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Blogs.IFAS is a strategic communications digital space that serves as a platform for UF/IFAS Extension, Teaching, and Research employees to directly post content to share with their clients and stakeholders. If you have not taken a tour of Blogs.IFAS we encourage you to do so. We currently have more than 700 bloggers feeding content regularly into more than 100 blogs! Below you will find some helpful links:
Announcing the call for submissions for the 2022 Blogs.IFAS Blogger Awards!
UF/IFAS Communications is grateful to all those using Blogs.IFAS for outreach & education to help improve the lives of Floridians & beyond. We’d like to show our appreciation by recognizing the effort & dedication of outstanding bloggers.
Follow this link to the submissions form: https://forms.office.com/r/RBy0fjgYWY
Please provide your submission by Friday July 15, 2022.
Thank you for your participation! View previous winners from the 2021 UF/IFAS Blogger Awards.
The Communicator Awards 2022 awards the Blogs.IFAS Website Redesign!
IFAS Web Services is thrilled to announce the launch of Blogs.IFAS 2.0. We’ve updated the look and feel and added features that will allow greater interaction to encourage readers to browse and read more of the amazing blog content you all have created!
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Blogs.IFAS 2.0 Features & Functionality Training: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/3c6449e563164305acacba922beb15f21d
This training includes:
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Many of the improvements for Blogs.IFAS 2.0 were “under the hood”, including coding the site in HTML5, improving accessibility, improving YouTube analytics tracking, and other performance enhancements. These improvements help ensure that users can find our blog, use our blog, and stay on our blog.
And many of the updates you can see achieve these same goals, as well! We have updated the look to be sleek and modern to ensure users know that this site has fresh content.
The navigation is re-designed to retain more users and encourage browsing.
The homepage includes more blog posts and a new section for Featured Blogger, to highlight our bloggers on a weekly basis and give readers a chance to see the people behind the posts.
On blog posts pages, readers now have the opportunity to interact in a new way…with our new “heart” button!
In addition, related posts will be displayed below blog posts to encourage readers to explore more Blogs.IFAS content.
On Author Bio Pages, bloggers now have the option to include a Subscribe button that is unique to their blog posts, allowing subscribers to get updates on their posts. Also, if the blogger has written or participated in any blog series, they are displayed on their Bio Page distinctly below their posts.
Authors will also now have the ability to be listed as co-authors on a single blog post.
Having an author profile can boost your readership and let readers know a little about you. Here are our recommendations for a great author profile, including how to format your email to avoid spam.
If you have a blog series, it will display below your blog posts. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu for more information on developing a unique blog series tag and displaying your blog series on your Author Bio Page.
You can edit your profile by clicking on your username in the upper-right corner when you are logged in to WordPress. Biographical Info is your profile and your Avatar is your profile image.
Three simple steps!
Read more about Getting Started on BlogsIFAS.
Featured images on blog posts must be either 1650x470 pixels or 1338x357 pixels. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu if you encounter any issue uploading your featured image.
A variety of photo editing tools can be used to crop your photos to the required size. For many of these tools, our team has developed video tutorials to help guide you through the process:
Photo Release Form
The tags you assign to your blog post will help search engines to better understand what your post is about.
For a list of commonly used tags and their importance, check out the UF/IFAS Blog Tag Lexicon.
The categories you assign to your blog post determine where your post is organized:
Writing a blog series is a great way to break up content into easy-to-digest posts and get readers excited about upcoming content. Here are the ways to identify a post as part of a series.
Follow this guide to Create a Blog Series and Add to Your Author Profile.
A post that is part of a blog series will have one or all of the following:
*A series is required to have a unique tag to identify the series. Ensure your tag is unique enough to only capture your blog series. Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu for guidance on developing your series' tag.
Reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu to ensure our series appear on your Author Bio Page!
Yes! The Delay Publish option can be a great way to manage when your posts are published. You may want to use this option when you have several posts ready at once, but you don’t want to publish them at the same time. It is a best practice to publish only one post in a day: this will allow your content to be displayed in multiple email digest alerts, giving readers additional opportunities to find your posts. You may want to delay publishing for another reason. Follow these steps to Delay Publishing a Blog Post
The webteam already has analytics running on your blog so if you would like access to them please use the following steps. Both Google Analytics and Google Data Studio can be used to provide analytics for blogs.
Access Google Analytics
Notes
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is an alternative tool for accessing Google Analytics. This tool is currently available for County agents, but if you are interested in accessing your data through this view, reach out to webteam@ifas.ufl.edu.
Access Google Data Studio
Notes
Some users receive an error when trying to access their Google Data Studio Report. If this happens, try logging out of Google or access the report from a different browser.
Resources
Adding Video Content to Your Blog
The best way to include a video in your blog post is to first upload it to YouTube (if your unit does not already have a YouTube account you can create one for free), then you can easily embed the video within your blog. This has the added bonus of YouTube captioning your video for you, providing ADA compliance and allowing users to turn on captions when needed.
Viewing Video Play Events in Google Analytics
You can access statistics for video play events on videos you have embedded on your blog posts. Follow directions here for How to View Video Play Events for Blog-Embedded Videos.
Recording & Editing Videos for a Blog
You may want to edit out the first few seconds of your video--perhaps you were getting your camera set up or you were giving attendees extra time to arrive for a live stream. Check out the following video tutorials for great ways to trim out unnecessary video content and help keep viewers engaged!
Recording & Posting an iPhone Video:
Recording & Posting a Zoom Meeting:
UF/IFAS YouTube Channels
Visit the UF/IFAS YouTube Channels for videos you can include in your blog posts related to your content.
Follow these tips when writing your blogs to ensure that all users can read them:
Have you ever struggled to come up with topics for your blog posts? Try out these...
Top 5 Blog Brainstorming Questions!
For more tips on what to blog about and which blog formats perform better than others, check out this blog post or this shareable one-pager on What to Blog About!
For more ideas for your blog, check out the Blog Events Calendar, also at the bottom of this page!
After you write a blog post, we encourage you to promote it on your social media accounts.
Tag the UF/IFAS social media accounts in your posts:
Also, here are some great hashtags to include in your posts!
For more hashtag recommendations, check out UF/IFAS Hashtag listing
To ensure your blog post appears in the En Español blog, tag your posts with "Espanol". Bloggers should include accent marks where possible on posts. To add special characters, follow the steps in the screenshot below when editing your posts.
Tag: Espanol
All Florida 4-H agents should include these categories and tags on their content to maximize post visibility:
To ensure your blog post appears in the Florida Master Naturalist blog, tag your post with the tag "Florida Master Naturalist Program" and/or "FMNP".
Tag: Florida Master Naturalist Program, FMNP
To ensure your blog post appears in the Master Gardener blog, all Master Gardeners should tag their posts with the tag "Master Gardener Volunteer". For bloggers with non-ufl.edu email addresses, the Master Gardener Coordinator will post their blogs on their behalf. New Master Gardener Coordinators can submit a Web Services Request to set up this access.
Tag: Master Gardener Volunteer
All Florida Sea Grant agents should include these categories and tags on their content to maximize post visibility:
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Copyright law protects the owner of creative materials from unauthorized use of his or her work. U.S. copyright laws protect literary works, musical or sound recordings, and pictorial or graphical designs. Prior to using any creative works that do not belong to the University of Florida, please make sure you have the proper license and/or permission from the owner of those works.
