Presented at NEAFCS Annual Conference 2010: Portland, Maine

1. Extension 2.0: Harnessing the
Power of the Blogosphere to
Expand Programming
Potential & Impact
Jamie Seger, Kara Newby
& Nancy Recker
The Ohio State University Extension

2. “Our job is not to defend
yesterday, but to invent
tomorrow”
-Peter Druker, Management Guru

3. Why Extension?
 Lack of knowledge about Extension among younger
generation (18-34 yo)

4. Why the Internet?

6. Blogging to Engage
 From teaching to Engaging
 Many generations of clientele are online:
 To socialize
 To learn

7. Possible Issues?
•Difficulty?
•Time/Task
Management
•Communicating
Impact

8. Creating Your Blog
 What do you want from your blog?
 Ease of Use:
 Google Blogger/Blogspot
 www.blogspot.com
 Professional Appeal
 Wordpress
 www.wordpress.com

9. Finding & Reporting Impact
 Where do I obtain statistical data? What kind of
an impact is my blog having?

10. Finding & Reporting Impact
 Options:
 Wordpress.com Statistics
 For blogs hosted by Wordpress.com (free)
 Can retrieve blog hit information daily, weekly, or monthly
 Top posts & pages
 Search traffic (i.e. if someone views your blog via a search result)
 Subscriber information (RSS feed, e-mail, etc)
 Referring sites
 Move It Miami County dashboard
 Over 7,900 hits since the MIMC program in March.
 MIMC program ended second week in May.
 Blog averages approx. 70 hits per day.

11. Finding & Reporting Impact
 Options (cont..):
 Google Analytics
 For use with a Blogspot blog – or – can embed into any
blog (with administrative access)
 Can retrieve daily, weekly, monthly, yearly stats
 Traffic sources (referring sites, direct, search engines, etc)
 Top posts
 Traffic map (see who is visiting your blog nationally &
internationally!)
 Export data into a PDF or similar view
 Family Blog

12. Finding & Reporting Impact
 I have all of this data – now what do I do with it?
 Annual Reports
 Monthly Mini-Reports
 List of new and updated posts (include “active” links)
 One or two helpful comments that were posted to the blog
from readers
 Overall statistics for that month

13. Group vs. Individual Blogging
 Group Blogging
 Blogs that have contributors of two or more people
 OSUE FCS blog
 Pros:
 Less amount of work for everyone in updating the blog
 Blog posts could represent a range of topics / authors could
focus on their area of specialization
 Cons
 Blog may seem unorganized, less uniform, and not targeting
one specific niche
 May require more work: checking with other authors before
posting, etc.

14. Group vs. Individual Blogging
 Individual Blogging
 Blogs that have one contributor/author
 Van Wert County Ag blog / Parents in Action blog
 Pros:
 Blog can be more focused
 More of a “high-touch” blog (readers correspond with one
author – makes for an intimate experience)
 Cons
 More work for one person

15. Group vs. Individual Blogging
 Which format is best?
 Extension staff
 Extension clientele
 Example in action:
 OSUE EERA blogs
 www.stepfamiliiestoday.wordpress.com
 www.osufcs.wordpress.com

16. Advertising Your Blog
 Boost your impact by advertising your blog and
posts
 Twitter
 Facebook

17. Microblogging:
Facebook Fan Pages
• Creating a fan page
• Inviting people to your page
• Selecting a user name
• Promoting your page to go virally
• Value posting
• Cross promotion
• Getting others to connect to your page
• Posting from your phone

18. Online Resources
 Copy of this presentation
 Videos (How to blog, how to develop a podcast for
your blog, etc.)
 Links to other social media presentations
 www.neafcs.org
 www.slideshare.net

19. Thank You!
 Questions?
 Please take a moment to fill out the session
evaluation.
 Contact Information:
 Jamie Seger - seger.23@osu.edu
twitter.com/jamies4families
 Kara Newby – knewby@ehe.osu.edu
 Nancy Recker – recker.22@osu.edu