« Back To BSA Innovation Engine

cjohnston

cjohnston
Member since : Oct-21-2008 (Verified)
2 Ideas, 11 Comments, 7 Votes

User Activity Stream

Ideas Posted

36
After a Camporee this weekend we're trying to ride the wave of enthusiasm. I asked my youth staffers to take pictures and post them on their facebook pages. The more we take pictures of cool events and get them out there the more Scouting will get positive publicity. We need to be aware of all of our multimedia options and encourage our volunteers and Scouts to use them. Even if we select the top pictures and e-mail them out to Scoutmasters to send to the youth everyone wants to show off their weekend.

Does anyone have a Facebook group for their district? How about your camp staff or alumni? A facebook group allows youth to put up pictures from the event in a space that can be highly monitored. Scouts need to feel confident about showing off activities to their friends.
Moderator Comments
2/18/09
From: Michael Ramsey, Director of Brand Management

Check out the Scouting Community. It’s a new, growing platform just for members 13 years of age and up, volunteers and professionals. Use it to set up communities by council, district, unit…it’s a very nice tool. You can access it through your MyScouting account. See scouting.org for more information.

There are many Scouting communities in Facebook and other social networks. The National Council now has a Facebook page to reach more people with positive messages about Scouting. It can also help us redirect members, alumni and those interested in Scouting back to our Web sites.

Many social networking sites have age restrictions that prevent youth under a certain age to participate. As with all media, we urge parents, volunteers and youth not to post any personal information on these sites.
I've noticed that our lingo can be confusing for new parents. If your membership chair is a diehard Scouter he may rattle off Woodbadge, BSBLT, CSBLT, BALOO, NJLT and a host of others. We need to make it a part of our culture to not use our acronyms with newer volunteers. For instance, FOS should be Friends of Scouting. We are scaring away potential volunteers who would rather ease into the waters. Roundtable could be called Continuing Training instead of conjuring ideas of Sir Arthur and his knights.

We are steeped in tradition but is this adherence to earlier catch phrases preventing us from moving forward?

Moderator Comments
12/10/08
From: Stephen Medlicott, Marketing Group Director

Good thoughts here. We are continuing to evaluate how we position the BSA, especially among key audiences such as new Scouts and parents and volunteer leaders. We will share this information with our communications team/copyeditors.
Total Rows   421
Displaying 1 to 25
12345678910….1617Next »

Comments Posted

cjohnston 1 year ago
PCowan,

You are living in 1993. Kids go to these sites. Having a Facebook Council Page does not take the place of active recruitment. According to your line of logic "We need to maximize what does work and not waste our time on arenas that take us away from delivering the program to our kids." We shouldn't have Council Webpages either.

I am not suggesting we don't do Boy Talks, that's our bread and butter. We need to advertise in every market available. By the way, you're really doing a boy talk right now?
cjohnston 1 year ago
I'm a Man Scout.
cjohnston 1 year ago
I agree. The uniform shirts don't fit well. It's not just people who are "larger" my shirt comes out all the time.
cjohnston 1 year ago
We're talking about texting youth. At a corporate campus or at a college you're dealing with those over the age of 18. I just think we may be violating some of our own by-laws by texting youth. I agree that texting is a method of quick delivery but I think we need to remember that we are Unit Serving Executives. Additionally not everyone texts and receive fees whenever they receive a text. I would not want to be the Scout Executive who has parents asking to pay their text bill.
cjohnston 1 year ago
Great idea! We're planning on doing service for 100 miles of trails.
cjohnston 1 year ago
ROFL!
cjohnston 1 year ago
Better education may be the key but at the same time I will say point blank people look at our acronyms and funny names and think we're crazy. Why should it take years to figure out Scouting when I can go Coach at the Y and be handed a clipboard and figure it out in a night?
cjohnston 1 year ago
Can the moderator give a little help here? This should go into the document library thread.
cjohnston 1 year ago
Let's deal with your argument one premise at a time. #1. Each council has it's own phone plan and you need to talk to your SE about giving you unlimited texting. #2. How would you feel if you found out your child was texting with a 45 year old Scouting professional or volunteer? You bring up another good point "We should be communicating with our constitutents on their medium, not ours." I agree with this argument however I feel that my constituents are my volunteers. My volunteers in turn work directly with youth. It's a slippery slope argument.

gmurrell, you're making an assumption. That we will be able to e-mail youth. The second part is that e-mail and texting are the same.
cjohnston 1 year ago
I disagree, we should not be texting youth it adds too much of a liability. I primarily text with all my friends. My volunteers also know to text me for a quicker response.
cjohnston 1 year ago
I agree with this. There should be some sort of document library that allows us to do a quick search for templates. Wouldn't be that hard to create and would allow any branding being done to quickly disseminate into local councils.