Submitting Content for The VOICE Newsletter

The Process

As we head into the new fiscal year, we’re excited to launch a new iteration of The VOICE – Life West’s weekly newsletter to students, staff & faculty.

Create your own content directly

Teams are responsible for creating their own content for the VOICE each week through HubSpot. Content created on any given week is reviewed by Marketing (and edited as needed) and then automatically goes out with The VOICE Newsletter on the following week.

Video Tutorial:

Written instructions:

All content for The VOICE will be created by you (departmental stakeholders) and hosted on https://voice.lifewest.edu. You’ll create that content using Hubspot’s straight-forward, intuitive content tool. The Marketing team reviews all submissions (and occasionally edits for clarity, depth and brand consistency). Each week, an automated email does out that recaps all content created since the previous week’s newsletter, giving the reader the opportunity to click through to the page you’ve created.

New Process in a nutshell:

• Individuals with each department will be given editor access in Hubspot to create posts/submissions for The VOICE themselves.
• Posts created (and approved) within a given week will be included in the following week’s newsletter.
• As a contributor, your new submissions will require the following:
  • A short headline
  • A 1-sentence description
  • A featured image – This will show up in the email as well as at the top of your submission’s stand-alone page (accessible from the email)
• New submissions can also include the following:
  • Headlines and long-form text copy
  • Inline images, graphics & video
  • Links

Creating a VOICE Post

• Log in to Hubspot
  • If you need access (to Hubspot or as a VOICE editor, please request that in the sidebar menu on this page)
• Once in Hubspot, navigate to Content > Blog from the sidebar menu
• Click “Create” on the top right. The pop-up popup will populate automatically with The Voice and English options. Continue with the Create blog post button
• Click the “Settings” button on the top right
• On the Settings popup, complete the following:
  • Blog Title / Headline This is the heading that will show up in The VOICE newsletter email as well as at the top of the page. Keep it short and sweet – under 30 characters is ideal.
  • Author Choose “Life West” (the only option). For now, please avoid creating new authors.
  • Upload Featured Image Images and/or graphics used should be 1200px wide x 600px tall. Images should be saved as a jpg, not PNG or other large file formats with large file sizes. They should be in landscape format, not portrait Need help? Start with a CANVA design in our template library
  • Meta Description This should be a 1-sentence intro to your post/submission
  • Once the above items are complete, you may close the pop-up window
• If helpful, chose “Click to add text” to add any additional content.
  • This opens a WYSIWYG editor that works like a slimmed down version of MS Word or Google Docs. You can add headlines, long-form text, bulleted lists, images, links and more.
  • If adding additional headlines, please avoid using the ‘heading 1’ option – but feel free to use heading 2 – 6.
  • Please avoid changing fonts or text colors as these are set by our template to match our brand guidelines
  • If adding images underneath the “read more separator”, please be conscious of file sizes. You can use both landscape and portrait images in this section, but as a general rule of thumb, you should use images that are 2000px wide or smaller with a file size under 300 KB. In short, it would be wise NOT to upload a 10MB, 7000px-wide image, as it will slow page load.

Summary

We look forward to collaboratively communicating with the Life West community using this new process. In addition to ensuring timely, self-serve communication, this process to submit content for The VOICE gives you a lot of flexibility to create pages to share with that community.

Note: Please have your content drafted and ready by 5 PM on Friday to ensure there is adequate time for Marketing to review content as needed.