General Website & Social Networking Presence

Alright as the title describes, I'd like to discuss the pros and cons of our presence on the internet as well issues which pertain to our strategies. I'll start off with some of the cons I've found while browsing the internet, some may seem a bit ridiculous but they still stand to make a point.

Website
The website has came a long way in the last few years; the goals which have been placed by Scouts Canada are being met. This is fantastic but if we look at the speed of which technology is moving, we are behind. Some of the issues seen when looking around the website include:

• Search box is broken - It loads an iframe into itself. (Appendix w1)
• Scouts Canada Registration box (front page) should load in the normal website... don't go opening new ugly windows. (Appendix w2)
• More content regarding programs (What about Medical Venturers or Rovers? Are there any Youth Forums, Round Tables?) (Appendix w3)

Social Networking

• The Facebook group is a 'group' not a page, if they are going to call it a page... make it a 'page'. (Appendix sn1)
• Found on the Facebook group, "... You must be at least 13 years of age to participate." - You have to be 13 to sign up for Facebook, why are we repeating this... its not changing anything? Not needed, put useful content there to replace it. (Appendix sn2
• One (1) Twitter account named 'Scouts Canada' not two (2) or three (3) (Appendix sn3)
• "... for those 13 and older, please" - Honestly? You believe that people are going to listen to this? Just remove it and use the bio for what it's made for. (Appendix sn4)
• The website design is amazing... where did the talent go when they did the Twitter page(s)? (Appendix sn5)
• Why not create a special marketing campaign developed around Facebook [pages] while advertising on Facebook? (Appendix sn6)

Appendix
w1: http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/
w2: http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/, http://geo.scouts.ca/grouplocator/findGroup.cgi
w3: http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/AboutUs/Youthp ... fault.aspx
sn1: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70367180847
sn2: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70367180847, http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
sn3: http://twitter.com/scoutscanada, http://twitter.com/Scoutcanada
sn4: http://twitter.com/Scoutcanada
sn5: http://twitter.com/scoutscanada, http://twitter.com/Scoutcanada
sn6: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/

Thanks Brandon for bringing this up, and providing references.

• In regards to the two different Twitter accounts, one (scoutcanada) is the official. The other (scoutscanada) is a Rover (a friend of mine) who grabbed it in order to protect it. Guess who has more followers?
  
  He picked it up early on so that it would be secured from non-Scouting sources sniping it. He's actually baffled that Scouts Canada hasn't approached him to ask him if he could transfer control. And knowing him, that was the point of his actions.
  
  Sigh.
  
• The age issue disclaimer is crap. Why don't they just paste the entirety of the B.P.&P. there, and be done with it. Because that's what it would be.
  Coming from a world where you are use to setting the rules and trying to break into a world that doesn't have rules, something will break.
  
  By putting down limitations on what can be done, you turn people away. Even if those limitations wouldn't have affected their actions.
  
• A quick nitpick I have of the front page:
  For the group locator, you punch in your postal code, and then look for the submit button. It happens to be over on the left, not to the right or directly below.
  Yes you can just hit enter, but it's still a usability issue. The submit button is camouflaged in with similar looking buttons, and is titled Find, not a self-explanatory title.
  
• Regarding Programs, I see this as needing more of a grass roots push. I'm sure National would be happy to include relevant, professionally written grade material if they were sent it. If more councils sent them a list of whats going on, they would include it.

Nick
18th Seymour Rovers
PCC Rovers

Excellent points gentlemen

On the age thing, it seems to have two conflicting results. Those who are younger than 13 will check the box and post to "break the rules" while those older will think "I don't want to be treated like a little kid" and generally refrain from getting involved.

The three different twitter accounts, it's a bit interesting, if you have a new theme, I think it would be quite easy to make the change.

Regarding Programs, perhaps we need a scout wiki or a generally fairly loosely policed / managed repository for posting program ideas etc (Scoutpedia perhaps.) We have many professional writers among Scouters who I am sure would be willing to contribute material if asked.

Scouters looking to post or exchange ideas already have access to a wiki under development - http://scouter.wikidot.com/ to which I would encourage Scouters to contribute, as well as SC's Program Builder Online - http://pbo.scouts.ca/pol/home.do.

Thank you very much.

Your point made regarding the age notice is quite reasonable and thankfully supports my statement very well, thank you.

Regarding your point on wiki's...

Regarding Programs, perhaps we need a scout wiki or a generally fairly loosely policed / managed repository for posting program ideas etc (Scoutpedia perhaps.) We have many professional writers among Scouters who I am sure would be willing to contribute material if asked.

A Scout wiki is included in the Scouting Now action plan, I'm not sure though it has been attended to. But as Scouter Ken noted, there are privately ran wiki's out there which offer a great deal of content or very little.

By way of clarification on the 13-or-over age limit thing, Facebook pages aren't obliged to talk about it so Brandon is right about it being an unnecessary use of space on the Scouts Canada page. However, facebook.com or any other site hosted in the US that collects information has to ask for parental consent due to a piece of legislation called COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act). Seeing just how freely youth are to give away their privacy I think we can all see just how effective that legislation is.

/Karl

There are many good scouting resources on the Internet, and new ones are always welcome. The errors and questionable design of the new SC site (the lack of drop down menus on the home page makes navigating the complex site more difficult) is a problem, but I think a more important concern is the lack of an Internet strategy, which seems to be a rather simplistic "Build it and they will come."

In the past year with about 20,000 adult scouters, SC's TalkScouts, Twitter, and Linked-in accounts all have less than 300 members or followers, while Facebook has just over 2,000. And I suspect that there is a lot of crossover membership. I think that's pretty disappointing.

The issue, which I don't believe SC understands, is that it is not enough to be there in name. One has to be involved by releasing information through these sites and, hopefully, responding to comments. And SC does neither here or elsewhere, though on occasion, Susan Mackie does post on Facebook.

And it's not as if SC doesn't have information to post. Every month for years SC has prepared a news bulletin for staff and councils, and for a year now, has posted the bulletin on its site -- http://www.scouts.ca/dnn/info/Home/Apri ... fault.aspx -- (not that anyone would know it from just surfing the site). Some of this info is already posted on the mainsite, but virtually none is posted on TalkScouts, Twitter, Linked-in or Facebook.

Why not? Especially as little of this information will make it into Scouting Life which is published only every two months.

Maybe this underlines another problem SC has been criticized for in the past -- being uncommunicative and unresponsive to ordinary Scouters.

Just my thoughts.

I agree with you Scouter Ken on the issues which Scout's Canada is currently facing regarding their online presence.

I believe that if the following objects were met; the power of our members and the Internet would be unleashed.

• JUST DO IT - everything is said to take time but time is an unreasonable excuse in todays world. Things need to get done now, not tomorrow, or the day after. As the action plan states, "The future is right here. Right now."
• Consolidation of Social Networking Accounts - all information on these pages should be kept the same and updated weekly regarding the latest information available.
• Online Ambassador - The responsibilities placed on two individuals to interact with visitors and users of both the general website and social networking websites. to clarify, they would not be on a live chat, but introducing and responding to questions and visitor feedback. (Appendix 1)
• Resource People Database - This is a fantastic idea that has been included in the Action Plan but needs to be taken one step further and included as part of the website. Not another side website which users continuously need to recreate an account on.

I'd also like to 'run over' a few of the different points made in the Scouting Now Action Plan
http://www.scouts.ca/scoutingnow/docs/T ... 202009.pdf

• Council Level Camp Website - Another idea which has been included in the Action Plan but how far has it gone, why are they waiting over a year? (Appendix 2)
• Website Navigation Reorientation - I used some big words! But I have to agree with Ken, we need to re-organize the website so that it becomes MUCH easier to use.
• Redesign Website - They said they did this; we can all see the colours have changed. But to be honest, they failed to solve any actual issues. A task force needs to be created to analyze the current website and work with a team of developers to totally redo the websites coding to work in on 90% of browsers and be mindful of the future.
• Micro Websites / Applications for Phones - The idea itself is fantastic but to keep it not only up to date and reasonably cost conscious is almost impossible. A solution to this may be to team up with the BSA or another Scouting Movement to co-develop the software in the eye of saving money as well in making it then easy to update without a programmer on hand.
• "Intranet's" or Portal's are listed a few times in the Action Plan in different forms, the question is... why do we need five different portals? Can we not consolidate into one which allows for the access of each applications tools and information without five different login pages and accounts?
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization:google find, google keep!) - this is one of the most important parts to a website apart from the GUI (General User Interface:layout), but our website does not include any amount of it if at all.

Appendix
1: I believe this position was mentioned at some point but it's long past any word of.
2: What do you know? I'm actually working on one for the Tri-shores Council!

And I thought I was the only one who thought the only change on scouts.ca was the colour and the speed (its slower now with flash and fancy menus). The content and menu structure is identical.

I agree that the web presence is too disjointed with overlapping content. We have scouts.ca, scoutfocus.ca, scoutingnow.ca (that one is a real disaster; all flash and no content), talkscouts.ca, then we have can.scout-guide and at least three mailing lists (scoutscan-l, scoutscan-issues, scouteh), to say nothing of the facebook group, etc. None of the forums have a critical mass of participation. Compare that to the UK with uk.rec.scouting and www.escouts.org.uk/forum/; they have tons of traffic, though the newsgroup has been slowing down in preference to the web forum.


Allan.
http://www.1stmerrickville.ca

The update was just slightly more than colour. How it is laid out is much cleaner, and easier to use. Aesthetics and usability make the difference. The same data/content comes to life with proper design.

Are you really complaining that we have different sites for different topics, that all link to each other? One is the Main site, another on Social Media, the third on the vision and plan for the future. Those second and third topics were given their own sites to highlight just how important they are. Nothing crazy about that. If they were in the main site, they would be lost.

This forum is less than a year old, and is slowly building volume. You are correct that it doesn't have critical mass. It can go more than a month between posts here some times. That's not even zombie level of alive. Scouts Canada can help this as Ken suggested by bringing more to the table, and allowing for discussion. Knowing that someone out there is listening might be enough to encourage people to post more.

Nick
18th Seymour Rovers
PCC Rovers

Allan's point is similar to what I had in mind, with SC's main site(includes MMS, Program Builder, & E-Learning - all of which require separate user names and passwords), ScoutFocus, Facebook, TalkScouts, Twitter, Linked-in, Wiggio, Good Deed, YouTube and Scouting Now, SC is everywhere (10 sites, not counting the three deadend blogs) and doing a good job nowhere, and it lacks a plan as to how all these sites will work together to support each other and Scouting. And contrary to the suggestion that they all link to each other, they do not. Where are the links on TalkScouts to any of the other sites?

I should point out however, Allan, that Can Scout-Guide, scoutscan-l, scoutscan-issues, and scouteh, are all private and not initiated or supported by SC (not that SC supports its own sites).

While I'll leave the general aesthetics of the new main site to the beholder, other than to say I do not find it appealing, I will point out again that without drop down menus on the home page navigation is challenging. Needed information is nested down multiple clicks, rather than one click away.

With the mention of the Action Plan, I checked the update to find that web development is marked with a "P" which denotes "project planning not completed or required", with a "TBD" under the"Due Date".

So I'm not sure where this leaves SC, other than not going anywhere fast.

Hi everyone. First let me say how excited I am to read so many intriguing comments on Scouts Canada's internet presence. This is a very encouraging and stimulating debate.
I was kind of glad to read my name mentioned - I should let you know that I am the staff person who is perhaps the most involved with our social media strategy, so you can feel quite free to email me any time with your suggestions at smackie@scouts.ca.

I have to agree that we have just scratched the surface at this point. We have only begun to harness the power of social media, and the amazing opportunities it presents. Although many of you are obviously very technically-adept and savvy when it comes to this venue of communications, keep in mind that many other organizations are not. Seriously, over the past two years I have attended three major social media conferences led and attended by industry professionals, and I can tell you first hand that overall, we are not lagging behind. It took a great deal of time to formulate our social media strategy, which began with just the basics - Twitter and Facebook pages and a YouTube account, and present that to the organization as a viable means of connecting with our stakeholders (youth, parents, media, and volunteers). The legalities and possible ramifications of what it would mean for us to engage in social media were thoroughly debated - and for good reason - to state the obvious, we're a youth organization and must be extremely careful when developing any sort of online presence. This is why we included the reminder that users should be 13 years of age or older - although it may very well seem redundant, not everyone is versed in the policies of Facebook and the like; we thought it would be helpful for parents to have this information upfront.

One day when I was researching various websites to see what other organizations were doing with their social media, I came across "Citizen Voices" which is a social media microsite created by the Governor General's office. If you get a chance, go take a look - it's a complete departure from the look and feel of her more traditional site. It's funky and edgy and designed to encourage public feedback. That's where the idea came from for "ScoutFocus" - sort of a one stop shop to house all our platforms. Let me know what you think about it.

Now we enter the second phase of our social media strategy, which I know will include many of the suggestions I've seen here, including search engine optimization. Like I said, we're only at the beginning and most social media sites and forums take time to grow. I'm sure you're all doing this already - but do share this forum and others with as many people as possible.
An important thing I've gleaned while reading this debate seems to be that we need to make our stakeholders more aware of what we're doing with our strategies (and not only social media). We do indeed produce a monthly bulletin for councils - perhaps we should look into making this more prominent and public - what are your thoughts?
The Chief Commissioner has also promised to support volunteers by sending a monthly bulletin to all registered volunteers - youth and adult. So far he has sent two bulletins, which look like they are being well received so far. If there are any topics you would like to see covered, by all means post your ideas here.

As for the new website design - this is a work in progress and will undergo many changes over time. It came about as a direct result of comments and feedback from volunteers, sent to this office via the HelpCentre, and to my colleagues here at National. We can't ever forget that we are here for our volunteers and for our youth - our goal should be to facilitate your dialogues and ideas. It's not enough to "push out" our messages and hope someone will pick up on them. We have to listen - it's the only way for us to understand where you're coming from, and do what we need to do together to grow this movement.

It's frustrating, I know, when things don't seem to be moving fast enough. But I know we're all committed to improve, as our online presence is absolutely vital to our success - we can't afford to be left behind in the dust.
You remember that movie "Jerry Maguire"? Help me help you. And you are helping a great deal just by participating in this forum.

Thank you Susie for joining in.

I think you started down the right path. Pushing out a message isn't enough. Listening isn't enough either. Conversing is the key.

See, just by having the fact that you went out, liked the style of Citizen Voices and incorporated what you learned from it into ScoutFocus, tells us a story. We now have a clearer picture of what is trying to be done and the thinking process behind decisions. We may disagree, love the move, think you just changed the colour, or whatever. But now we are being engaged.

You mention that you have been to three different social media conferences, which is good news, but that's New news to us. Why not tell us about this when you went to them? Showcase to your membership that National is actually committed to this strategy and doing something about it. All we see are the final products, if they make it that far. We don't see all the hard work that it took to get there. I'm sure if we knew more of what was happening day to day (ok not twitter addict levels, but once in a while) there would be more slack given. If I'm a boss and I send an employee out to work on a project, and I only get a short email every 6 months, I'm not going to think highly of them. They could be the hardest/smartest working employee in the industry, but they aren't doing a good job of showcasing it.

If you have debates, such as the Age clause, explain to us. A quick paragraph posted here would pay dividends done the line. My experience would be that if the topic ever came up again, the community would link to that paragraph for you. Silence is damning. The default is to assume you didn't think it out. If you give a reason, any reason, we are more likely to agree. Even as simple as "We recognize that everyone's input is valuable, but the internet is a dangerous place. Youth who haven't reached 13 years old yet should be with an adult at all times on the internet. We encourage our younger members to be involved, but with adult supervision." If that's your reasoning, then that's your reasoning.

So give us monthly updates/bulletins. Give us your success stories. Give us your failures. Give us your ideas and lessons. Give us your debates. Show us you are alive. Reach out to your members. With 100,000 members, there is bound to be someone who is qualified in what you are trying to work on. Ask for help or advice. We are all on the same side.

I am not sure I have much to add, Nick did a fantastic job of taking the words right out of my mouth. Thank you Nick!

Congratulations Susie on being the first SC staff/official from Ottawa to post on SC's board.

And thank you.

Especially with the open invite to email you with suggestions.

I, too, like the GG's Citizen's Voices (http://www.citizenvoices.gg.ca/en/), particularly the integration which Scout Focus doesn't have (yet?). Will that be part of the "second phase" of the social media strategy -- better co-ordination and focus between sites?

I think you're right about listening to volunteers and that SC seems to have been doing a better job in that regard in the past year or two, but I also think that on social media websites volunteers occasionally need to hear a "Hmmm", an "Ahhh" or even a "Nahh" from someone at SC. Otherwise these seem to be one-side conversations with volunteers talking to an SC brick wall of silence.

That may not be the case, but that's what it seems like. There have been discussions on leader education, marketing, popcorn and more, that could have (should have ) been at least acknowledged.

Anyways, here's hoping Baseline's brick walls of silence continue to tumble.