Our BellaOnline editors are enthusiastic about their topics and eager to help out their fans. Here are the tasks a typical BellaOnline editor looks after in a given week. It should only take 2-3 hours a week, done whenever you want, but it should be done weekly.
Site Setup
BellaOnline is very much about creating a personal connection between the editor of a site and that site's visitors. Our sites are not "collections of random articles". They are about "a unique voice sharing her opinions". To promote that message, you will enter a short bio detailing to your visitors what unique talents you bring to your position. You'll also submit a professional photo of yourself. Our visitors love to see that you are a "real person", and one that can be trusted as a respected member of our site.
Weekly Articles
The web is a fast moving world. Visitors often come back daily to see what is new, and weekly articles are important to keep them interested. The articles need to be long enough to be worth their visit - a minimum of 400 words. Note that articles should not be too LONG either. Visitors don't like to have to page-down more than twice for ease-of-use reasons. Longer articles should be broken up into easy to read chunks. Depending on the site you run, articles might include how-to pieces, commentaries, recipes, product reviews, movie reviews, and more.
Newsletters
Most visitors are being innundated with spam in our modern times. We don't want to add to that. Only people who sign up on your site for your newsletter will get it. These are your most loyal of visitors who want to know when you've added new content. Each time you add a new article, you should send out a newsletter letting your visitors know to come read it. We have made this very simple for you to do.
Visitor Questions
Each BellaOnline site comes with an email box to handle mail and questions. You need to check that frequently, to help your visitors with their issues. Many times, the types of questions you get will help you decide what new topics to tackle on your site.
Site Forum
The forum for your site provides a valuable resource to your visitors. It lets your visitors ask questions to the group - often other visitors will help out with answers. For many editors, the forum serves as a blog for them to post their ruminations or thoughts on issues, and get feedback from visitors. Forums thrive best when an editor posts at least 2-3 times a week, so that visitors know their own posts will be paid attention to.
Chat Rooms
A weekly or monthly chat is optional, but can provide one on one contact with your visitors. If you choose to run a chat, it will need to be moderated by you. For security reasons we do not allow our chat room to be open in an unmoderated state. Chat events normally last between one half and one hour. Normally an editor will start a chat once they've built up a regular group of forum visitors.
General Notes
Your content must be relevant to your given category. We have many different topics at BellaOnline and have defined each one for a reason. Read more about our site setup to understand this issue. You should always spell check and grammar check your articles, to maintain our level of professionalism. You need to avoid all pornographic, X-rated, or profane material. We don't want to end up blocked by library computers. Also, try to weed out outdated or broken links. Users find those very annoying.
Joining the BellaOnline community of editors is fun, easy, and allows you to meet many new people who share your interests. You can hone your existing skills, plus learn new skills in a supportive and nurturing atmosphere. There's no HTML knowledge required. Simple online forms let you add and edit all of your content. We have training managers and mentors who will help you every step of the way, but we do want self-starters who will read our training documentation and make the effort to learn. While our system is one of the easiest on the web, it does of course require a learning curve.
We hope you'll consider joining us!
