Balance Blog

May 14, 2013
Posted by Tracy Betts | in Social Media | Comments (0)

This past week, the folks from CEO Update joined three association lobbying experts in a forum to discuss the latest aspects and trends in association advocacy. The forum, titled "Advocacy in a Time of Gridlock" included:

Scott DeFife
Executive vice president, policy and government affairs
National Restaurant Association
Ivan Adler
Principal
The McCormick Group
Scott Talbott
Senior vice president public policy
Financial Services Roundtable

Key Takeaways

  • Social media is an important channel and should be viewed as one of several critical components in a multi-layered communications approach.  
  • Engaging your audience in a ways that resonate with them and get them to take action requires laser-sharp, strategic focus.
  • Understanding your audience and focusing your messages are the key to success

How to understand your audience and create focused messages

By following this approach, you are sure to create the laser-focused messages and calls-to-action that compel your audiences to take action.

Understanding your audience

Have you taken the time to understand who exactly you are trying to reach and what their priorities and interests are?  

There are a variety of tools and techniques you can use to better understand not only who your audience is, what they are talking about, and where exactly they are gathering. Use these approaches to help gain insights about your audience, and to guide your overall strategy.

  • Listen and Learn. Use online tools to listen. This could be as simple as setting up a Google alert and then discovering exactly what conversations are taking place and where. It may not be Facebook or Twitter - the conversation may be happening elsewhere and center around a particular blog or industry forum. 
     
  • Perform Keyword Research. Keyword research may reveal that the words your greatest advocates are using are different than the ones you are trying to use to reach them. Keyword research can provide insight and increase the chances that your message is being found by the right people.
     
  • Build an influencers list. If you are listening properly you are going to see some patterns: a blogger that has a strong following, insightful content, and solid agenda. A twitter influencer who is very engaged and has extensive reach around the topics that are relevant to you. Are you leveraging these online influencers to get your messages in front of their audiences?  Know your influencers and interact with them!

Developing focused messages and calls-to-action

Using what you have learned about your audience and aligning that with your objectives, you can then tailor your messages to get them to take the desired action. Measuring what works and what doesn’t and using that data to refine your approach as you go along will make you even more successful. 

  • Define your goal. Even the largest organizations have limited time and staff to focus on social media. Don't waste time and resources. Understand exactly what it is you are trying to accomplish. Everything you do needs to support your overall goals and objectives. When I worked in radio we called lack of focus on goals and medium "spraying and praying".   
     
  • Identify measures of success. Is your measure the number of members that write a congressman? Make sure you have your analytics set up properly to capture this information. Track who those advocates are and where they are coming from.
     
  • Clearly articulate your calls to action. You understand your goal; now make sure the rest of the world understands your goal. Create 2-3 key calls to action that can be used throughout your campaign. Make sure that all of your online channels - your website, blog, and emails – have a clear path to whatever action you want them to take. 
     
  • Create a communications calendar. With your goals, key messages and measures of success clearly defined, create a communications calendar. A calendar will help to strategically plan what messages and activities will happen when and where – and help you identify opportunities for additional elements. This will also keep everyone on board with what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and when.

    These calendars can take many shapes – from a simple spreadsheet (preferably shared with all content owners) to a massive matrix. Be sure to include all online channels and web properties. Posting a press release on your website? Note who will tweet it or post on Facebook. Updating a bio? Note whether that tidbit needs to be tweeted. Be all inclusive in this endeavor to be sure you are getting the most mileage as you can from your efforts.


May 2, 2013
Posted by Alan Yurisevic | in CMS, in Web Development | Comments (0)

When creating or organizing content for your WordPress website or blog, you may realize that you need to categorize your posts into more than just Posts and Pages. If you're familiar with Drupal, your solution would be to create new Content Types using the administration pages. However WordPress does not provide an out of the box solution for creating it's alternative, Custom Post Types. In fact, before WordPress 3.0, you had to settle for using Categories or using custom solutions. Now however the process for creating Custom Post Types is easier, though you will still need to rely on a 3rd party plugin.

Custom Post Type UI

The plugin you will need is called, appropriately, Custom Post Type UI. This module provides an easy way to create and manage post types through the WordPress dashboard.

You can click on the image above to visit the plugin's page, where you can download the zip file necessary for installing it on your site. Once you have the zip, install it like you would any other plugin and activate it. You will notice a new menu section on the left of your dashboard:

Click on Custom Post Types, and then to create one click on "Add New". This wll bring up the screen you see on the right in the screenshot above. All you need to do now is fill out the fields for your new custom post type, including a name and label. Clicking the Advanced links at the bottom will gve you more choices for your new post type. (This page is also used to create custom Taxonomies, but we'll leave that for another post).

Once you've created your new post type, you'll see it appear on the left navigation, along with links to create a new post. You can see an example below, where I named the new post type "Newsletter":


April 12, 2013
Posted by Jeannette Modic | in CMS, in Web Development, in Web Strategy | Comments (0)

Thinking about making the move to Drupal 7?

Planning an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 begins with these three steps:

  1. Review your current list of modules. I like to go to the available updates page to see all of your modules and how many will need an update in Drupal 6 before we can update to Drupal 7. This page is great because it give you a direct link to the module page so you can see if the module has a Drupal 7 version available.

    If there is a Drupal 7 version available you'll want to look for notes about upgrading. For most modules it should be a fairly painless process but for others there may be extra steps involved to upgrade the module. You will want to look out for modules that have moved into core or have combined with other modules as these are going to require extra attention.
     

  2. Review custom modules on your site. You will want to look at what each module does and whether it can be replaced with a new module offering the same functionality or if you will need to upgrade your custom module.
     
  3. Review your theme for Drupal 7. A majority of the theme layer has changed in Drupal 7, and a majority of your Drupal 6 theme will need to be rewritten. You will particularly want to review any custom template files because the way to call fields in the code completely changed with the introduction of entities in Drupal 7.

    Because the theme will need significant work, this could be a great time to give your site a fresh new look. Maybe you can even upgrade your site with a responsive design

 
As you go through this process, you will encounter modules that do not exist in Drupal 7. When this happens, my recommendation is to start at the module’s page. Many times you can look through the issue queue and look for a topic about a Drupal 7 port in those threads. Generally, if there is not a port to Drupal 7 being worked on then you will see recommendations for other modules that can do the job.
 
We like to organize all this information into a spreadsheet in order to go through one-by-one for each module and then create a game-plan going into the upgrade. This helps to set expectations for the level of effort involved.
 
Sample Spreadsheet:
 
If you're considering an upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7? Download our whitepaper to learn more, or feel free to contact me, I'm happy to help! 

April 10, 2013
Posted by Tracy Betts | in Project Management, in Web Design, in Web Strategy | Comments (0)

A website redesign project is a big deal. It’s an investment of time and an investment of money. For most organizations a website redesign is also a high profile project. Your CEO is watching, your Board of Directors is watching, and your users are anxious. If you are in charge, you know you need this project to go as smoothly as possible. The first step to a successful website redesign project is getting internal buy-in. 

Before you can sell the concept of a website redesign internally, you need to understand a few things yourself:

  1. What do your users want? The success of this project and the success of your organization is tied directly to how well you understand and serve your customers. The goal is understand and articulate the gap between – What you are offering your users now? What do you need to offer them in order to help reach your mutual goals? What does your new website need to do to fill the gap? Your challenge is to align user objectives with your organization goals.


    Download this handy checklist to understand the types of high level information you should be giving your leadership
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  3. Listen. There are key stakeholders in your organization that may not be your direct leadership. It is your job to listen to them. Chances are your organization has been through a website redesign before. Understand the history of the last project. Who was in charge? What worked? What didn’t work? Gather feedback on the needs of different departments. Listening and making your coworkers feel heard is key to a successful project in the long run.

  4. Set Expectations. Most often, in a post-launch meeting with a client, I will hear them express regret that they rushed a project to meet a deadline (usually a conference or board meeting) rather than slowing down and making sure that you were getting the most from your website investment. Set realistic expectations for time up front.


Once you have collected the information above, it is a good idea to write a project brief. This is a one-two page document outlining the project. Your project brief is an opportunity for you to paint the picture of what a website redesign will look like for your organization. Here are some key points you will want to include:

Lead with the outcome: What does a successful website redesign look like?

  • Start by reiterating key organization goals – these should be the ones that you lay out in your strategic initiatives
  • Define key audiences and briefly describe what each audience wants to accomplish at the website (include internal stakeholders)
  • Lay out gaps between audience needs and what the website delivers now
  • Set expectations (Time, Cost, That this is not for your Board or CEO but for your users!)

You are now on your way to starting a successful website redesign.

COMING NEXT:  How to Budget for your Website Redesign Project