Tip of the Week: Create a bulletin template

Did you know templates can streamline your bulletin creation?

Your club bulletin is an excellent tool for engagement with both your own membership and the world at large. A well-written and regularly scheduled bulletin becomes something your subscribers look forward to receiving. Yet, the work of constructing a new bulletin every few weeks can be daunting, especially for your volunteer editors and contributors. To help streamline this process and ensure your bulletin has a standardized look and feel, considering creating a permanent bulletin template to use and re-use as needed.

Simply create your template as you would an ordinary bulletin, and give it a clear name such as "Bulletin Template". Next, uncheck the box labelled "Visible on Website". Click on the "Next" button to navigate to the bulletin designer page.

Once on the designer page, place the widgets you would want displayed on the bulletin (i.e: Stories, Events, Custom Content Widgets). Note, as a reminder, dynamic widgets such as Birthdays and Anniversaries, Events will always display data whereas the stories widget will remain empty until stories are selected to display. Do not select any stories as this is just a template we're setting for future use.

The final step is to simply save the template. Now when it comes time to create your next bulletin, simply click on the "Copy" link next to the template. This will duplicate the template and you will then be prompted to rename this duplicate edition to the name of your bulletin. Once renamed, navigate to the bulletin designer and simply begin editing the content in the widgets that need updating. To add stories to the empty story widget (if it is part of your template) hover over the stories widget and add them from the library.

This is a great alternative for clubs that don't necessarily want to start creating each new edition from scratch but also don't want to copy archived copies of the bulletin, where they then need to deselect items that you don't want appearing.

Have your own helpful tips on creating bulletins? Comment below and let us know! For additional assistance with the bulletin module, visit our knowledgebase.

Tip of the Week!

Every single day, almost 700 million people worldwide actively check their Facebook news feed. The social media site has become one of the fastest ways to spread news and information. This viral spread of ideas is a by-product of the way Facebook works. Readers are more likely to trust content posted by a friend, and more likely to both read it and share it on again. We trust our friends to have vetted the story, to ensure it’s interesting and relevant. This essential trust is the foundation of Facebook’s success.

At ClubRunner, we have introduced tools to help you harness the power of social media. And now, we’ve made it easier for your club to capitalize on Facebook’s uniquely viral ability to spread news. While you could always use the social media bar in your stories to share your club news, these links are now embedded with Facebook tags.

These tags automatically generate a thumbnail image, title and story brief by taking that information right from your story, making your Facebook links all the more compelling. By making your stories more shareable, ClubRunner helps raise awareness of your club events and drive traffic to your site!

Tips for the Week!

Did you know that you can set a cap on the number of stories you want to display on your website?

We've now introduced a new feature to the home page stories widget, where you will now see a field called "Items to Display". This option allows you to set a customizable cap on the number of stories to display on the homepage. The default has been set to 25 but you can always edit this by going to the properties screen. Great for automatically keeping the website clean and stories visible!

Did you know that you can now extract member privacy options within your member data report?

We've added a new field available when downloading your managing your membership list data. When downloading member data, you have the option to include member privacy options. These will be displayed in separate columns in the resulting Excel file download.

Did you know that we've upgraded our security settings to the highest requirements?

We're proud to announce that we have updated all of our SSL certificates to comply with SHA-2's highest security requirements. Google recommends SHA-2 standards as the benchmark for web security and this improvement means your data enjoys a high degree of protection.