Executive Summary

Ruth Ann Minner is opening up her blog site to comments; however, to date the guest traffic on the site has been minimal. How can we influence Delaware constituents to frequent and contribute to the Governors blog?

The Office of the Governor should:

Sex up the blog!

• Make it multi-lingual
• Create a launch pad for Delaware news
• Improve use of pictures and photo

Make it Conversational

• Add comments feature.
• Add Most Commented / Most Popular sidebar.
• Add an “E-mail to a Friend” link.
• Create permalinks for articles that are alpha-based.
• Create a personal blogroll.
• Interact with users! Try a livechat. Report news here first! Take questions answer them on the blog.

Guest Blogging

• Institute guest blogging for cabinet secretaries
• Follow our recommended best practices.

Web Goodies

• Create and promote a widget to get people to your blog.
• No changes are needed regarding software packaging.
• Include useful keywords
• Create XML sitemaps
• Submit the blog to directories
• Ping the blog!

Timeline:

Note: For the purposes of this timeline, we are assuming this is the governor’s blog, not just Governor Ruth Ann’s blog.

Preliminary Step: Form blog task force and become familiar with process and next steps (November, 2008)

First: Sex it up! (December, 2008)

Next Step: Make it Conversational (January 2008)

Research Assistant starts February 1, 2009.

Make it Conversation & Web Goodies (February 2009)

Budget:

Research Assistant: $14,600/year
Opportunity cost of staff commitment

1. Research Assistantship – assuming $14,600 salary with 50% of time dedicated to blog and work with Communications and Constituent Relations Team, total direct cost is $7,300.

2. Deputy Communications Director – assuming $80,000 salary with 5% of time dedicated to blog and RA supervision, total cost is $4,000 of projects position was otherwise working on. This is an opportunity cost.

3. Constituent Relations Liaison – assuming $45,000 salary with 5% of time dedicated to blog and RA supervision, total cost is $2,250 of projects position was otherwise working on. This is an opportunity cost.

4.  Information Technology Specialist – assuming $55,000 salary with 3% of time dedicated to blog over course of the year, including RA supervision, total cost is $1,650.

Total cost, both direct and indirect – $15,200.