Table of Contents. 1 A Note to You, the Reader. 2 Is blogging right for your organization? 3 Mission. 4 Audience. 5 Content.

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2 Table of Contents 1 A Note to You, the Reader 2 Is blogging right for your organization? 3 Mission 4 Audience 5 Content 6 Design 8 Getting Started 9 Marketing 10 Tips from Bloggers 13 Suggested Reading 14 Thank You 15 About This Tool Kit

3 Dear Reader, It s no secret that archives and historical societies large and small struggle financially. For many institutions, the only way to stay afloat is by enlisting a dedicated group of volunteers to assist professional archivists. All too often, organizations are run exclusively by volunteers. And these volunteers are spread too thin and number too few. If you are reading this, there s a very good chance that you are one of these champions, volunteering your personal time to preserve history for the benefit of generations to come. You have made a personal investment in ensuring that your archive survives. But making your collection available to interested parties is only part of the equation. You must make your presence known to the public at large; more importantly, you need to engage them. This tool kit focuses on one method of informing and engaging the public: blogging. If you haven t blogged before, take heart! This packet contains everything you need to get started. Let the blogging begin! [1]

blogging. You have at least one staff member who is willing to blog consistently.

4 Is blogging right for your organization?? You are ready to start blogging if the following are true: You have at least 1-2 hours/week to commit to blogging. You have at least one staff member who is willing to blog consistently. The staff member is moderately tech-savvy. If not, s/he is willing to learn. The staff member has a good grasp of grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. The community you wish to reach has access to the Internet. [2]

5 Mission Your first step in creating your blog is determining what you want to achieve. What should arise from this project? Consider the following examples: Increase your organization s exposure. Market your services and programs. Draw attention to your collections. Spread the love of history. Attract a new demographic. Engage the public. Make available a selection of your digitized material. Invite public to help identify items in your collection in which little is known. Shaping your mission will provide focus on the types of posts you ll write, who your audience is, and what your tone will be. Readers like familiarity; a mission will create consistency. [3]

6 Audience Once you ve established your mission, you need to get to know your intended audience. Whether your goal is to attract new members or inform your current members about upcoming programs, you need to learn more about who they are. How old are they? What ethnicities make up your audience? (This is particularly important if you plan to integrate genealogy.) What are their interests and hobbies? How fast are their Internet connection speeds? (This will help you determine the design and elements on your blog.) Where will they be accessing your blog? From home, from work, from their cell phone? Pretend that you are your ideal reader stumbling upon your blog. What do you want to read? How do you want the blog to look? [4]

7 Content Blogging is an ideal marketing tool for organizations short on time. For maximum impact without investing an abundance of time, stick to the following guidelines: Include at least one picture per post. Scan or take a picture of the document you re blogging about. (Tap into our visual culture!) Keep your word count under 350. Recent blog posts by Ancestry.com and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania have been 330 words. Less is more, so 150 words are adequate! Blog readers look for snippets, not theses. Always cite your sources. For items in your collection, let your readers know how to access the materials. Suggest further reading, if you d like. Adopt a friendly, conversational tone. Personality draws readers! Consider themed posts; they will give you direction and structure and your readers something to expect. Examples: Tuesdays, post a picture you need help identifying. Fridays, highlight a new acquisition. Sundays, a genealogy tool. Think back to your mission! [5]

8 Design The appearance of your blog directly affects whether or not people want to visit it. Make a great impression! Keep in mind that businesses and organizations are often judged by their web presence. Take advantage of your blog service s options, particularly pre-made color schemes and layout designs. Text o DO use attractive, readable fonts. o DON T type in all caps. o DON T choose a small font size. o DON T use bold and italics unless necessary, and never together. o DON T underline text that is not a link. Background Links o DON T use graphics, patterns, or dark color backgrounds where the blog posts will appear; it is hard to do well. o DO embed links behind graphics or text. o DON T overwhelm your page with long URLs. [6]

9 Design cont. Layout o DO limit yourself to focal points by keeping similar elements together (e.g. YouTube clips in the right column; site information on the very bottom; navigation elements grouped together in a column or a horizontal bar at the top). Images o DO scan documents and images from your collection no longer protected by copyright. o DO scan in JPEG format at 150px resolution for images that don t require close inspection. o DO create a watermark on images if you do not want them to be used without your institution s permission. o DO provide a thumbnail linked to a larger version as a courtesy to those with slow connection speeds. o DON T overwhelm the columns with images. o DO ask permission for images found on another website. Make sure it is not copyrighted, link the photo to its source, and indicate where you found it. [7]

10 Getting Started There are a number of free blog publishing services. The most popular are Blogger (a Google service), WordPress, Tumblr, and Weebly. While each service can be used effectively and creatively by a first-time blogger, it is wise to poke around each of the four to find the one that meets your needs and skills. While some are easier to learn (e.g. Blogger), others are easier to customize (e.g. WordPress). TIP: Consider not only your needs today, but your needs tomorrow. If you leave the organization, who will likely take over? If you stay, which blogging tool will allow you greater flexibility as you expand your blogging/technical skills? If you choose to use Blogger, you will be able to view a tutorial upon creating an account. To learn about WordPress, consider reading one or both of the following titles: Teach Yourself Visually: WordPress by Janet Majure (Visual, 2012) WordPress 24-Hour Trainer by George Plumley (Wrox, 2011) [8]

11 Marketing While blogs can be considered a marketing tool, sometimes you have to market your marketing tool! How will you attract readers? Consider the following: Choose a prominent place on your site to link your blog. Use Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to alert others of a new post. Make your institution s website a blog. Services such as Blogger and WordPress.com provide templates that will accommodate static content. Link to other blogs and websites that may be of interest to your readers. Ask those blogs and websites to highlight you on their page as well, or simply comment on their posts. These options increase the likelihood that people will find you in a web engine search. Post your URL on institution newsletters, flyers, and signs. If you write a column in the local paper, post it there, too. As part of your signature, provide a link of your most recent blog post. [9]

12 Tips from Bloggers Do your research. Follow popular blogs to learn what works and what doesn t. Ask advice of their writers. Take a storytelling approach when highlighting documents in your collection. Avoid using a stat counter until you reach a high number of visitors. Focus primarily on specific documents, photographs, or collections rather than institutional-specific news, particularly if you want to reach beyond your immediate community. Keep your content fresh. Posting infrequently will discourage regular readership. Request that your readers/visitors contribute their own content, such as stories and historic photographs, that tell the story of your community. They will be glad to see their contributions publicly posted and will spread the news to others. Post a picture of a document that is difficult to read and request help transcribing. Encourage readers to type their interpretations and transcriptions as a comment. [10]

13 Tips from Bloggers cont. Store up blog post ideas by making note of interesting documents in the collection as you encounter them. When asked an interesting question, write a post with your answer. Relate history to the present day, such as posting a historic picture next to a contemporary picture of the same location. Make use of the site statistics that your blog host provides. How are people discovering your website? Which posts are the most popular? If a particular topic draws a lot of visitors, consider making it a regular feature or follow-up that post with another on the same topic. Run contests or incentive programs to boost readership. For instance, offer a discount for items in your gift shop or free photocopies if a reader links to a blog post on their Twitter feed or Facebook wall. Develop a regular schedule, even if it s just once a week. When strapped for time, take snippets from past newsletters. [11]

14 Tips from Bloggers cont. Respond to every comment. Share the writing load with others in the organization. If you plan on having themed posts, assign themes to volunteers that are knowledgeable about the subject (e.g. one person always posts about genealogy, another writes about photographs, etc.). If you opt to not embed a link into a word, phrase, or picture, create short links using tinyurl.com or a similar site. Do not be discouraged if readers are not commenting or officially subscribing to your blog. Readers more often than not remain anonymous. Consider soliciting posts from guest bloggers. Make sure to link to your society s website on the blog. Include contact information, hours, address, and phone number where it can be seen easily. Use terms in your posts (and their titles) that web surfers are likely to type into a search engine. JUST DO IT! [12]

15 Suggested Reading 31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo by Bryan Allain (BlogRocket, LLC 2010) only available on Kindle 101 Blogging Tips: How to Create a Blog That People Will Find, Read, and Share by Tristan Higbee (Amazon Digital Services 2012) only available on Kindle The Absolute Blogging How-To Handbook for New Bloggers by Karen G. Pipps (CreateSpace, 2011) Blogging for Dummies by Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley (For Dummies, 2012) Creative Blogging: Your First Steps to a Successful Blog by Heather Wright-Porto (Apress, 2011) Engagement from Scratch!: How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same! by Danny Iny (CreateSpace, 2011) Low-Budget Online Marketing for Small Business by Holly Berkley (Self-Counsel Press, 2003) Visit the blog tip categories on [13]

16 Thank You A special thank you to the following organizations for their thoughtful input: Arlington Historical Society, Arlington, Massachusetts Auburntown Historical Society, Pulaski, Tennessee Carnamah Historical Society, Carnamah, Western Australia Christian County Historical Society, Taylorville, Illinois Edina Historical Society, Edina, Minnesota Hastings Historical Society, Hudson, New York Josephine County Historical Society, Grants Pass, Oregon Skagway Historical Society, Skagway, Alaska [14]

About The Busy Archivist s Blogging Tool Kit was created by Leah Davies, a Master s of Library and Information Science student at The University of Alabama.

17 About The Busy Archivist s Blogging Tool Kit was created by Leah Davies, a Master s of Library and Information Science student at The University of Alabama. Suggestions were solicited from the organizations listed on page 15. This tool kit may be copied and distributed as long as credit is given. It is not for commercial use. Modifications are prohibited. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. To contact Leah Davies, her at leah.davies@gmail.com Created July 23, 2012 [15]

Shareaholic Editorial Guidelines

Shareaholic Editorial Guidelines October 2012 Thanks for your interest in writing for the Shareaholic blog! We have high standards for content, which is probably why you d like to post with us. This could