Blog Strategy http://civicfootprint.net/blog/ Goals- Build awareness about Civic Footprint and engage with
young professionals to encourage high quality engagement through
giving, volunteering, and participating;
- Engage with sector leaders to participate in contributing content to our Civic Footprint Wiki;
- Produce regular interesting, current and thought provoking content related to high quality engagement; and
- Integrate
open-source plug-ins and tech tools that help develop our key messages
and allow us to innovate in the blog / social media space.
Key Messaging
We will use the blog to illustrate our use of organizational pilates, strengthening our core and examples of how we're building our organizational Civic Footprint. We have built detailed strategies around our online presence, how we're developing content and why we are using resources in this space. This blog will describe our goals and philosophies behind the use of these tools, as well as best practice guidelines for using and developing social media properties. "Giving, Volunteering, Donating. Your Civic Footprint is everything you do for causes important to you, formally and informally" Use of Images and BrandingThe Civic Footprint blog will display consistent branding with regards to use of colour, key messages, and our tag line. With the current blog template, Primepress,
we are able to easily insert rotating header images. The rotating
header functionality provides an opportunity to keep our designs fresh
give the reader a feeling of fluidity across the site. Wordpress versus Blogger
We have made a decision to use Wordpress
Software as our blogging tool. Because much of Framework's
organizational knowledge is housed within the Google Platform, it was
necessary to investigate Blogger and Wordpress as options for blog tools. Below we have outlined the benefits and disadvantages of both tools, highlighting the benefits of Wordpress. Wordpress Blogger Advantages
| Disadvantages
| Advantages
| Disadvantages
| Open source - easily customizable
| Requires some level of programming / HTML knowledge
| Integrates with Google applications
| Limited functionality with add-on gadgets
| Endless documentation
| Not a Google Product
| Can restrict access to only Google users
| Cannot customize CSS or HTML
| Can upload images / media through FTP (for easy image storage and manipulation)
| Configuring and installing Wordpress requires advanced database and cPanel knowledge.
| Can upload Picasa images with one click
| Cannot add custom applications easily
| Can import other blog content from any platform.
| New account name / password to remember
| Simple set-up, easy to get going
| Must use blogger specific design templates
| Can create "Pages" to add additional content pages outside of the blog.
| Multiple authors will need to learn to navigate the Wordpress Dashboard
| Can use existing Google Account
| Can only import blog content from other blogger blogs.
| Can edit comments if necessary
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| Cannot create additional pages
| Open source widgets means you can add endless options for functionality.
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| Can only delete or accept comments
| Can time stamp posts to be published in the future.
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| Limited Gadgets
| Saves custom content if you change a template
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| Lose customized design elements if you change the template.
| Categories - can set up each category to be displayed differently on the site
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| No Categories
| User owns the content, hosts the blog and controls all rights
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| Google hosts the blog and controls user and content rights.
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We will strategically develop content with SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) in mind. With a goal of achieving Google
PageRank of 4 within a year, we will be sure to include many outbound
links within each post and seek inbound links from influential sites
(seeking other bloggers who source our blog, post through Twitter,
etc). It is also important to tag and categorize each post for simple
organization of our data and easy indexing from Google. Content Publishing Outline
Each
week one member of the Framework team will be responsible for writing a
short blog post on any of the topics below. Please see below for our blog post best practices. These posts will be in
addition to content provided by the Online Organizer. We will
eventually expand our publishing schedule to include other stakeholders
and volunteers who are interested in blogging for us.
The preliminary posting schedule is:
- July 20 - Anil
- July 27 - Amanda
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August 10 - Emily
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August 17 - Jen
-
August 24 - Theresa
- August 31 - Amanda
- September 7th - Anil
- September 14- Emily
- September 21 - Amanda
- September 28th - Jen
- October 5th - Theresa
- October 12th - Amanda
- October 19th - Anil
- October 26th - Emily
- November 2nd - Mike
- November 9th - Jen
- November 16th - Theresa
Each blog post should be between 250 - 400 words long. Multi-media rich posts (such as a Timeraiser slideshow post) do not require lengthy content. Where possible, embed images and videos to add a variety of content for the reader to view. Images at the top of blog posts set the tone for the post and entice the reader to continue reading. Be sure to include many outbound links, adding hyperlinks to external content, definitions, and our other online assets where possible. When guest bloggers post new content, we want to be sure to promote that new post through Facebook, specifically through their Facebook profile. We encourage guest bloggers to use the "share" button on Facebook, to post their published blog post on their personal Facebook profile. Topic / Category
| Description
| Posting Frequency
| Primary Author(s)
| Organizational Pilates
| Tips, strategies and updates on how we're strengthening our core, specifically related to knowledge management, workflow and technological processes | Weekly
|
Amanda
Anil
Emily
Jen
Theresa
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Civic Footprint Promotion | Comments on articles, news and blog posts related to high quality
engagement, promoting our tools and the process we're making with Civic
Footprint | Weekly
| Amanda
| | Technology | Updates
on new tools we've discovered, changes or updates to strategy, or
articles featuring a successful experience with Cloud Computing and
Software as a Service
| Bi-Weekly (1st and 3rd week)
| Amanda and Anil
| Civic Engagement
| Posts related to volunteering, participating and donating, and / or issue based features
| Bi-Weekly (2nd and 4th week)
| Emily, Theresa, Jen
| Timeraiser
| Updates, Call to Artists, Embed Picasa Albums, Thank Yous and event information
| As needed
| Theresa and Jen
| Community Print Club
| aligning our values with other non-profits, philosophy behind CPC, print shop promotion and predictable printing conversations
| Monthly
| Emily and Amanda
| Course Research
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| As needed
| Anil and Emily
| Thoughts from our ED
| A
space for our Executive Director to provide his perspective, thoughts,
plans for the future or humorous posts on the inner-workings of
Framework
| Monthly
| Anil
| Featured Guest Posts
| Guests will be encouraged to write on any topic related to Civic Footprint or their experiences with the Timeraiser and completing their pledge.
| Bi-Weekly
| Our Volunteers - Solicited by Emily and Amanda
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- Our Twitter Posting Schedule - managing multiple audiences in the same space
- What is Civic Footprint?
- Customizing your Facebook page with FBML and HTML
- Introduction to Organizational Pilates
- Course Research Overview
- Cloud Computing & Disaster Recovery - Keeping our organizational information safe and secure online
Wordpress Categories- Organizational Pilates
- Civic Footprint
- Technology
- Timeraiser
- E-Learning
- In the News
Tags versus Categories
To allow additional organization and site indexing, we will use both tags and categories. Although the functionality for categories and tags are similar, our approach is this; categories have been pre-defined and represent the larger topics discussed on our blog. Tags can be any topic or element of the blog post. Wordpress says it best in their page "Categories Vs. Tags": Tags are similar, but instead of a list of words to choose
from, you write them in a list (separated by commas) in the Tags Module
of your post editing screen. They are free form words and generally
describe your post in more detail.
For example, a post titled “Last Night At Burger King” might be
filed under the “Dinner” category, but could have tags such as,
“burger, chicken fries, chocolate shake, dr. pepper”. Get the gist? Are categories and tags hierarchical?
Categories can be treated that way by making categories children of
another. Tags, however, exist in their own right and have no set
relationship to anything else.
The following tools will allow us to measure the number of page views and to see who else is promoting our content.
Blog Audience:-
NGOs
- Timeraiser and Civic Footprint volunteers
- Funders and Stakeholders
- Media Inquiries
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Broader Public - those seeking information about Civic Footprint
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Timeraiser participants (and potential Timeraiser participants)
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