Digital Makeover Update: SYFAB’s first steps

I just posted an update on the Digital Makeover project to the Net Squared site.  I’ve blogged about the Digital Makeover Project from Simon Fairway before (you can read those posts here and here) ad think the steps being taken are really interesting, and a great learning showcase for other organizations.

South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau is a voluntary organisation and registered charity set up to help voluntary and community organisations get the resources they need and was selected as the featured organization in the Digital Makeover project because of the organization’s openness to technology and change, and the capacity and culture to adopt new approaches. You can read more about the organization and the assessed overview here.

The first steps of the digital makeover, lead by Simon Fairway of Juvi Media and Danny Antrobus from SYFAB, have been to start a blog, a news website, and install Google Analytics.  You can review Simon’s posts to the Net Squared community about the Digital Makeover steps.  Here are some of my key questions, read more about the strategy ideas on the Net Squared blog here!

Blog

Key Questions: How is the new blog going to affect website traffic and SIFT (SYFAB’s interactive guide to fundraising)?  What are the goals for the blog’s affect on these two areas? How do you hope visitors will interact with the site and with each other?  Read more

News Site

Key Questions: What are the goals and differences in purpose for the news site vs the blog?  How can each be identified by visitors so that they can pick whether the blog or the news site is where they want to be?  Why don’t think link prominently to each other? How do you hope visitors will interact with the site and with each other?  Read more

Google Analytics

Key Questions: This is the fun stuff!  Are you using Google Analytics (or the blog software’s built-in analytics) for the website, blog, and news blog?  You should be!  Which pages or posts get the most visitors?  Which get the most comments?  Which do the most people find via a search engine?  Which statistics are most useful to SYFAB in identifying whether the website/blog/news site is reaching its goals?  Read more

Next Step

A quick next step that aligns with the above areas is to set up free Google Alerts about the organization name and industry. Creating alerts on ‘SYFAB’ and ‘South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau’ will let SYFAB staff know who is talking about the organization (whether it is resources, the website, the blog, the news site, or more) and where that conversation is taking place.  Staff can then highlight these links or news stories on the blogs or check out the other site to add information to the conversation.  It’s also useful to create alerts about the services or industry, like ‘funding advice’ or ‘fundraising in uk.’  This will let you identify other blogs, news articles, or websites discussing the same topic, so SYFAB can get involved (whether by commenting on that site, linking to it, or blogging about it).

Read more strategy ideas on the Net Squared blog post.

What experiences has your organization had using Google Analytics or Google Alerts?  What advice do you have for SYFAB while it under goes this Digital Makeover?