The first step to creating a blog is to ask what data you want online. The first step is not graphic design.
If you had dreams of a what a perfect website would look like, but want free and easy, forget your notions of the design and layout and focus on the data you want to be easy to find. Keep that in mind as I give some tips for how to create a blog for an organization.
Once you have a framework set up and everyone has access to the information you can work at making the blog pretty and doing all kinds of customizations that give it visual appeal. However remember you are a nonprofit organization who probably does not have a large budget for extraneous spending. I hope you are focusing on spending money to deliver the actual program to the youths or whoever your organization serves rather than wasting money on a fancy website.
USING BLOGGER FOR AN ORGANIZATION
1. To use Blogger you need an email login for the group.
I recommend to create a free email such as with gmail for the group. Do not set up accounts using people's own personal emails. You want the organization to own the email not a person who may one day leave the group.
Create an email name that makes sense to the group. Example: the town of Hawkins has a Tennis league called Hawkins Youth Tennis League, use email of HawkinsYouthTennis @ (whatever.com). Once you have the email address check to see you can retrieve emails.
This email password and account name needs to be shared with multiple leaders of the organization and/or the board of directors. This data should not be kept secret with one person as that is a recipe for disaster should they leave the organization.
2. Determine a name for the blog. See if you can call it the exact name of your organization. Keep it simple. Be sure to go through whatever process your organization has for deciding upon these matters. Do not just make it up yourself then get in trouble later if other leadership in the org does not like the name you selected!
3. Open a FREE Blogger account using the organization's email. In this process you will need to have the name of your blog ready as it will hopefully be available to use for your exact URL. Example www.hawkinsyouthtennis. (blog host site goes here.com).
4. Begin to fill out the information in the "About Me" section.
Not of vital importance is the fact that your blogger profile can have a photo. When you have time you can upload a photo, such as a photo file of the logo of your team to put next to your blogger profile name.
In the About Me section be sure to put your group's contact email. This may be a second email account that is set up for members of the public to contact the organization. (The login email could be for the IT support person/blogger/webmaster.)
Put in the About Me section, only the bare bones essential information. Ignore the sections of the profile that are geared toward private people's blogs such as sharing your favorite movie titles. However in the favorite books section perhaps you'd want to put a few titles of books that your club members would read to enchance their knowledge about your activity. That's fluff though, so let me get back to basics.
Creating a blog can be a small or huge project depending on how complicateed YOU CHOOSE to make it. I encourage you to keep it simple when you are starting out.
You can make a long detailed post that tells more about your organization. I will explain that later.
5. Creating Posts
Blogs are ordered like a journal with "blog posts" which have a date that you enter as the "post date". There is a time stamp that you also may edit or change. When you look at the blog you will see the most recent posting and it goes backwards in time as you scroll down. Do not worry about this if it is not how you dreamed your perfect website would be, just stay with me for a moment while I explain how you can use the blog to your best advantage.
I asked you earlier to think about what your organization needs to communicate. I advise that you chunk out the data into topics, single topics if possible. You will enter each chunk of data as a single blog post.
For example if your tennis team travels to play competitively and you need to explain the various locations that you commonly travel to, get that data ready. Create a new blog post with a simple title such as "Tennis Clubs We Compete With". In that post you will list out in an organized way, the data.
You can use the simple buttons within the posting window to insert links to other website such as linking to the other club's websites and also linking to a Google Map of the location. You can include driving directions or special instructions such as "we recommend you park here and here" or "arrive 30 minutes early due to the long walk between the parking lot and the club".
You can save a draft copy of your post if you are not ready to publish it yet by clicking "saved".
You can preview the post by clicking on "preview".
When your post is finished, publish it by clicking on the "publish" button.
Published posts are listed in reverse chronological order in the tab "posting" then "published".
6. Editing Posts
You may edit a published post at any time to make corrections or to add new data.
7. Draft Posts
Draft posts are posts that have been started but have not yet been published. View the list under "posting" then "drafts".
Posting date: when you want to publish the post you can edit the post date, because it defaults to the time and date that you started to write the post. You have to update it to today's date if you want it to appear at the top of the list as the most current entry when you are ready to publish it. This is very simple to do by clicking on the "post options" at the bottom then going to the date window and changing it to today's date.
8. Linking to Individual Blog Posts
Every post you make has its own URL. Click on the title of the published blog post and look to your browser's window and you will see it.
If you are preparing an email to members and want to point them to the travel locations, you can insert that post's URL into the email.
9. Making a Sidebar List
You should create a LIST, following the easy instructions on Blogger, to make a list of information in your blog's sidebar. One such item would be to link to these clubs. You use that URL of that one post when creating a item in your list.
For example if you do a blog post telling lots of details about your program you could then make a sidebar link titled "About our program" or whatever you want to call it.
10. A Note About Blog Post Titles with Dates in the Title
If you are working with something such as giving registration information for a fall sport season, then will have a winter season and a spring season, title your blog posts appropriately. For example do not just say "Registration Information", call it "Spring 2012 Registration Information".
11. Old Information vs. Current Information
For ease of blog maintenance my opinion is you should work to make a nice sidebar with the essential links for what your participants need to know and what newcomers who are not yet registered members may need to know.
Update the sidebar lists in a timely manner.
For example if you are still in the winter session of playing a sport and are getting ready to open spring registration, delete the link to the winter registration information from the sidebare but leave that old post alone in the archives. There is no harm in keeping old data buried down low in your blog post list.
Then enter a new post for spring registration then add that new post's link to the sidebar.
You can also make the list on the side divided by seasons if it makes sense.
Imagine it to say:
List Title: Spring 2012 Season
Registration Information
Travel Match Locations
Spring Calendar
List Title: Winter 2011-2012 Season
Registration Information
Travel Match Locations
Winter Calendar
or you may keep it more simple and just have one list such as:
List Title: Team Information
Spring 2012 Registration Information
Spring Calendar
(delete Winter Registration link when the registration is long over with)
Winter Calendar
Travel Information for Matches (applies to all seasons)
12. Public or Private
Blogs are public by default. Blogger allows settings to make a blog private. If you make the blog private you will need a password and every member will have to keep this straight. If your audience is a mixture of members and the newcomers who enter through the general public you should not have it password protected.
As with regular websites you are probably putting only public information on the site so your blog would be public.
13. Posting Photos and Sharing Group News
Your organization will have to work out its own privacy policies such as if children's photos will appear and if so, press releases (legal documents) will have to be signed by the parents giving legal permission. Many teams ask parents to do this at enrollment time and keep it on file for the whole season.
Sharing photos is very easy with Blogger. The upload is done with a few simple steps to upload image files from your computer or a flash drive onto the blog. You can choose to have the image size small, medium or large. You may also double click on the published photo and see it blown up to gigantic on your computer screen.
Although sharing photos and group news is not essential information it is nice to see if you have the time. For example if you want to post some photos from a tournament you have that ability. Just write a new blog post announcing that you played in a tournament. If you wish to write a paragraph or longer summary you may do so. You might choose to only have photos in that post.
14. Reminders About Upcoming Events
The blog format is actually nice for keeping members informed of the latest news. You can make a short blog post reminding members that a deadline for registration is upcoming or that it's time to sign up to participate in the annual fundraising or year end banquet or whatever you want.