Internet and Community Organizing
Community Organizing can be made much easier by the use of the Internet. We will explore the use of free websites (Google Sites, Weebly, Nextdoor), Email Lists, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs as tools of community organizing.
These days if a business or organization does not have a web presence, it does not exist. That’s not really true, but without that presence an organization loses a great opportunity to engage the public, get its message out, increase membership and funding / donations.
There is a cemetery in Lutz, on US Hwy 41, a few blocks north of the Old Lutz Schoolhouse. What is its history? How do you get interred there? Who is buried there already? Where could you donate to keep it maintained? An internet search provides almost zero information, except that there was an inactive organization called Lutz Cemetery Association.
Many organizations choose not to have a web presence because they don't have the expertise to create website or can't afford to pay someone to develop and maintain one. Some organizations get a grant to have a website created. However they don't have the operating funds to update the website as needed. Or a volunteer with web site design skills creates a site and later leaves the organization.
There are many different free websites that organizations can use. However sometimes the results have not been very attractive. Some are not easy to use. Some place ads on the site over which you have no control. Some are tied in with your internet provider and if you change providers you lose the site.
I have created sites using a variety of these including Yahoo's Geocities, Google Sites, Blogger, and Wordpress. The best free website site I have found is Weebly.com.
Weebly is easy to use, looks good, can be customized if you have the skills, has an integrated blog is easy to maintain and update, and can be integrated with your own domain name.
My wife's site SusanBanghart.com, my personal site DavidBanghart.com and the Lutz Dog Park site http://lutzdogpark.weebly.com/ are all Weebly sites. The only thing that tells you it is a free site is a small notice at the bottom. "Create a free website with Weebly" If you go with the paid version that notice is not there. I consider that small notice an acceptable trade off for a free site.
The first step to creating a site for your organization is to create a Google email in the name of your organization. This way you can easily pass off to the email address and website to others in the organization if you leave. For example I created Lutz Dog Park1@ gmail.com for the Dog Park site. I forward that email address to my personal address to get all emails that come in without having to login separately to Google.
I like using Google for the email because of the many affiliated features such as Google Documents / Google Drive, Google Voice, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Plus, Google Photos / Picasa Web Albums and more. These all can help make it easier to run your organization better or to better publicize it. Later I will go over each of these.
In further articles I will go over actually creating a Weebly site, marketing the site, getting it listed on search engines and.improving that listing. My hope is that at the end of these articles groups that don't have websites will feel comfortable enough to start and maintain a site.
Obviously I am still working on this page so wander away and come back some other time after I have decided to put the energy into finishing this. Instead look at some of my photos or find out what we did to deal with issue of street level prostitution in Seminole Heights.
These days if a business or organization does not have a web presence, it does not exist. That’s not really true, but without that presence an organization loses a great opportunity to engage the public, get its message out, increase membership and funding / donations.
There is a cemetery in Lutz, on US Hwy 41, a few blocks north of the Old Lutz Schoolhouse. What is its history? How do you get interred there? Who is buried there already? Where could you donate to keep it maintained? An internet search provides almost zero information, except that there was an inactive organization called Lutz Cemetery Association.
Many organizations choose not to have a web presence because they don't have the expertise to create website or can't afford to pay someone to develop and maintain one. Some organizations get a grant to have a website created. However they don't have the operating funds to update the website as needed. Or a volunteer with web site design skills creates a site and later leaves the organization.
There are many different free websites that organizations can use. However sometimes the results have not been very attractive. Some are not easy to use. Some place ads on the site over which you have no control. Some are tied in with your internet provider and if you change providers you lose the site.
I have created sites using a variety of these including Yahoo's Geocities, Google Sites, Blogger, and Wordpress. The best free website site I have found is Weebly.com.
Weebly is easy to use, looks good, can be customized if you have the skills, has an integrated blog is easy to maintain and update, and can be integrated with your own domain name.
My wife's site SusanBanghart.com, my personal site DavidBanghart.com and the Lutz Dog Park site http://lutzdogpark.weebly.com/ are all Weebly sites. The only thing that tells you it is a free site is a small notice at the bottom. "Create a free website with Weebly" If you go with the paid version that notice is not there. I consider that small notice an acceptable trade off for a free site.
The first step to creating a site for your organization is to create a Google email in the name of your organization. This way you can easily pass off to the email address and website to others in the organization if you leave. For example I created Lutz Dog Park1@ gmail.com for the Dog Park site. I forward that email address to my personal address to get all emails that come in without having to login separately to Google.
I like using Google for the email because of the many affiliated features such as Google Documents / Google Drive, Google Voice, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Plus, Google Photos / Picasa Web Albums and more. These all can help make it easier to run your organization better or to better publicize it. Later I will go over each of these.
In further articles I will go over actually creating a Weebly site, marketing the site, getting it listed on search engines and.improving that listing. My hope is that at the end of these articles groups that don't have websites will feel comfortable enough to start and maintain a site.
Obviously I am still working on this page so wander away and come back some other time after I have decided to put the energy into finishing this. Instead look at some of my photos or find out what we did to deal with issue of street level prostitution in Seminole Heights.