Northwest Navy News is Growing

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Since the launch of Northwest Navy News (http://www.northwestnavynews.com/) in March, the site has slowly gained a following. It averaged about 400 unique visitors and 1,200 page views in May. The number of visitors is growing at a rate of about 20 percent per month so far - slow but steady. Most of the visitors are coming from organic search results, thanks to search-optimization efforts. That’s great, but it also means that most people are finding the site accidentally, leaving lots of room for marketing outreach.

I’m doing what I can to get the word out to more people about the site. I recently appeared as the featured guest on an Internet radio show called Navy Homefront Talk (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nht). The show reaches thousands of Navy and other military spouses around the country, and I hope to see a bump in interest as they visit to check it out. Through Facebook and Twitter, I’m connecting with more and more military families, bloggers and service groups. A week-long Facebook advertising campaign last month added more than 70 fans for the Northwest Navy News Facebook page (http://facebook.northwestnavynews.com).

I’m also starting to get nibbles from local advertisers. I spoke to one who is connected with the military affairs committee for one of the chambers of commerce. Partnerships with the chambers could lead not only to more advertising but also to more listings for the military discounts section of the site.

After a visit to the 2009 MilBlog Conference in late April, I came up with a new idea for a network of military family blogs in the Puget Sound area. I’m developing a list of local bloggers and beginning a blogroll to appear on the sidebar of Northwest Navy News pages. Once I have a good list going, I plan to create a banner for the blog network and begin approaching bloggers to add it to their sites. I think this could raise visibility for the existing bloggers in this area and begin to form a community with Northwest Navy News at the hub. In the future, I could see hosting a regional conference for the group and others with similar interests.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all the work ahead, but I’m focused on taking one step at a time and building something truly valuable and sustainable.

Launching is Just the Beginning

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I’m a perfectionist. I could keep fussing over details forever. So the toughest part of launching Northwest Navy News so far was letting go of the little things and embracing the idea of the site as a process, not a finished product.

Other journalists turned entrepreneurs, like David Cohn of Spot.Us, advised me to get a site launched quickly with a basic set of features and let it evolve out in the open. I understand why. It’s just tough to resist the urge to perfect everything before sharing it with the world.

The trick is to remember that a Web site is not like a story on a printed page. It’s never finished. Ideas and execution still matter, but ongoing interaction online helps shape a site or an application into something more meaningful than it was in the beginning.

With that in mind, I flipped the switch this month on www.northwestnavynews.com. Please visit and then:

  * Create a profile to become part of the community and interact with other people.
  * Research bases and find out more about living in the Northwest.
  * Read the latest news about housing, deployments, benefits, childcare, military policy and other issues.
  * Find military discounts for businesses and services. If you have an account, you can also share your own favorite discounts by adding them to the list.

I’ll be developing other features as I go. I’m reaching out to the people who I’ve consulted with along the way to get their feedback. I’m also continuing the networking I began on Twitter and setting up a Facebook page to connect with even more people who might be interested in the site.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me in this project so far and celebrated my progress along the way. I’m excited to see how this adventure unfolds from here.

Getting ready to deploy

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Work began this week on building the first version of Northwest Navy News. Expect to see the site make its debut sometime in the next few weeks.

I’m working with Greg Bear and his team at Bear Ideas, a Web development firm in Seattle that specializes in the open-source content management system called Drupal. This platform allows for quick development because it already has so many features common to community sites and blogs.

For the first incarnation of Northwest Navy News, I’m focusing on pages with resources for families being stationed at each of the four Navy base locations in the Puget Sound area. The site also will have topic pages on family issues, education and housing, as well as blog-like news posts, forums and basic user profiles.

I’m setting the groundwork to compile a searchable database of businesses offering military discounts. Companies will be able to use a form to add their information. Down the road I expect to offer enhanced listings, with a coupon or detailed message, for a fee—the first idea for how the site might support itself.

While the Bear Ideas team does its work with the code, I’m looking for ways to develop more content and starting to get the word out about the project. I’m using Twitter to post links and information, as well as to connect with Navy and Coast Guard families.

The timing of all this feels fortuitous. In the last year, the military began embracing social media and networking like never before.

The Pentagon launched its own version of YouTube called TroopTube. The Navy surveyed 15,000 sailors on how they use technology, including social networking. And most, if not all, branches created official blogs and policies about social media.

Complex issues of control are still involved when you talk about the military and any form of media, but I’m hopeful that the environment is right for a site like Northwest Navy News.

And the winner is ...

Friday, October 17, 2008

After lots of agonizing, I finally picked a logo. I received lots of great submissions from designers at crowdSPRING, but in the end I went with the idea that really conveyed what my site is all about: Navy families. It’s friendly, welcoming and very Web 2.0.

I’ll be showing it off for the first time this weekend at the Kitsap Military Fall Festival. The event is organized by the Silverdale Chamber of Commerce and draws hundreds of military families, as well as local businesses and service groups. I look forward to talking to more people about my project and enlisting their help in refining and testing some of the site’s features when they’re ready.

Help choose a logo for Northwest Navy News

Thursday, October 02, 2008

I decided to try something a little different as I started to think about establishing a visual identity for my project. So I turned to crowdSPRING, an interactive marketplace for designers and buyers.

It works like this: A company or individual looking for a logo, Web site, stationary or other design concept submits the request, along with a price they’re willing to pay, a deadline and specifications about their needs. Designers—the site calls them creatives—submit their ideas. Then it gets interesting. Buyers and anyone else visiting the site can rate the entries. Buyers can also leave feedback and suggest changes. Creatives read and respond to the feedback, then update their designs. After the deadline passes, the buyer picks a winner and that winner gets paid.

I was intrigued by the idea of a social design process after a Twitter friend, marketing professional Kim Dushinski, posted a few tweets about her experience with crowdSPRING. You can see the logo she chose at MobileMarketingProfits.com and read her blog post about the experience.

With just a few days left before the self-imposed deadline on my logo project, I’d love to hear what you think about some of the entries. Go to my project page on crowdSPRING to rate the offerings or feel free to post your thoughts as comments here.

Soaking up ideas

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I recently spent a week in Washington, D.C., hanging out and learning from lots of smart journalists and Web geeks. I’m still trying to process everything I saw and heard, but here are some efforts that inspired me:

• Knight-Batten Award winners JDLand.com and Ushahidi.com each demonstrate in different ways how powerful community journalism can be and how technology can be harnessed to tell stories. JDLand.com is the effort of one woman, who has a separate full-time job, to chronicle the changes going on in one D.C. neighborhood. Ushahidi.com, on the other hand, provides the tools for people in the midst of a crisis to report what is going on around them.
   
• NowPublic.com takes stories reported by people around the world and gives them a place to grow, change and reach a wider audience. I’m fascinated by the idea that the original story, whether it’s a few paragraphs or a long-form narrative, is just the beginning. People who read it take time to add their own observations, links to traditional news coverage, photos, videos, ratings and comments to create something that becomes more meaningful over time.
   
• Similar to NowPublic.com and also recognized by the Knight-Batten Awards, CNN’s iReport allows people around the world to tell stories, using their own definitions of what makes news. It’s encouraging to see a mainstream media outlet taking these stories seriously and using them to inform their professional reporting.

Ideas and inspiration from Navy wives

Thursday, August 28, 2008

A group of women that meets at the sprawling Navy support complex in Marysville, Wash., once a month while their husbands are deployed prepare for when their ship returns. The group’s leaders invited me to join them last Friday evening to get ideas for my project. I talked with the women while they worked on their own project—a surprise for the day their husbands return.

“I didn’t even know where to start,“ one woman told me when I asked if she used any social networking sites to find support in the Puget Sound area. Another woman said she used Meetup.com to find activities and meet people, and several others said they connected with Navy wives on MySpace.

Several women said they used Web sites like GreatSchools.net, checked sex offender registries and called local police departments before they moved to the area to decide where they should live. Some relied on family or friends for advice. Others got suggestions from a Navy housing office and then did more research on their own.

One thing they mentioned that hadn’t occurred to me was that it would be helpful to list laws that vary from state to state, governing things like drivers licensing, car insurance, gun ownership and landlord-tenant responsibilities.

These women were inspiring and full of great ideas based on their experiences. I’m grateful they invited me to their gathering. I hope to meet with more groups like this and continue to learn from them as I move forward with my project.