We hope that you have had a chance to explore the new and improved Virginia Cooperative Extension website. Thank you to everyone that has contributed content to the site so far.
As you will see, there are many opportunities to promote programs, events, impact, and educational content through the homepage and topic pages.
However, we need your help to keep the content fresh and engaging. Here are a few of the ways that you can help us.
1) Submit an article for the Extension News Page.
- The best articles are educational in nature. We want to move away from the after-the-fact/event articles, to more education-related topics. These would be similar to what you might submit to a trade publication or as a column in a newspaper.
- You can still submit an article about an upcoming event or program, as long as you include an educational component, such as “here’s one of the things you’ll learn…”
- A post-event article can also be submitted, as long as it includes how the program/event impacted the target audience.
- Articles must be in your area of expertise.
- Please have at least one person review the article for the educational content before it is submitted.
- Articles should be between 350 and 500 words. This is based on research that shows 350 words are the minimum to be indexed in Google, and people don’t have the attention span to read more than 500 words.
- Include a list of topics that your article should be associated with. For example, if you article is about pumpkins, you may want to tag it to: specialty crops and agritourism.
- Submit your article and photo (300 dpi) to Lori Greiner. Research has shown that articles that include photos will receive more views than articles that don’t.
2) Make sure to post your programs and events on your local VCE calendar.
- We will be selecting programs and events to feature on the calendar each week. Priority will be given to those events that are open to the entire state. If you have an event that you would like to have considered for the homepage, please submit your item to Brandi Evans.
3) Please notify us of any trainings or certification classes that should be featured on the homepage.
- We require that an informational page be created on the website for any training or certification in order for it to be linked from the homepage. If you have content that you would like to have included, please submit an online job request.
4) Submit suggestions for the spotlight and featured topic pages.
- We will be developing a monthly calendar and we are open to your suggestions. Some topics make more sense to feature at certain times of the year. Send your suggestions to Lori Greiner.
5) Submit content for a new topic page.
- We realize that there other topics/sub-topics that should be included on the website. If you have content that you feel would make a good topic page, please submit your request online job request.
We thank you in advance for your contributions to the site. If you have any specific questions, please contact either Lori Greiner or Susan Gill.