Communications Team

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

Communication Channels

• Outpost Newletter: Our “official” newsletter published directly from Wordpress.

• Facebook: Only because everyone is there. Some people aren’t, so Facebook alone is not enough. We keep things on Facebook rather “unofficial”.

• Tribe(?): Dead

• Twitter: Automated posting of our blog entries.

• Google+: new, needs momentum

• Reddit: new, perhaps a mistake

• Yahoo Apogaea List: Original mailing list. Some community members prefer to get their news this way.

• Yahoo Colorado Burning Man List: Not an Apogaea specific channel. Reserved for important news, like the date tickets will go on sale.

Communication Preparation and Scheduling Best Practices

• Fact check every communication. Typically, copy the president, vice president, and relevant leads and liaisons.  When in doubt, copy all of mission control.

• Departments should provide notice of communications 2 weeks or more in advance of publication. This provides adequate time to schedule all steps of a standard publishing lifecycle.

• When possible, communication requests should include full copy and relevant media. Hopefully, communication requests will, at least, contain the key details.

The Standard Communication Life Cycle

1. Compose the post. Alternatively, if someone was kind enough to provide you with complete copy, be sure to thank them for it.

2. Fact check, grammar check, and double check your copy before posting. Twice.

3. Post the communication to the Apogaea Outpost news as a blog post or, if it is an event, as a calendar entry. If it is of relatively high importance, include the post in the front page “coin slider” (the image carousel) and make the post “sticky”.

4. Share url of blog post with everyone who helped fact and grammar check for final triple dog dare check.

5. Upon relatively adequate confidence, post link to blog post on social networks: Facebook, Google+, Twitter (automated). Post under the Flaming Art avatar.

6. Monthly (initially) to weekly (right before the event), compose an Outpost newsletter (using the newsletter tools in Wordpress) containing links to all new news posts and events. Any short important announcement should be included as well. Reference the format of previous newsletters, they are all archived. Newsletters should be done in the voice of Flaming Art.

7. Create a text version of the newsletter (no html formatting or images). Distribute this version to the Yahoo mailing lists (and any other relevant lists).

Departmental Liberties and Guidelines

Individual departments (DPW, Bamf, Rangers, ASS, etc.) are encouraged to manage their own communications as they see fit. The communications team is at their disposal. Ideally, departments will see value in working with the communications team for the most effective communications campaigns possible.

Departments are asked to help collaboration by:

• Informing the communications team of public communications being sent directly from their department w/out the help of the communications team. All they need do is cc telemetry@apogaea.com.

• Helping to ensure the website is accurate, comprehensive, and up to date.

• Referencing the website in your communications (with LINKS) whenever possible. If the information is not on the site, it should probably be added before a communication is sent.

You can help departments by:

• At board meetings, think about what communications might need to go out during the next month and make notes.

• When you are putting together a newsletter, contact people who might want to get information out.

• If you see a communication come out from another department, contact the person to see if they want it in the Newsletter.

• Email missioncontrol@apogaea.com and see if any board members want to add something to the newsletter.

Communication Style Guide

Coin slider images should be 540x346 pixels.

Regular Communications Schedule

Monthly:

• Public Board Meetings on Second Sundays: Post location, details, and agenda as a calendar entry.

• Newsletter

Yearly:

• [date] Ticket Art Contest

• Official Event Date Announcement

• Tickets On Sale

• Call For Art

• Call For Volunteers

• Appogaea Post-mortem