2.3. Blog

Another way to get to the citizens, to promote the project, place it on the Internet and to have a content repository different to the institutional press releases, is to open a blog on the participation website.

One of its main advantages (especially compared to our channels on social networks whose content is more ephemeral) is that it will allow us to create a historical archive with all the information and news about our direct democracy platform and participation processes.

Before creating it, you should think about a publishing strategy that answers the following questions:

• Do we have human resources to maintain it? The team should have between one and two people who can write.

• Do we have information to communicate through the blog? A priori you have to think about what topics would fit in the blog.

• What publication periodicity can we maintain? If we have a blog we would have to publish a post at least once a week or once every two weeks. For less frequency it is not worth having a blog and maybe it is better to resort to press releases and communication through social networks.

The blog can be created from an existing publishing platform. The development staff can recommend which is the best content management system and how to incorporate it into our website.

The image must be the same as the participation project, but if the institution already has a network of blogs, you can open a specific space that is linked from our website.

Regarding the issues that address from the blog, you can address issues such as:

• Participation tutorials: tutorial example in blog.

• Color chronicle of a voting day or counting of votes.

• Timeless themes of direct democracy or citizen participation that would not be offered in a press release.

• Follow-up of citizen proposals or projects of participatory budgets that are not offered in a press release but are likely to communicate.