There are numerous ways a staff can promote it’s site. One way is by creating something your readers want. Late last summer the Des Moines Register created high school football schedules that readers could download and set as the wallpaper of their desktop.
The Register created a simple template where they could easily swap out the different schools and logos and flow in the football schedule of each team. To keep in the forefront of their readers’ thoughts, they branded the football image with their “Insider H.S. Sports” logo, the logo they use for high school sports coverage on their site.
The image they created was 1024 x 766 pixels and directions were given on the site telling readers how to set one as the deskop image.
This idea is a very simple thing for scholastic staffs to do for each sport at the school. Heck, include the speech and debate schedule, the marching band schedule and really anyone else who has a published schedule.
The process to create these is quite simple.
1) Get schedules of each group you want to create a wallpaper for.
2) Take a photo or create an image you would like to use with the schedule.
3) Make a canvas 1024 x 766 pixels.
4) Create your wallpaper within that canvas size using the schedule and image from steps one and two.
5) Make sure that somewhere on the wallpaper you brand it with your Web site’s logo or URL like the Register did with their “Insider H.S. Sports” name and logo.
6) Save the file for the Web, upload and promote on your site.
Written By: Aaron Manfull