Hello world! Is it 1998 or 2024? Just kidding : ) This is our first blog post for the NPTO Communications team. The reason this matters is 3-fold. It:
Allows more people to contribute to communications
Helps our work be discoverable in an internet-based world
Minimizes the work of the communications email volunteer role so that it's sustainable
First, we're volunteer-based. The blog is a great place to capture information because it decentralizes information-sharing away from the one person who sends the emails. Emails are a way to share information, not create the information. There's a distinction. So now a lot of people can write blogs, and the email can be a combination of links or a few featured blogs. You don't need to wait for the email. You can read up when the blogs are posted. Or search for information related to topics relevant to you. To summarize, the blog is the content-creation centerpiece. Email, social media, newsletters are communication channels to access that content.
Second, we live in an internet-based world. Emails are governed by the CAN-SPAM Act enforced by the FCC. There is a clear bar for opt-in and opt-out. As a 501(c)3 supporting our local public school, we want our information accessible to as many people as possible, which means we cannot lock ourselves into only email distribution. We need our content to be discoverable by the internet crawlers. Having our content live on a public blog allows search engines to find and share content based on relevant search queries, so more people can find us and our impact can grow.
Finally, having a blog that many people can contribute to will take the burden off the email communications volunteer. It is an incredibly important role, and we need to make it sustainable. By allowing the content to live in the blog and the email be highlights that link back, it creates a sustainable opportunity for volunteer parents/community members to be involved successfully.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I have spend an outsized amount of time thinking about this. As a Chief Marketing Officer, journalist and parent volunteer, I took on the Communications volunteer role to make sure it was a sustainable position for the future. I am excited to craft a model that anyone can step into in 3 months and be immediately successful.
In shared commitment to community,
Kimberly Brown
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