Daily Blast Guidelines

Guidelines

Content

What belongs in the Daily Blast? Any information that needs to be shared with a wide audience at Mines! Consider what kind of reach your message needs, or who would most benefit from seeing it.

Posts that should be in the Daily Blast:

• Events open to the entire campus community or to a wide, general campus audience
• Announcements that affect a large portion of the campus population
• Upcoming deadlines for applications, awards, grants, etc.
• Any non-urgent information that needs to be shared broadly across campus

Posts that shouldn’t be in the Daily Blast:

• Information not meant to be shared with the entire Mines campus
• Events not hosted by a Mines student organization/club, department or office (i.e., events unaffiliated with the university)
• Commercial/business solicitations
• Emergency notifications (health/safety emergencies, unplanned IT outages, etc.)
• Anything unrelated to Mines and/or the campus community

What do I do if my information isn’t right for the Daily Blast?

You have a few options! If your information is urgent, it can be sent to a campus email listserv. Contact the Communications & Marketing Office (communications@mines.edu) for further guidance.

Timing

All posts must be submitted by 3 p.m. the weekday before the desired publication date in order to give moderators appropriate time to review the entry. Any announcements submitted after 3 p.m. are not guaranteed to be published in the next Daily Blast.

The Daily Blast is not moderated or published on weekends and holidays. This means if you want your item to appear in the Monday issue of the Daily Blast, you must submit no later than 3 p.m. the Friday before.

Over the summer, the Blast runs once a week, on Mondays (except holidays). The deadline of 3 p.m. the weekday before publication still applies.

Accuracy

Submitters should carefully review their submission to ensure accuracy, completeness and spelling. Submitters cannot change their posts after they have been approved. Moderators will only make minor corrections for clarity and do not fact check the content of entries.

If you need to make a correction to an already-approved post, email daily-blast-feedback@mines.edu. Please include the post ID number (you can find it in your submission confirmation email) and clear instructions on what changes need to be made.

Audiences

The two editions of the Daily Blast – Faculty/Staff and Students – have distinct audiences and content that is tailored to their needs and interests. When deciding which edition is appropriate for your post, consider the content of your message:

• Is it for an event open to everyone on campus?
• Is the information only relevant to a specific group?

Be intentional when choosing editions – “general awareness” is not a compelling enough reason to submit to both editions. If you submit a post to both editions, even though the information is not applicable to that intended audience (for example, a workshop or service only open to students submitted to the Faculty/Staff edition), moderators will edit your submission to keep the email better curated for our audiences.

We encourage faculty and staff members who would like to be aware of student-focused events and opportunities to subscribe to the student edition.

Instructions on how to subscribe so can be found in the Help Center.

Repeats

Each post is allowed to run twice — an initial publication date and one repeat date. If you do not select an initial publication date, your item will default to appear in the next Daily Blast after approval.

If you’d like your post to appear more than twice, you will have to submit multiple posts. However, this is discouraged in order to keep the Daily Blast as streamlined as possible.

We recommend submitting one post that runs as a “save the date” notice ahead of time and then a reminder post on the day of the event (for a total of three posts).

If you do submit a repeat item, we encourage you to vary the title and brief description so that it’s not just the same item appearing over and over again.

Here’s an example of two posts about the same topic but posted a week apart and presented in different ways each time:

How to Maximize Your Post’s Potential

Here are some ways to make sure your post gets noticed and seen by the right people.

• Timing: Think about the ideal time for your post to appear. If it’s an event that requires registration, give participants a couple of weeks. If it’s an announcement about a big change, some lead time is good, too. But if you are inviting people to a casual get-together with no RSVP needed, a day or two ahead of time will work better. There is no limit on how early you can submit an item; if you know you have something to run in a later edition, submit as soon as you can.
• Less is more: Short and punchy posts are easier to digest and are more likely to be read instead of long, overly wordy ones. Same goes for choosing how often to post—if you run your item too many times, it starts to become background noise. Stand out by being simple, to the point and intentional in your word choices.
• Details matter: Give the people what they want! Posting about an event? Make sure the date, location and time are in the Title and/or Brief Description – you want all the key information visible in the email, no click through required. Don’t depend on users going to a link to get all the info they need (but always include relevant links with more details when you have them).
• What to avoid: acronyms and initialisms (use sparingly and write out when you can); jargon; vague language; leaving out key information; forgetting to check over posts for accuracy, grammar and spelling

Example of a post full of DON’Ts

• Vague headline
• No information in description
• Missing date, time and location in Title and/or Brief Description
• Details behind link
• Wrong category
• Student-focused event requested for Faculty/Staff edition

Example of a post full of DO’s

• Title is short and to the point, includes key info
• Brief Description includes all relevant information
• Clear details on who, what, when, where and why
• Curated audience selection

How to submit a Daily Blast entry

Below is what the Daily Blast submission form looks like.

DEPARTMENT/ORGANIZATION: List the department or organization of the sponsoring group. This will often be the submitter’s affiliation.

CATEGORY: Choose the most appropriate category for your event/announcement. Read through carefully to make sure you’re selecting the best one for your post. Moderators may modify your selection if it is improperly categorized.

• Today at Mines: Only for Daily Blast editors; will not show up for most users
• Closures and Outages: Upcoming closures of campus offices or planned facilities- or IT-related outages
• Employee and Benefit News: Announcements for Mines employees related to benefits, training, performance management and other Human Resources information
• Important Deadlines: Upcoming campus deadlines that are, at most, a month away
• Campus Announcements: General information to be shared with one or more community groups; Any item that does not fit in other categories can go here
• Campus Events: Non-academic events and activities open to campus community members; for events with limited audiences, select this category and the appropriate edition (only Students or only Faculty/Staff)
• Career/Professional Development Opportunities: Programs and events related to professional development; limit audience if appropriate
• Club Meetings: Invitations to attend meetings of registered student organizations; almost all posts in this category should only appear in the Student edition
• Academic Lectures: Any speaking event or lecture given by a Mines faculty member or visiting scholar
• Research Announcements: Information related to Mines research, including new opportunities, calls for involvement or important updates
• Athletics and Rec Sports: Events and activities related to Mines Athletics, Rec Sports or Outdoor Rec Center
• Every Oredigger: Events, workshops, meetings and announcements related to wellbeing and the campus-wide wellness initiative

DIVISION: This section directs items to the appropriate moderator. If you are unsure which Division to select, choose Comms & Mktg.

• Student Life: Any items pertaining to Student Life activities, programs and organizations. Most of these items should be only for the Student edition.
• Athletics: Events and announcements related to Mines Athletics, Rec Sports or Outdoor Rec Center.
• Communications & Marketing: All other items that do not fall into the other two divisions.

AUDIENCE: Select an edition of the Daily Blast for the post. If the post is appropriate for all Mines audiences (Students, Faculty and Staff), both boxes can be checked. However, if the information in the post is intended for a select audience or your event or activity is restricted to one audience, please select the corresponding edition only. Moderators may modify your selection if an inappropriate audience is selected.

TITLE: Create a catchy headline for your announcement that encourages people to read more.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: This is where all high-priority information should be included, as it is included in the email digest version of the Daily Blast. Readers should be able to understand the gist of your post without having to click through to the Daily Blast site. Do not repeat your title. If your post pertains to an event or deadline, include the date, time and location in the title or brief description.

URL: You can include a URL in this optional field. If you would like to take the user from the Daily Blast email directly to a website instead of the Daily Blast site, check the Single Click option box.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Do not repeat the title or brief description. Add any additional information or details that need to be shared. If your post is for an event, check the “If this is an event” box, and make sure the event details are correct. You can also change the email address listed on the post to contact for more information (the submitter’s email is the default).

PUBLICATION: The first box allows a publication date to be selected. If the post should run again, a second date can be selected in the optional Posting Repeat Date field.

• Posts will not run for the range of dates between the two selected dates – posts only run two times if two dates are selected.
• If a post only needs to run once on the next scheduled Daily Blast publication date, leave both date fields empty. A blank date will default to the next edition of the Daily Blast. Note: If you leave the first date blank, be careful when setting the repeat date – if it’s your repeat date is the same date as the next Daily Blast publication date, the post may appear twice in the same issue.

After reviewing that all information is correct and free of errors, hit the “Preview this digest entry” button. If the preview looks good, approve the entry and it will be submitted to the moderation team. Submitters should receive an approval email after submission.

What Happens After I Hit Submit?

All items must be reviewed and approved by a moderator before they will appear in the Daily Blast.

Who are the moderators and what do they do?

• Moderators are Mines staff members in Communications and Marketing, Student Life and Athletics.
• Moderators can make small changes to announcements that have not already been published in the Daily Blast, typically for audience errors, grammar, spelling or other issues. If there is a larger issue with a post, moderators will reject the post. Submitters will receive a notification after their post is approved or rejected.

Posts that don’t follow these guidelines may be rejected. Please make clear how your post relates to Mines activities or events when filling out the submission form.