Gauge The Opinion Of Members

You can include polls in your blog to gauge opinion on questions where members are likely to have clear choices or preferences. You can use a Google poll gadget designed to go in the sidebar or there are a number of free poll widgets that can appear in a post like this.

Sharing Info and Getting Feedback

Blogs are great for sharing short pieces of information and getting feedback through the comments facility below the post. When you have something that would be too long to post embedding a slide show such as this can be a good idea. This slide show was uploaded to a free hosting site called slideshare.net



You can also use a blog as a means of getting feedback by encouraging people to use the comments facility. For example you could ask people to post comments saying what they think about the info in the presentation above.

Branch News and Events

What is a blog. Basically it is an easily accessible website that you can use to post news and information. For unions it offers a great opportunity to contact with members, share ideas and information and gain feedback. Best of all a blog is in your control - no "webmaster" or censor. And it's free!

This page is where you post general branch news and information. This is like an on-line newsletter. It rolls down and new posts will appear at the top of the page. Older posts can be accessed from the archive links in the sidebar on the right hand side.

Add pictures to illustrate your point, create interest or to mark a recent event. It is easy to add pictures to a post like this. It is also possible to link to pictures in a third party site such as flickr.

Events and Dates

You can create an on-line calendar of your events and activities and post it on your blog. Members can view it here or subscribe to it to be notified of new additions. There are various ways of displaying your calendar. My preference is the second of the two below. The second format can also be displayed in the sidebar of the blog as I have done.






How to Find Us

Features Used On This Blog

1. Google Calendar

It is pretty easy to set up a google account and then a google calendar. You can note your events and meetings in the calendar, once a member clicks on a particular event they will be directed to a page with more specific detail, you can even include a map.


The calendar can be displayed as a gadget in the sidebar like the one we have in the sidebar on this blog (picture to the right), or you can put a larger version in a post like we have here.








2. Make it Easy To Find Relevant Info

You can add tags to each post you make. Try and think this out so you are using tags consistently. This is a way of categorising the information on the site. In the picture below the tags have been circled.


Then you can add a labels page element in your side bar so people can easily find the info they are interested in like this.


3. Provide Links To Other Sites and Information

In the picture above you will see a list of LINKS. These are displayed in the sidebar. Place links that relate to your blog, or ones that will be of interest to members. These links help make your blog relevant and useful for visitors.

4. Making It Easy For Members To Keep Up To Date

One of the great features of blogs is the ability to subscribe. This means that whenever you add a new post subscribers have this fed to them directly rather than waiting for them to visit the site.


Subscribing to blogs and internet newsfeeds is pretty new and people are not that familiar with it. However, it won't be long and everyone will be doing it. You may also want to consider teaching people how to subscribe at one of your meetings or at a union training day.

5. Slideshows, Videos, Audio and More

Often you want to get across relatively complex information that would take pages of text to explain. No-one wants to read that, the secret of a good post is to keep it short. However, you can utilise a number of other formats in your blog to get across info.

Here I have embedded a slide show. It is hosted for free on another website called SlideShare. Setting up an account only takes a couple of minutes and then you can upload a slid show. They provide instructions on how to embed in your blog.


You can also embed videos from places like YouTube or Google Video. It's also possible to include music players.


6. Polls

You can gauge the opinion of visitors to your blog through the comments feature, or you can add a poll to find out opinions and preferences on issues that have have more clear cut or specific options.

Polls can be added to a post like this. This means they will be prominent when you post them but will move down the page as new posts are added.

The poll you can see on the left was created using Poll Daddy but there are plenty of free options available on the internet. There is useful review here.

Another very simple option is to incorporate a Google Poll Gadget in the sidebar like the one you can see to the right. This is really straightforward. You could incorporate it as a regular feature of your blog, changing the question to reflect whatever is topical. It can get a little lost on the sidebar, but you can put up a post that alerts visitors to it.