Category: Blogging

What to do with cublogs.org

I’ve been sitting on the domain for a while now and the offer to help CU’s spin up a blog for free proved to be less than popular.  I’ve got the domain now and I’m willing to do whatever with it.

I can’t remember where I heard it, but a user-generated site that lists all of the credit unions that blog would be cool.  That way the busy executive can skip having to look around and follow everyone.  Something like Yahoo Pipes would work but somehow let everyone add sites on to the list.

Maybe donate it to CUES or Callahan or somebody and let them run the list?

Thoughts?

Running two blogs is tough

Not only do you have to post twice as much, it is kinda a pain to get the relevant topics to each blog.  Then I get an idea for a post I really like and I’m torn which blog to put it on.  I want to put it on the Life & Times because I’ve got pretty good readership, but I also want to get the fi-linx blog up and running so I end up putting it there.  But it doesn’t have the readership so then I’m left doing the old double post, which I hate.  So this time I’m just going to say that I put something on the fi-linx blog that I want everyone to read rather than just double posting and making it look like I’m just running two of the same blog.  Anyways, there’s my rant for today.  Go check out my post on the fi-linx blog.  This whole blogging thing is tough!

What’s your criteria for adding to your blogroll?

I received an email last week from a CU vendor that recently launched a new blog and they are trying to get it off the ground.  They asked me to include their blog in my links section and I decided to think about it over the weekend.  I’ve heard the name of the company before, but I wasn’t that familiar with them.  Their site looks great, they’ve got good content in their blog for the niche they fill and they seem like nice people.  But what ultimately makes you add someone to your blogroll?  Quality contributions in comments around the blogosphere?  Good posts on their site?  Pretty mug shots on Twitter and LinkedIn?

Tough decision with cublogs.org

We have had 171 blogs setup on cublogs.org since we started it.  Of all of those blogs, only 7 have actually been setup by real people or credit unions.  The rest have all been spam and it is becoming a slight daily annoyance.  The basic idea behind cublogs.org is to remove the perceived technology barriers of blogging and enable credit unions to use a great blogging tool free of charge.  However, it seems that more spammers are using the tool than CU’s right now. 

So here is what I’m thinking:

  1. Leave cublogs.org up as it is, with no changes, and just deal with the spam.
  2. Kill WordPress Mu, the engine behind cublogs.org that lets people start their own blog on fly.  Instead, offer WordPress expertise, blog hosting, and general help, for free of course through the domain.
  3. Kill the whole site and not renew cublogs.org.
  4. Morph cublogs.org into some type of community listing of all credit union related blogs.  Open Source CU has the best blogroll, but why not use the domain as a massive community generated list?  I’m not sure the best way to do that, but that’s why it is just an idea.

What are everyone else’s thoughts?

What a way to start a blog

The nemesis of most travelers, the TSA, started a blog called the Evolution of Security.  One of the most hated governmental agencies, opened lines of communication with the millions of voices that travel each year.  If your credit union is afraid to start a blog because there is a potential for bad feedback, just look at their first post.  They’ve got 389 comments!  I could only hope for that great a response for any blog that a credit union, or bank, starts!  The TSA’s attitude about all of the feedback, which contains many bad experiences, has been great.  To quote their most recent post, "Thanks again for the great range of insightful, sad, humorous, outrageous comments. Keep them coming and we’ll do our best to try to keep up."

 

BoingBoing

Cnet

Your members have blogs too

Apparently Queensland Teachers’ CU in Australia recently re-designed their home page.  Some of those changes included a welcome page, or splash page.  Hopefully QTCU is paying attention to the blogosphere and is aware that one of their members is voicing their concern.  I’d love to see QTCU comment on the author’s site about their new home page, but that could be wishfully thinking.  As I’m sure William can attest to, sometimes getting involved in the debate online can be risky.  Just a great reminder, members carry on conversations about CU all of the place.  Make sure you are paying attention!

Free Blogs for the CU Industry!

Yup you read the title right.  Free blogs.  But wait, you can get free blogs just about anywhere you say.  While that it true, I’ve grown slightly tired of seeing credit unions attempting to get into blogging using free tools like Blogger or wordpress.com.  While both provide some basic functionality, neither are flexible enough to make great looking or feature-rich blogs.

I have setup cublogs.org to address just this issue.  Powered by WordPressMu, the multiple blog engine that wordpress.com is based on, anyone can sign-up instantly for a personal blog or a credit union blog.  One of the major differences between cublogs.org and wordpress.com is the ability to use plugins and have complete control of theme files of your site.  And obviously, there isn’t any software or servers for you to manage!

If you are a teller or the VP of Marketing and have been wanting to setup a blog about your CU, the CU industry, or just a personal  blog, stop by and set on up.  Play around it with it for a while and see if you like it!

I’m always looking for feedback, so comment on an article or drop me a line on the Contact page.  And if you are one of the 3000 or so CU’s without a homepage, drop me a line.  I would love the opportunity to help out any CU setup a free website!

CU Homepage on WordPress!

Just stumbled onto Mutual Savings CU’s website and it is done with WordPress.  And, I don’t know if sadly is the right word here, but it looks a lot better than many CU sites I’ve seen!  Very easy to navigate and very clean!  It is a great example of how WordPress doesn’t just have to be a blogging engine, but works great as a CMS as well.