Web wonderland

2011-11-11T14:30:00.001-08:00

I've been working pretty well non stop on revamping the existing website. One of the first things I did was migrate us to Wordpress. We had an intern from UPenn (Li Yi) who helped establish the basic template, which I then had to format over to WP. Easy to say, harder to do.

The website forms a critical component for the overall marketing program. Te site IS our primary public face. We will be adding content to the existing content over the next few months. It's live now, but the official launch will happen as part of the formal program launch in the spring.

This new site had to have the essential components of grants and travel info. However I felt it was important to have a large selection of partner information in the form of a toolkit. I also felt we had to have better ways to submit information - mini grants, follow up reports, and event listings. All of these are now added. I am feeling much better about our public face that I have since I started.

We have also signed up for crowdbooster.com, google analyticd, and Facebook insights. All of these will ideally allow us to follow how we can grow our base. I have done a test run of Facebook ads to see how they go, but I'm not convinced that it will work.

So, pieces of our social media and web plan are coming together. Next post I will fill you in on some of our data collection and where it points us next.

Aaron

First of...

2011-10-31T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is just past the one year anniversary of the re-organization of Anacostia Trails Heritage Area Inc. In doing so, the new organization now has a Governing Board made up of municipal representatives to advise and a Managing Board to manage the day-to-day operation. We have also returned to the orginal management plan to determine what will be the best method for advancing the organization. One of our big initiatives has been the establishment of a marketing plan. And thats what I spent the last week doing. Well, myself and our office manager who did a hefty amount of digging for data.

Shortly after I arrived, I had students from George Washington University ask to help - as part of their Tourism Mangement program - evaluate our marketing goals. There were lots of great ideas, big and small, some which we are implementing, some which were a bit too out there for us. One of the ideas was that I should be writing a blog - I guess because I have a few opinions on how things work. I suppose you tell a few jokes and suddenly I'm blog worthy. Well I toyed with the idea for a while but never felt it was right for the organization. However, with the process of writing our marketing plan, I started to recognize the need to have a voice for the organization where we could tell you about all the good work that our partners are doing. To that end, a blog made a good amount of sense.

Therefore, I will attempt to keep a blog updated on our progress. My initial plan is to keep everyone posted on our marketing plan development - statistics, goals, plans, etc. As we approach the spring, I hope to update everyone with the rollout of some new programs. Additionally, I will try to let everyone know about our progress with the "Undaunted" (1812) commemoration.

More to come soon. - Aaron

Heritage Area Insider

Web wonderland

First of...