[Ohio-talk] Fw: [NFBAffiliatePresidents] July 2009 NFB-Newsline Sponsor Newsletter
Dr. Smith
jwsmithnfb at verizon.net
Sun Jul 26 19:42:13 UTC 2009
fyi
JW
Dr. J. Webster Smith
President National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
P.O.BOX 458 Athens, Ohio, 45701-0458
Phone Number - 740-592-6326
"Changing What it Means to be Blind"
----- Original Message -----
From: "West, Renee (by way of David Andrews <dandrews at visi.com>)"
<RWest at nfb.org>
To: <nfbaffiliatepresidents at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 4:05 AM
Subject: [NFBAffiliatePresidents] July 2009 NFB-Newsline Sponsor Newsletter
NFB Affiliate Presidents:
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Please find attached and below (in plain-text
format) the July 2009 issue of NFB-NEWSLINE®
Happenings, the monthly newsletter for our
sponsors. This newsletter is provided to you for
your information; should you have any questions
please email Renee West at <blocked::mailto:rwest at nfb.org>rwest at nfb.org.
Thank you.
Renee West
Manager, Marketing and Outreach
Sponsored Technology Programs
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore MD 21230
Phone: (410) 659-9314 ext. 2411
Fax: (410) 659-5129
Websites: <http://www.nfb.org/>www.nfb.org;
www.nfbnewsline.org;
<http://www.nfbnewslineonline.org/>www.nfbnewslineonline.org
There is a Braille literacy crisis in America.
You can be part of the solution.
<https://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&identifier=4000>Buy
the Louis Braille Bicentennial Silver Dollar now!
Text of the July NFB-NEWSLINE Happenings follows:
NFB-NEWSLINE® HAPPENINGS-JULY 2009
Main Menu
The NFB-NEWSLINE® Team is back from
convention, where we enjoyed ourselves and had
great success in promoting our service to
attendees. The NFB-NEWSLINE® parlor hosted
several group-specific gatherings and many
open-house sessions where people could drop by
and get hands-on experience with our new initiatives.
Before we left for convention, we
created a new handout and a new CD to provide
information on NFB-NEWSLINE® Online's new
features. The colorful handout covers basic
information on the four new features, answers
questions about subscribing, and provides contact
details; while the CD gives very detailed
information on the two new features currently
available (NFB-NEWSLINE® In Your Pocket and Web
News on Demand). The CD fully describes our new
Web site (www.nfbnewslineonline.org) and walks
through the steps of installing and/or using the
new features so that interested subscribers can
easily begin using the initiatives on their
own. If you would like to receive these new
promotional items please contact Renee West at rwest at nfb.org.
As noted in the statistics section,
we are seeing a great increase in the usage of
our Internet bandwidth as a result of our new
initiatives. To allow for this current usage and
in anticipation of increased demand in the
future, we have augmented our capacity fivefold.
We are happy to make this adjustment!
If you just can't get your fill of
news about NFB-NEWSLINE®, if this monthly
newsletter is just not enough, you can now get
frequent updates by following us on
Twitter! While this newsletter will always
provide you with a monthly banquet of interesting
news and helpful ideas, you can follow us to get
the freshest dish by signing up at http://twitter.com/NFB¬¬_NEWSLINE!
Channel Chat
We provided added value to NFB-NEWSLINE® during
the last month by providing both the ACB and NFB
convention agendas on the service. The agendas
received a good reception by members of both
organizations. You can similarly serve your
subscribers by placing organizational convention
agendas on your local channel. Most affiliate
organizations will have at least one statewide
convention per year, so be sure to contact the
individual organization's affiliate president to
help coordinate this effort. Besides the NFB and
ACB, there are many other state branches of
national organizations (as noted in last month's
Chat) that also might appreciate access to this valuable venue.
Remember.this is YOUR space, so get out YOUR message!
JUST THE STATS, MA'AM
It is July, and things are getting
pretty hot in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
/>Newsline Town! Speaking of hot, we've got some
sizzling statistics for you this month. We
received a total of 143,344 calls in June, and
looking over the past quarter, we're increasing
steadily with nearly 550 more than when the
second quarter began. Also excellent is the
number of new subscribers--779 this month! Check
out my challenge under the "New Subscribers"
category. The progress we're making is just swell(tering!)
Top Ten Minutes Used:
A total of 2,622,576 minutes of service were
enjoyed in June. Two states with scorching stats
are Texas, whose minutes are up by 4,688 over
May's usage, and Virginia, who had
82,375 in May, jumped 5,645 more over the past
month. That's nearly a 7 percent increase! Brilliant!
1. California 270,534
2. New York 177,421
3. Massachusetts 165,962
4. Florida 159,826
5. Illinois 132,695
6. Ohio 131,676
7. Texas 126,314
8. Maryland 108,983
9. Pennsylvania 95,178
10. Virginia 88,020
Top Ten New Subscribers:
Did you know that we are at the edge of breaking
the 68,000 mark? We need just 111 more new
subscribers and we're there! We have seen this
statistic rays, er, raise significantly over the
last year as we started out 2009 with 64,371
subscribers, and over the past six months we've
had an average of 718 new subscribers per
month. My challenge is to end the year with a
total of 72,500 new users, which means we'll need
to add about 922 new subscribers each month from
August through December. It's definitely a
challenge, but with a little effort we can make
it. We just need to add 204 more new subscribers
than we do on average (just 5 more per state!)
each month to reach this goal--I know we can do
that! I'll even be a pep squad for your efforts! Ra Ra Ra!
1. Florida, with 296
2. California and Pennsylvania tied with 53 new members each
3. Texas , with 41
4. Illinois, with 33
5. Georgia, with 27
6. New York, with 21
7. North Carolina, with 19
8. Massachusetts, with 16
9. Michigan, with 14
10. Maryland & Wisconsin tied with 13 new members each
E-mail Superstars:
While we still are working on resolving
statistics for this area, I can tell you that our
e-mail usage is burning up the charts! A total
of 174,443 e-mails were sent in June; this figure
is up by 15,595 (nearly 10 precent!) over May's numbers! Hot! Hot! Hot!
Top Ten Registered Subscribers:
All the usual stars are here, and as predicted
Maryland did indeed blaze past the 3,000 mark. Way to glow, gang!
1. Florida 10,885
2. California 6,590
3. Maryland 3,001
4. Texas 2,786
5. Michigan 2,606
6. North Carolina 2,579
7. Wisconsin 2,360
8. New York 2,332
9. Ohio 2,244
10. Massachusetts 2,014
Congratulations, Everyone!
Subscriber's Corner
I'd like you to meet Ima NuWon, who
has just signed up for NFB-NEWSLINE®. Ima will
receive, as all new subscribers do, a welcome
letter providing her with her login codes and
access phone numbers. This is a good first step,
but unfortunately Mrs. NuWon cannot read print,
and if she's not quite sure what NFB-NEWSLINE® is
she may disregard this letter entirely. Even if
Ima does get her login codes and access numbers
(through a reader, say), she may put off calling
the service if she wasn't made aware of how easy
and valuable it is. When she does call, she
might find she needs a little help, but doesn't
know what to do to get it. Eventually, Ima may
quit trying and forget about NFB-NEWSLINE®
entirely. Poor Ima! What can you as a sponsor
do to help her? Three words make all the
difference: follow-up calls. If you call Mrs.
NuWon a week after she is to have received her
welcome letter, you will firstly serve to make
sure she received her letter and had access to
its content. If she has either not received or
has lost the letter, you can provide her with her
codes and access phone numbers. Ima will further
appreciate having someone with whom she can ask
questions and receive advice. When speaking with
Ima you may realize that she might find some
material, like a User's Guide or the Introduction
and Instructions tapes and CDs, very valuable in
learning about the service. It would also
greatly help Mrs. NuWon to point out that
context-sensitive help is available throughout
the service. You can help her navigate through
the menu system, tell her about the state papers
option, and also help set up her Favorites list
and TV listings. Perhaps most importantly, you
can help provide encouragement. Let Ima know
that NFB-NEWSLINE® is truly very easy to use,
that the menu choices are fairly consistent
throughout the system, and that she can alter the
voice's speed and tone to suit her
preference. Giving Mrs. NuWon support and
confidence will help her to make the best use of
NFB-NEWSLINE® and will in turn create an
individual who will promote the service to her
community. As word-of-mouth is the best form of
advertising, an active subscriber is an
invaluable asset in the promotion of
NFB-NEWSLINE®, so helping Ima will in turn help others.
It was indeed important to get Mrs.
NuWon signed up with NFB-NEWSLINE®, but it's
arguably even more important that Ima actually
uses and enjoys the service. NFB-NEWSLINE® is
not made available to add more subscribers to the
service, but rather to add more value to the
subscriber's life. You truly play a critical
role in fulfilling the promise of NFB-NEWSLINE®
in the lives of the print-disabled community.
Now that you know about Mrs. NuWon,
you are surely asking how you can help her and
other new subscribers become active users of the
service. Possibly the best way by which you may
do so is to create a "system" that lists new
subscribers with their contact details, and
contains space to assign a date for the follow-up
calls. Such a system should help identify which
new subscribers need to be contacted on the
current day, and will further note what other
follow-up tasks may be needed. You may wish to
share this system with another individual who can
help share the calls or carry out certain tasks,
like mailing out instructional materials to a
particular subscriber. You can use Excel for
this purpose, or your Tasks function on
Outlook. There are also task managing systems
available for free download. However your system
works, simply making a follow-up call will make
all the difference to a new subscriber. Please
contact Renee West, Marketing and Outreach
Manager, for ideas at rwest at nfb.org.
Your Monthly Helpful Hint
Does your agency or organization
Twitter? Are you on Facebook or another social
Web site? If so, please consider doing a tweet
or post about NFB-NEWSLINE®. This is a simple
way to get information out on the service with a
nod to 21st-century communication
technologies. To make things EVEN SIMPLER, I can
also provide you with text for your tweet or
journal entry, including an image with a link to our Web site!
Talk with you next month!
The NFB-NEWSLINE® Team
We Need Your Help!
Support Braille Literacy and help provide blind children
and adults with the tools they need to succeed by purchasing
the Louis Braille Coin. Created in honor of the 200th birthday
of Louis Braille, this beautiful coin is made of 90 percent
silverand is the first US coin ever to feature readable
Braille. Visit www.braille.org or call the National Federation
of the Blind at (410) 659-9314, extension 2216, to learn how
you can make change with a dollar!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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