so it becomes a habit you don’t have to think about rather than a task you never quite get round to doing.