Did you know Monday was President’s Day? Because I sure didn’t! Oh well, I got a coffee out of my trip down Main Street.
Today I had my first direct connection with BBBS’s followers—I posted a blog post on BBBSCM’s WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter that I edited and reviewed! The blog post is by Katie Roy, a new Interview Match Specialist, and she explains how powerful it is to see the positive impact of mentoring and BBBS just in her first week on the job.
As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I had to review her writing for clarity as an outsider; as someone who may not be familiar with BBBS or their terminology. The key changes I made were: changing “sites” to “meeting sites” and capitalizing “littles” and “bigs” to “Littles” and “Bigs” to make it clear they are BBBS jargon.
The next step was to add hyperlinks wherever possible. At one point, Katie mentioned “statistical evidence” that proves BBBS has a tangible, positive impact on Littles. Here, I hyperlinked “statistical evidence” to a page on the national BBBS site showing statistical data from a study that was done recently. Another key area for hyperlinkage was where Katie noted that some matches had been together for “twenty years”. In this text, I hyperlinked to an article posted not too long ago from the national BBBS site profiling a Big and Little who had actually remained friends for about 40 years! Impressive!
Lastly, I searched through the company server to find photos to add to the post. Jeff and I managed to find one of Katie (placed at the top of the article) and two other photos: one of a Big Brother and Little Brother candidly embracing and another of a group of Big Sisters and Little Sisters from one of Katie’s sites (actually both were from Katie’s sites). I made it a point to select photos that were 1. recent (anything more than say, three years old was off the table), and 2. relevant. In terms of relevancy, I wanted the photos to be from Katie’s sites (every Interview Match Specialist regularly visits specific meeting sites where the Bigs and Littles meet up). This meant searching through many, many albums of photos to find ones that were from Katie’s sites. Also, I used the photo of two boys embracing inside Katie’s paragraph where she mentions a Little that welcomed her—literally—with open arms. This only seemed natural. The group photo of the female Littles and Bigs was chosen and placed in a paragraph that spoke about the importance of mentors, and how they create great bonds with mentees. This context seemed fitting for a group shot.
Lastly, posting the blog post meant: using BBBSCM’s WordPress blog for the first time, using BBBSCM’s Twitter account for the first time, using BBBSCM’s Facebook account for the first time, and figuring out how to properly embed and resize captioned photos into a WordPress blog ten minutes before I had to go catch a bus back to Clark. These were no easy tasks, but luckily I have experience using all of those networks and utilized Bit.ly to keep my posts succinct.
So now we wait. And track engagement.
I'M A MKTG INTERN! 