How To Create Your Own Credit Union Blog - An Introduction

So there has been a lot of interest from credit unions in setting up blogs. I am still leery of suggesting that all credit unions do this. If you aren’t prepared to give it 100% and give good and valuable information - DON’T DO IT! Don’t have your blog be a simple delivery channel for your most current campaign. That being said…

HOW TO SET UP A CREDIT UNION BLOG

So, I thought I’d put together a “Basics” checklist for beginners to use. There are more facets to setting up a blog than I list here, but this should give you a solid base from which to build. I’ve used this same method for both personal and business blogs.

For Starters:

• Select a memorable, relevant name: This doesn’t have to be your credit union name, but make it relevant to your brand. If you are a school employees credit union you could do something like www.TheCULounge.com (try to stick with .com names if you can).

• Buy the domain: Whether you’re using a hosted or self-hosted version of a blogging platform, buy your name as a domain. Someday, your blog could be very popular and you won’t want to have missed the chance to have your own name. This also helps prevent Blogjacking by establishing the blog with its own identity instead of an arm of the CU web site.

Decision Time:

• Select a Platform: Wordpress, Blogger, and Typepad are a few to consider. I gravitate towards Wordpress every time. Problogger offers a great writeup on selecting a platform - it’s over a year old but still very relevant.

• Hosted vs. Self-Hosted: For the purpose of this post, let’s assume you’re taking my advice and selecting Wordpress. Will you choose their hosted version or will you take their software and install it on your own server space with a web host? Wordpress.com offers a very nice way to get things started in about 5 minutes. They host your site and all the setup is done for you. But, this is more limiting and down the road you may wish to have more freedom (we did). Your other option is to download their latest version and install it on your own hosted space on your own domain you just purchased. Don’t be scared off by this option! With this option you have complete freedom over your site. The Wordpress.org installation instructions are very thorough. I’m not a web developer and I’ve been able to pick up on it pretty easily. There are even hosts that offer one-click installations (we have this for our clients)! Ultimately, this isthe way to go and I would recommend self-hosting 100% of the time. You can usually get away with a hosting plan with Wordpress installed for less than $20 a month.

Claim Your Property:

• Technorati: Once you get your site set up, go out to Technorati and claim your blog. Technorati is an authority on blog ranking. They track and rank your coveted incoming links. The more links the better your rank and the better you’ll be in search engine results when people search on keywords that could lead them to your blog.

• FeedBurner: RSS feeds and FeedBurner seem to be a tough concept for people new to the blog world to figure out. FeedBurner is the most widely used RSS feed distributor. What do I mean by feed distributor? Go sign up for a Google Reader (this is what I use) or Bloglines account. They are free online readers of RSS feeds. When you subscribe to an RSS feed and select your feed reader, the RSS feed (or blog) that you just subscribed to will now be in your reader. FeedBurner helps it get there. It reads the feed from your site and distributes it to other sources. Those big orange buttons you see on sites lead to a FeedBurner feed where people subscribe. FeedBurner keeps track of your subscribers so you can see how many subscribe to your site. They also offer a decent, free stat tracking tool.

Now, let’s jump ahead and assume you’ve done your research and made all the above decisions. I could go on for pages and pages on the above discussion points, but remember this is a general checklist meant to give you starting points from which to get started.

You’ve selected to host your own blog on your own domain and have gone ahead and installed (or had us install) the Wordpress software. You now need to put some structure to your new site. Below is my list of must-have initial plugins with which to start your blog.

Build Your Site:

• Themes: This will help you customize your blog a little so that you aren’t stuck with the standard Wordpress layout and look. There a few places that you can get free Wordpress themes. Wordpress provides many but you can find others themes and you can even find some really neat ones that cost a few bucks. Please don’t skip this step. They are easy to install and customize - you can even change them to match your CU colors and add your logo.
• Akismet: This comes included with your Wordpress installation. Don’t be a fool - activate it and set it up - quickly. Akismet helps block comment and trackback spam. To give you an idea of its importance, it about 400 spam attempts on this site every month.

• Subscribe to Comments: Allows users to register themselves on any given post to receive follow-up comments via email. I dig this plugin as it allows your readers who comment to get updated on your response or the responses of other readers without having to remember to come back and check.

• WordPress Database Backup: Essential for any blog. Allows you to schedule backups of your database to be emailed to you or saved to your server.

• WP-Cache: A WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It caches Worpress pages and stores them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database.

• A Contact Form – The contact form is a plugin that you can drop on any page or any post and it gives visitors a way to fill out a form and contact you. It is much better than publishing an email address that can be picked up by spammers. This is the one I use, it is pretty good but there are a lot of good ones out there.

• Add This: This plugin puts an icon at the bottom of your posts that when clicked offers multiple options for bookmarking your content. This is important for getting your content added to sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon. If you’re a fan of Search Engine Land and Sphinn you’ll want to add the Sphinn button as well!

• FB StandardStats: This plugin gives your site the capability to track stats (who, when and how many people are visiting your site) via FeedBurner as a backup to Google Analytics or your stat package of choice. I can’t stop looking at this though so install it at your own risk. I love looking at analytical data

• FeedBurner FeedSmith: The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well. When I switched servers I only lost about 5 subscribers because I had this set up. It only took a week to get those readers back though

• Google Analytics: This plugin allows you to utilize Google Analytics for your statistical tracking on the site. Did I mention that Google Analytics is FREE?! This is another time drain though. I hit my Google Analytics data at least three times a day for my sites. Its like geek-crack.

• Google Sitemap Generator: This plugin generates an XML (fancy web site programming language) sitemap of your WordPress blog which helps search engine spiders crawl your site more effectively. This format is supported by Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. This helps to get better google rankings by assuring that all your pages are indexed by Google.

• Simple Tagging: Simple Tagging allows you to tag posts with keywords that will appear in the meta tags of the post source code. Thus, making the content more searchable. “Tagging” is attaching simple words to represent the overall content of your post (and site). For example. If you are doing a post on home improvement opportunities you could tag the post with words like “DIY, How To, home improvement, heloc, line of credit, home loans, finance, home” and so on.

• SEO Title Tag 2.0: This plugin allows you to write a post title that will appear in the title tag for the post. What’s nice about this is you can write a keyword-stuffed title for the title tag and keep a more catchy title for your published post.

• Visit Blogging Related Sites: Like this on! Well, kind of anyway. What I really mean are sites like Coppyblogger.com (he wrote an excellent article on headline formulas for blogging). There are a lot of good sites for blogging tips but don’t forget, while this is all fun ad good - there is a point. You are likely in the marketing department and eventually someone will ask you to calculate out an ROI - so don’t go too crazy. Blogging is addictive and could cost you your job. I have a pocket full of napkin scraps with blog post ideas. I think about it a lot.

There are many more useful and powerful plugins - new ones are coming out all the time. If anyone reading this uses one I havent listed that you like, let me know and I will give you credit here.

Next, you’re ready to start writing and socializing…

Content, Content, Content:

• Posts: I usually recommend having 5-10 posts written and posted before you go out and start “socializing” your work. I have another blog where we had over 30 posts before I began the marketing process. Socializing means commenting on other sites, linking out heavily to other blogs, and participating in social networks (click each link to see our accounts at - MySpace, Facebook, Technorati to name a few). If you’re going to bait someone to check out your site you’ll want to make sure you have a good cross-section of content that gives that visitor an idea of what they can expect from you.

• About Page: Have a decent About page to educate your visitors on what you’re all about. I think it’s important to give visitors something to which they can relate. Don’t be afraid to be a little irreverant either. Remember, your blog is a personal and friendly conversation. Think of it as a dating profile and not a press release.

• Make It Easy: Make life easy for your visitors by offering an easy to find subscribe button. Link to your myspace page, your facebook page or any page that will give you an alternate or more comfortable means of communicating with your members.

• Most Importantly - Have Fun!!: If blogging is not fun for you - stop doing it! Your dislike will show in your writing anyway - it will get stale and boring. Do web searches for “effective blog headlines” or “Blog post ideas”. You don’t have to blog only about credit union issues - and frankley, you should’t. Enjoy this platform and the great communities and relationships that develop.

Is there more to setting up a blog than what I’ve outlined here? YES! But, I’m hoping this checklist gives credit unions something to follow as they dig into setting up their first site. What did I forget? Is there something you would tag as essential for a beginning credit union blogger?

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