Guide for Organizations
From Newscloud
Whether your organization is small or large, NewsCloud can help you integrate breaking news and current events into your Web site and better engage your stakeholders.
There are five levels of NewsCloud integration to choose from. As resources allow, NewsCloud will offer assistance to groups wanting more guidance for a small fee.
Level One: Add NewsCloud headlines to your Web site or blog
NewsCloud offers a number of standard headline feeds for top stories, incoming stories, sections such as World, U.S. or Environment, and individual topics such as global warming, apple products or the 2008 elections.
Depending on how you host your organization Web site, there are various ways to integrate our feeds into your site. Most of these take only a few minutes to complete.
TypePad blogs can add headlines to their site using our TypePad Widget. Drupal sites or WordPress blogs can add headlines based on their RSS feeds. For other sites, you can often just paste the Javascript code provided at the bottom of many of our pages into your Web site.
Example of a NewsCloud page with Javascript
Examples of NewsCloud headlines on a blog
If you would like guided assistance setting up this service, the typical consulting fee is $49.
Level Two: Create a Journal to clip headlines from around the Web for your Web site or blog
Most groups would like to designate and control which stories appear on their Web site. Posting stories to your NewsCloud Journal is an easy way to accomplish this.
When you register at NewsCloud, you’re given a journal Web page. The address of this Web page is usually, http://www.newscloud.com/journal/your_name. You’re also shown how to add a “Post to NewsCloud” button to your Internet browser that makes it easy to submit stories to your journal from any other Web site.
Every story that you submit to NewsCloud is added to your journal automatically. And, your journal has an RSS feed, usually http://www.newscloud.com/rss/journal/your_name as well as Javascript for your Web site.
Once you begin posting stories to your NewsCloud journal, you use a method similar as to described in Level One to add headlines from your journal to your organization’s Web site or blog.
Furthermore, you can customize the look and feel of your journal to match your Web site and then provide a link for readers to visit your journal page as if it were an integrated part of your site.
Example of a NewsCloud journal
If you would like guided assistance setting up this service, the typical consulting fee is $99. If you would like assistance customizing your journal template, the typical fee is $299 depending on the complexity of your Web site design.
Level Three: Create a Group for multiple staff or member stakeholders to track and clip headlines on related topics for your blog or Web site
NewsCloud groups can automatically track news with automated keyword searches or they can allow multiple people to post stories based on a set of related topics. They are easy to create and can be configured in just a few minutes.
Like a journal, a group also offers RSS feeds and Javascript code to display its headlines on your Web site or blog.
Furthermore, you can customize the look and feel of your group to match your Web site and then provide a link for readers to visit your Group page as if it were an integrated part of your site.
You can also add headlines from related blogs or news feeds and Web site links to enhance the content on your Group page.
If you would like guided assistance setting up this service, the typical consulting fee ranges from $299 to $799 depending on the complexity of your Web site design and your individual needs.
Level Four: Invite your stakeholders to participate in news gathering for your organization
With groups, you can invite your stakeholders to join in the process of finding news on the Web and posting it to your Group page, thereby distributing the task of news gathering across hundreds or thousands of motivated stakeholders.
You can also invite members to join your Group and participate in gathering news for your organization. Some organizations may choose to offer branded templates for their members to apply to their own journals, creating a social network of news journals branded with your organization’s site design.
If you would like guided assistance setting up this service, the typical consulting fee ranges from $499 and upwards depending on the complexity of your Web site design and your individual needs.
Level Five: Host your own installation of the NewsCloud software at your own Web site
NewsCloud is an open source platform that can be downloaded and installed at any Internet domain e.g. http://www.yourname.com.
This is only recommended for users with additional technology know how and resources for maintaining an active technical service.
If you would like guided assistance setting up this service, the typical consulting fee ranges from $999 and upwards depending on the complexity of your individual needs and the capabilities of your in-house technological experts.
Additional Options
- If you would like your members to write original material for your organization, you may want to help them set up blogs at a popular service like WordPress or TypePad.
- If you would like to encourage your stakeholders to follow your RSS feed, you might consider using the Feedburner service to “burn your feeds”. Feedburner makes it easier for people to read and subscribe to your feed and offers additional services such as email delivery of new entries.
- You may decide to integrate advertising from a service such as Google AdSense into the templates for your journal or group pages. Your organization may be able to earn additional revenue if you have sufficient Web traffic.
- If you would like your stakeholders to take action after reading your news headlines – by writing emails or faxes to their elected state or federal legislative officials, try our sister service ActionStudio.
