GAHCC Newsletter Website For Chamber Of Commerce

During my tenure as Social Media Ambassador for the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce I identified a multi-pronged challenge and came up with a solution for them.

As often happens in non-profit organizations like chambers of commerce, projects are independent of each other. This happens not so much for lack of planning, but because of budget issues. Usually, the labor is made up in part by well-meaning, but sometimes ill-prepared volunteers.

The Old Newsletter

The first part of the challenge was the GAHCC Newsletter, “Noticias”. It was originally conceived as a PDF that would eventually go to print. The newsletter was delivered by email to the membership every month in PDF form, requiring that the user download and open the PDF to read it.

Creating and publishing a newsletter –even if it’s only in PDF form– is a burdensome task involving the expertise of an editor, graphic designer(s), and account executives that sell the advertising space in the publication. The logistics are demanding, and the deadlines stressful.

Handled in-house, having a newsletter may seem like a good revenue generating idea, but the truth is it becomes a heavy load for all involved.

The Old Blog

One of those well-meaning volunteers created the GAHCC blog as a way to showcase the chamber’s leadership in digital media.

As a general rule I don’t recommend having a blog separated from the organization’s main website (see PCHAS case study). The reason? One of the ideas of having a blog is to have the website broadcast the change in content, which in turn sends search engines the signal that this blog is a source of fresh information on whatever matter is discussed there. But given the complexities –technical and content-wise– of the GAHCC’s main website, and their lack of a budget to re-do the whole thing, it made sense to keep it separate.

The biggest problems with the GAHCC blog were others.

First, it lacked any strategy. They just created “a blog” without much concern about what it was supposed to do, who it was for, etc.

Second, it lacked information architecture. No one planned what the major topics would be, and the result of that was more than forty categories that made any kind of navigation all but impossible.

Third, the only navigation it had directed visitors to this isolated blog away from the blog, to the chamber’s social media pages.

Fourth, it had a way to subscribe that did not connect or update the GAHCC’s official email marketing list. Instead, it created a new, isolated list outside the chamber’s marketing reach.

Fifth, and one of the biggest issues, it was built very poorly. Just because someone says they can “build something in WordPress” doesn’t mean they’re a developer.
The previous “developer” ignored all the fundamentals I list above adn then some. They also created a poorly thought out blog: Proprietary theme (difficult to maintain, likely to break), non-mobile-responsive (likely to turn off the increasing mobile-device readership), poor usability, etc.
One of the biggest flaws was a very large number of full-size articles on the home page. This created a slow-loading, difficult to browse experience. I’ve attempted to reproduce it here: (scroll to see the whole, long, thing)

 

The Solution

Seeing these problems I proposed a new blog website for the chamber of commerce that would become the newsletter.

Brand This new Newsletter would be known as “Noticias Digital”. It would substitute both the PDF version –dropping the plan to ever print it– and the poorly executed blog, while piggybacking on a known brand within the GAHCC community.

Revenue Because it substituted a revenue stream, we created a new revenue stream by hosting advertisement on the blog, which in turn reached a wider audience than the non-print PDF version ever did.

Technology I created the newsletter in the “News” mobile responsive child theme* for the Genesis framework*. This framework offers some of the most robust coding in the industry, modern standards, and the mobile responsiveness improves the consumption of content on mobile devices. Because it’s built on WordPress, there is a wide user base that already knows how to work on it, or staff can be easily trained.

Usability No website is worth the money or effort if no one can use it. So I though long and hard about the topics that would be published, and with the client, determined the minimum that would make sense to a visitor. Hence, the much simplified navigation.
While we still have as many articles as before, browsing them is a lot easier given we only see images, titles, and short excerpts.
The home page allows for certain items to be featured on the top rotating area, and the area right below it. This allows staff to keep in rotation articles that may be related to ongoing campaigns or important upcoming events. The rest of the content is pushed off the page as new content is added.
Because it’s online, the new version of the email that goes out to the membership provides a similar experience. Instead of requiring recipients to download and open a PDF, it links to the full articles on the site. This creates more traffic for advertisers, and more engagement with the membership.

Lead Capture The new email subscription form integrates with the GAHCC email marketing provider, and signals interest in the subscriber, who will now receive periodical reminders of the chamber’s membership benefits.

Happy Staff Because it’s always available, a blog newsletter allows for publication of articles at any time. No longer is the staff stressed out about a deadline to send the PDF by email at a certain date. An article that needs to get publishes just is, and the next email to the membership shows the most recent articles available.

The GAHCC Noticias Digital newsletter thrives to this day, see it here.