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Presented at NEAFCS Annual Conference 2010: Portland, Maine
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Extension 2.0: Harnessing the Power of
the Blogosphere to Expand Programming
Potential & ImpactJamie Seger, Kara Newby
& Nancy ReckerThe Ohio State University
Extension
“Our job is not to defend yesterday, but to invent tomorrow”
-Peter Druker, Management Guru
Why Extension?
Lack of knowledge about Extension among younger generation (18-34 yo)
Why the Internet?
Blogging to Engage
From teaching to Engaging Many generations of clientele are online:
To socialize To learn
Possible Issues?
•Difficulty?
•Time/Task Management
•Communicating Impact
Creating Your Blog
What do you want from your blog?
Ease of Use: Google Blogger/Blogspot www.blogspot.com
Professional Appeal Wordpress www.wordpress.com
Finding & Reporting Impact Where do I obtain statistical data? What
kind of an impact is my blog having?
Finding & Reporting Impact Options:
Wordpress.com Statistics For blogs hosted by Wordpress.com (free) Can retrieve blog hit information daily, weekly, or monthly
Top posts & pages Search traffic (i.e. if someone views your blog via a search
result) Subscriber information (RSS feed, e-mail, etc) Referring sites
Move It Miami County dashboard Over 7,900 hits since the MIMC program in March. MIMC program ended second week in May. Blog averages approx. 70 hits per day.
Finding & Reporting Impact Options (cont..):
Google Analytics For use with a Blogspot blog – or – can embed into
any blog (with administrative access) Can retrieve daily, weekly, monthly, yearly stats
Traffic sources (referring sites, direct, search engines, etc)
Top posts Traffic map (see who is visiting your blog nationally &
internationally!) Export data into a PDF or similar view
Family Blog
Finding & Reporting Impact
I have all of this data – now what do I do with it? Annual Reports Monthly Mini-Reports
List of new and updated posts (include “active” links)
One or two helpful comments that were posted to the blog from readers
Overall statistics for that month
Group vs. Individual Blogging Group Blogging
Blogs that have contributors of two or more people OSUE FCS blog Pros:
Less amount of work for everyone in updating the blog Blog posts could represent a range of topics / authors
could focus on their area of specialization Cons
Blog may seem unorganized, less uniform, and not targeting one specific niche
May require more work: checking with other authors before posting, etc.
Group vs. Individual Blogging Individual Blogging
Blogs that have one contributor/author Van Wert County Ag blog / Parents in Action
blog Pros:
Blog can be more focused More of a “high-touch” blog (readers correspond
with one author – makes for an intimate experience)
Cons More work for one person
Group vs. Individual Blogging Which format is best?
Extension staff Extension clientele
Example in action: OSUE EERA blogs www.stepfamiliiestoday.wordpress.com www.osufcs.wordpress.com
Advertising Your Blog
Boost your impact by advertising your blog and posts
Microblogging:Facebook Fan Pages
• Creating a fan page• Inviting people to your page• Selecting a user name• Promoting your page to go virally• Value posting• Cross promotion• Getting others to connect to your
page• Posting from your phone
Online Resources
Copy of this presentation Videos (How to blog, how to develop a
podcast for your blog, etc.) Links to other social media presentations
www.neafcs.org www.slideshare.net
Thank You!
Questions?
Please take a moment to fill out the session evaluation.
Contact Information: Jamie Seger - [email protected]
twitter.com/jamies4families Kara Newby – [email protected] Nancy Recker – [email protected]
