The April/May contest is to add new bloggers to your community’s blog.

Have new users sign up to be bloggers using the steps outlined in the Mini-Blogging Guide to help them sign and up and learn the basics of how to blog.

Think of creative questions to ask them relating to their personal and the community’s participation in the Horizons program. Here are a few examples:

1. What changes do you see if your community as a result of participating in the Horizons program?

2. How has participating in the Horizons program affected you personally?

3. What are some major milestones or achievements you have seen your community reach?

4. What are some Horizons related projects your community is currently working or or plans to carry on into the future?

5. How has the Horizons program helped develop leadership in your community? What populations have grown the most in terms of leadership?

The community that has the most new bloggers by the end of May will win the contest!

There are a number of ways you can sign-up new bloggers - you can post an announcement on your community’s web site. You could hold a blogging party or blogging night at a community member’s home, the local library, high school or coffee shop. Add a few minutes of blogging to your next Horizons meeting and find interested people there. Be creative!

As always, if you need help, let me know!

Happy Blogging!

Congratulations to our February contest winners! Julie Adams from New York Mills was the individual winner and the community winner was Chisholm! Now it’s time to announce the March contest.

The February contest was designed to get people to check out the Minnesota blog regularly to see all the cool things we’ve been working on. Now the challenge is to get people in your community to check your blog to see all the neat things you’re doing in your community. This month’s challenge is to get people to check your blog out.

How will we know who the winner is? A few different ways. The first will be to use instructions from my January 27th post on installing a hit counter to your blog, or click adding-a-web-counter.doc. The hit counter will help you see how many unique visitors you have to your blog each month. Be sure to check the box for “unique visits.” If anyone is having trouble installing it, let me know and I can help you out. The other way is through this very neat program that our site managers installed called Google Analytics, which is a more detailed blog statistic tracker. For more information on Google Analytics, click here: www.google.com/analytics.

The community that has the most blog traffic, weighted for population, wins! The individual winner will be chosen by random drawing from bloggers who post in the month of March.

How will you drive traffic to your blog? Look at my February 10th post on ways to promote your blog, or post a comment asking what others are doing!

Good luck, and Happy Blogging!

A community blog is only as good as those who use it - both those who blog and those who check it to get the latest news, information, and discussion. If you want people to visit your blog, you have to let them know that it is out there. People will rarely, if ever, stumble upon your blog by themselves (But it does happen, just ask the bloggers in Chisholm!).

Here are some easy tips for promoting your community blog:

1. Send out an email announcement introducing your blog to the community. Start by sending it to your friends, and having them pass it along to their friends. Or find a contact who owns a list with many subscribers, such as local businesses, schools, chambers of commerce, or other.

2. Include your blog address in your email signature. Just add your community blog URL to your email signature by changing your options to have it automatically included, or by manually typing it each time you send an email to people you think might be interested.

3. Do some good, old-fashioned self-promoting! Create business cards or fliers and leave them out where community members gather. Contact your local newspaper, community newsletter, radio or television station and ask them to do a story on the blog.

4. Link to other websites. Other nonprofits, chambers, government agencies, local businesses, and even other bloggers often have a designated area where they link to like-minded organizations - similar to the sidebar option on your own community blog. Don’t be afraid to ask others to link to your blog, and be sure to return the favor.

5. Have a contest! Similar to the contest the Minnesota blog just announced. Drive people to your blog by offering them incentives to participate.

6. Have a Blog Night where you teach others how to blog. Some communities in other Horizons states are holding blog nights where they do a seminar on what the blog is, it’s role in the Horizons program, and how to blog. It’s a great way to spread the word, create community, and get more individuals blogging.

The community blogs are an important tool for increasing communication and helping you to create change though the Horizons program. There is no single solution that will work to get all communities involved. Be creative and be proud of the work you do on the blog!

Introducing the first in a series of four community blogging contests!!!

Leave a Comment - You Could Win a PRIZE!

Leave a comment by February 29th answering the following question and you will be entered into a drawing to win a community organizing book for your community.

“What Horizons moment has given you the most joy, hope or fulfillment?”

But wait, there’s more! The community that logs the most comments will also win Chamber Bucks for use at a community event! Be sure to leave the name of your community as well so we can keep track of which community has the most comments. We will only count one comment per person, but feel free to share as many of your thoughts as you’d like.

Winners will be notified on March 1st, which is also when next month’s contest will be announced.

Good luck and happy blogging!

The recent upgrade of WordPress created problems for bloggers from several Horizons communities trying to upload photos into their blogs. Mike from North Dakota came up with a helpful set of instructions that simplify the process and help work around some of the issues people have been having.

Click the link to download the instructions on embedding photos.

For many of you looking to change the look of your blog posts, WordPress now makes it easier. Just click the “Show/Hide Advanced Toolbar” button (the third button from the right that looks like a bunch of little squares) and get easy access to more options such as adding color, underlining text, inserting characters, & more!

Many of you have asked if there is a way to measure hits to your blogs. Here is one relatively easy (and free) service that you can add to your homepage. For an example of what the web counter may look like on the Minnesota page, look to the right at the top of the sidebar.

To download the instructions, click adding-a-web-counter.doc

For those of you wanting more sophistication and detail, the blog team has just installed Google Analytics. I’ll post more information on that service when it becomes available.

For all of those impressed by Lori’s recent post and eager to share their own photos and slideshows, here are some simple instructions for adding a Picasa slideshow to your own blog.

Thanks to Cheryl in South Dakota for making these available!

Click here to download the instructions: adding-a-picasa-slide-show.pdf