The purpose of a USNH blog is to provide regular updates in the form of short articles about topics of interest to your specific community.
Purpose and audience
Blogs generate a lot of buzz because they can be powerful tools to connect with and grow an online audience. However, like any form of social media communication, they quickly fall flat when not maintained and regularly updated. For this reason, we suggest carefully considering your resources and creating an editorial calendar before requesting a blog for any USNH site.
Blog software
USNH Software Development is responsible for the maintenance and operation of blogs on USNH websites. The software application supporting blogs is Drupal.
Request a blog
USNH colleges, departments, organizations, and entities with Drupal USNH websites may set up and run blogs on those sites. Only those designated as having the communications/ marketing responsibility for the entity may request a blog for themselves or for someone in their entity. Request a Drupal blog from Software Development. Individuals can set up blogs for themselves through USNH domains. Individual blogs are not governed by this standard.
Blog guidelines
- Post unique content specific to your community. News of more general interest should be posted through your institution's publishing platform. Occasional short posts can link to publishing platform stories, but in general posts should be unique to this blog and not duplicates of content posted elsewhere.
- Post at least once a week. Set up a content calendar to plan out blog posts in advance and invite others to help write them.
- Never comment on anything related to legal matters or pending litigation.
- Any advertising, promotion, or endorsement of third-party products or services is not permitted.
- Review copyright rules for images and videos you post. If an image or video you take will be used for promotional purposes (anything other than a news story), you may need to obtain a photo release
- Always obtain consent from parents before posting photographs of children.
- Notify other communicators about posts of joint interest.
Support
For questions regarding blogs, please contact Software Development.
Training
Anyone working on a Drupal or USNH domains blog is welcome to attend the open walk-in training and help sessions that Software Development offers. For a schedule of the training sessions and walk-in times, see the Teaching & Learning Technologies training calendar.
Responsibility for content
USNH blogs are maintained by members of the university community acting as official representatives of the University System of New Hampshire. Blog editors are responsible for content. In addition, editors should review links in past posts at least twice a year to ensure that all links are still active and available. Finally, editors are responsible for complying with all relevant laws and USNH policies.
Violations
Although ET&S does not monitor or regularly review website or blog content, it reserves the right to remove at any time any content that it considers to violate this standard or any other USNH policies. If inappropriate or inaccurate content is discovered, USNH Software Development will contact the site owner to discuss the issue. If the blog or content owner cannot be contacted or is no longer at USNH, that content will be administered by Software Development and can be removed if deemed inaccurate or inappropriate. When content is obviously unacceptable, ET&S will immediately remove the content prior to contacting the site owner. Unacceptable entries also may cause site access to be suspended.
Reports regarding inappropriate content may be sent to Software Development.
