How to plan news articles for your Scout website

If you’re starting your website from scratch, it can often be difficult to think of content that’s engaging and easy to create. Populating your news, events and gallery pages are great to start with.

Your latest news area doesn’t have to just contain traditional updates about things your Scouts have been up to recently. You can use this space for many other things such as a leader/member blog, tips or advice articles, activity ideas and instructions.

Here’s a further insight on how you can plan your news articles for your Scout website.

Create an Adult Volunteers column

Your Leaders and Adult Volunteers are bound to be involved with building and/or maintaining your website. Take advantage of them getting used to WordPress and ask them to type out their thoughts.

Traditionally, Leaders in the past may have sent out an update letter every so often, or even a whole newsletter! Make your updates more frequent and insightful by getting your Adult Volunteers to create a column or diary.

Your team could take it in turns to write about something different, or you can make it a regular thing. Parents love to know what’s going on in the Scouting world but often might not have time to stay and chat when dropping off or picking up their youngsters.

Organise a members’ writing rota

Get your Scouts involved with writing some updates about your Group. This could also include blogging about being a Scout, a camp diary or roundup, or a badge work log. This is a great way to get them involved with knowing what it takes to maintain your website.

It can also be really useful for prospective members and parents to find out what your youngsters take part in on a weekly basis.

Advertise upcoming events or important information

If there’s a particular event coming up that you’d like to shout about and notify your parents about, why not write a news post about it?

If it’s an important event or a particular piece of information your parents need to know about, having it as your featured news post isn’t likely to get missed!

You can also link to the event within your news article, which is especially helpful if it’s bookable. You can then follow up with an article about the event once it has taken place!

How do you use your news area to it’s full advantage? Let us know over on our Facebook or Twitter!

Find out more about Scout Group websites here