Murrindindi Shire signs up for Youth Portal

The Victorian municipality of Murrindindi Shire is probably best known for the devastation its towns including Marysville and Kinglake experienced during the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires.  The council has signed up to Datalink's Youth Portal as a means to lift the spirits of local young people.  It will also be used as a key platform to communicate important bushfire prevention and relief information to young people.

The project to design and implement the Youth Portal will begin in the coming weeks and is expected to be launched in time for National Youth Week.

5 great YOUTH Portal launch strategies

Some steps to a great YOUTH Portal launch.

1. Branding Competition

Competitions in general are good ways to involve young people.  But a branding competition can help enhance the sense of ownership and establish mindshare of the website.  They can begin even before the launch and will instil much anticipation in young people about the new site.

The great thing about the web is it means your online presence can have its own brand and domain name, meaning that you don't have to rename your youth service.

When implementing the City of Greater Bendigo YOUTH Portal, for example, it was decided to begin with a generic brand and open it up to a competition.

The result of the competition was the name "YO! Bendigo" which has been well received.  You will be suprised how young people will use this brand to communicate your service to others - especially if it is short and catchy. I personally think this is a fantastic name for the YOUTH Portal !

2. "Soft Launch"

A "soft launch is always good way to test the water.  It involves putting the site up but not publicising it to local young people until you are ready. 

This approach lets search engines like Google gradually pick the site up and for you to optimise it for online searching.  It allows you to continue to test the site with focus groups and make adjustments as necessary.

A soft launch allows you to more thoroughly prepare for a "hard launch" to fully unleash the YOUTH Portal. 

3. Mailout

A mailout is a traditional way to publicise launches and the YOUTH Portal is no different.  The best way to reach young people is through their homes and their parents.  It certainly boosts your PR if their parents know that council is doing something for positive for their children especially since Internet safety is such a big issue, this can allow parents to check the YOUTH Portal and add it to their safe list of websites. 

4. "Hard Launch" Event

A "Hard Launch" involves telling the world in as many ways possible.  But the best hard launch is actually inviting young people to an "event" or launching at an event where the majority of young people will be.

This lets you give the YOUTH Portal a personal face - the youth worker.  But you will only have to show that face once as like SMS on mobile phones ICT breaks down the barriers, making it easier for young people to establish regular contact with you.  The YOUTH Portal can help greatly to establish a sense of the trust relationship you need to do your job.

5. Social Media

Another great way to publicise your launch is to use social media, including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  The aim of a YOUTH Portal is not to replace these services, but to bring them together.  So if you have pages on these social media sites by advertising your launch on them will help to establish YOUTH Portal as the first point of call in case young people forget the locations of your social media pages. 

Advertising your YOUTH Portal on these services can be as easy and subtle as posting the web address with a status like: "Check this out!".  It can be a good approach to leave it up to the young people to decide whether the YOUTH Portal is of use to them rather than forcing them onto it.  You'll be suprised by how many will appreciate it and not only visit but voluntarily return to the site.

YOUTH Portal can then become the central platform from which you publish content to these services.  If you don't have such pages, then promoting the YOUTH Portal first is a great way to get people using them.

Monash Youth Stuff Launch

Its been a work in progress for a while but the City of Monash is finally launching its Monash Youth Stuff website.

Monash Youth Stuff is a website which links local youth to local clubs. The Web 2.0 project is one of the first of itskind aimed specifically at a young audience that stimulates involvement inlocal clubs and community organisations and helps promote theclubs.

Built with a dynamic community database add-on for, the system is aimed at enabling users to search for clubs near them and subscribe to news and updates.

Monash City Council contributed directly to the design of the site.

This is what Monash City Council had to say regarding the launch:

Just did an audit of the site, and I am happy to say that it appears to be exactly as we expected. I am extremely satisfied with all the work and adjustments of late. The team is thrilled to finally have the project in full operation.

I appreciate your speedy responses and the effort over the past couple of weeks from the Datalink team.

The website can be viewed at www.monashyouthstuff.org.au