MAXIMIZE THE VALUE OF WHAT YOU CREATE: HOW TO USE YOUR BLOG POST EFFECTIVELY ACROSS SOCIAL PLATFORMS
Rose Hayden-Smith, PhD, Extension Foundation Education Technology Fellow
This checklist will help you maximize the value of blogs (or other content) you create in your Cooperative Extension work. While this checklist was designed with a blog post in mind, it will work well for other forms of content, including FAQ sheets, information sheets, and many other kinds of publications. This kind of checklist will help you create a simple communications strategy for the content you create. As you use the checklist more and more, the practices will become second nature.
Make this your own: you don’t have to follow every suggestion included. Depending upon what you’ve created, you might use only a few of the ideas provided here.
Content Strategy Considerations/Checklist
The Fundamentals
Have you included an image that helps tell the story? Is there an opportunity to include or reference related Cooperative Extension content (via hyperlinks)? Did you include elements of the brand promise or public value? Is there a video clip you could include to help tell the story? Have you put in a link and used an image in your Tweet? Have you created a Facebook post to draw people to the content? Could you craft an Instagram post featuring the image you sourced and “microblog” about the piece you’re promoting? Be sure to include a reference that says “Link in profile.” Can you use the content to create a meme/infographic that could also be shared? Have you used hashtags that will tie the content in with larger social conversations or existing campaigns? Have you routed the content to related statewide programs, institutes, departments, or other partners? Is the piece evergreen? (“Evergreen” means content that you can use again and again. For example, if you publish the same - or slightly modified - piece each year about food safety tips for Thanksgiving, that’s an “evergreen” piece). If it’s an evergreen piece, be sure to tag it some way to make future work easier. Have you considered including content or media produced by external sources that may enhance the relevance of your content? (An example might be something like this: including a link to a newspaper article on coffee production that references our Cooperative Extension research, in a blog post you’re writing about this work.) Is there an opportunity to tag news reporters in social posts? (Are you referencing their work? Is this a story they may have missed? A topic they have written about previously?) Is the content something that might interest governmental relations staff, i.e., something they can share with elected officials? (Content featuring constituents, local companies, topics or issues of concern to them, or related to legislation they are involved with.) Can it be shared with other influencers we’re connected with? Is there an opportunity to share the content (ex: Industry or commodity newsletters? Local newspapers?) Can the content be shared on other platforms? LinkedIn? Medium?
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