The Moore Family Center Blog offers a great chance for Oregon State University Dietetic Interns to practice writing for the web and for an audience similar to clients they will have once they become Registered Dietitians. This post will show the steps OSUDI’s need to take to set up their accounts on the MFC Blog as well as their avatar/profile image through the use of Gravatar, and finally the process of how to send posts to the CPHHS’s web coordinator for final posting to the MFC Blog.
The submission process
Before we get to setting up accounts and profiles I’ll briefly list the process to get content posted to the MFC Blog. (I’m leaving this at the top of the page so that it’s not buried way down this page)
- Write great content :-)
- Give your post to Michelle Bump to check over for accuracy in the nutrition side of things.
- Once Michelle has checked off on your post send it and all images used in the post to Alan.Calvert@oregonstate.edu
- If need be Alan will reformat for the web and/or edit the intro paragraph to work with blog excerpts and/or search engines.
- Alan will give you a heads-up once your post is live. Be sure to promote/share the heck out of it :-) (more on promotion below)
Create an account at Gravatar
In order to have your profile photo display in author bios and in the comment section of posts you’ll need to create a Gravatar. Gravatar is owned by WordPress’ parent company Automatic. WordPress is the blogging platform used by blogs.oregonstate.edu, and therefore runs the MFC Blog. Creating a Gravatar associates any of your email addresses to specific photos. In this case you’ll need to associate both onid addresses to one photo of your choosing.
If you already have an account at WordPress.com – you will use the same username and password to log into Gravatar, then follow the instructions for adding your ONID email addresses. The sign-in for wordpress users is at the top right of the Gravatar homepage.
If you do not have a Gravatar nor Wordpess account, click the “Create your own Gravatar” button, create a username and pass, then follow the instructions for adding your ONID email addresses.
The addresse you will need to add is:
- YourONIDusername@oregonstate.edu
Only a few OSUDI’s have difficulty setting up their Gravatar. If you do, feel free to contact me – it’s usually an easy fix.
Being added to the MFC Blog
The admin will need to add each OSUDI to the site by means of ONID name. You should receive an email confirmation/invite when added. Even if you don’t receive the email (lost in a junk folder or something) you will still be able to log into the site.
Set your personal settings and add a bio
Also required! I explained this part in a previous post cleverly titled Howto: Set profile info in Oregon State WordPress Blogs
Promote ALL THE THINGS!!!
Great content
- answers/addresses a pain point. What do people search for an answer to?
- conversational style (which is different than “dumbing it down”. Think of it as audience appropriate language.
- scannable (that’s why we use the headings)
- at least one image so that it looks pretty when shared to social networks
- promote your content, not your blog. if your content is consistently “good” – that is how you get a name for your blog (or you)
- Title for your content, and how you write that teaser. For instance, if you were to read OSUtoday the title would be more like “Did you know the shape of your glass can affect the shape of your waist? Find out how at the Moore Family Center Blog (with some bit.ly link)”
- A great title is also important for sharing your content on social media networks. Often all you have to draw readers in is the title.
- “The long tail” is a term that refers to the longevity of interest in a post. It’s possible that a post might not get its most traffic until months after it is first published. A year and a half after the MFC Blog was created the post Milk and Milk Alternatives: How Do They Compare?
Layout
- build the site so people have to click on a story to read full thing – pull them in – but require that click you you know they were interested enough to read past the teaser. too many blogs have a really full page of all the stories that people can just scroll through. (example somewhere)
Tell all your friends (but don’t be obnoxious)
- Self promotion is not a horrible thing – even just writing “here’s a little something I wrote about processed foods” isn’t horrible. Yes, you can be annoying when self promoting… you’ve all seen it. Don’t be ‘that’ person.
- The more places you can post/share, the better.
- If you have some close friends that don’t mind sharing for you, let a couple of them know.
Influencers
- Friends that are digitally connected.
- Alumni or in the world RD’s you already know well enough that if you give them a little heads up privately, such as:
- (Hey Sara Jane, I wrote this post for the Moore Family Center and if you think the people in your social networks would find it valuable, it would be the bee’s knees if you could share it. Thanks! )
Organizations
- They really are people too – or at least you need to build relationships with the people running them.
- I currently have the managersforBeWellandUDHS on my short list of who I give a quick email heads up to that we have a new post for MFC Blog.
- I know MFC content typically fits with their content, but I still leave it up to them to choose to post or not.
- For both BeWell and UDHS, they have electronic newsletters – but they also have active social media outlets.
- What are the orgs tightly associated with MFC that would be willing to share your posts?
Building your own digital identity
- find your niche
- engage
- it’s not just about you – rule of thirds (give or take).
- 1/3 of posts are replies to other people’s posts
- 1/3 of posts are retweets/reshare of other people’s content
- 1/3 of posts are all you… original stuff by you.