Ok apologies for managing to break all good practice in both English Literature and English Grammar in one sentence but hopefully it has got you this far!

This is a question we are increasingly asked as a digital agency by charities who are taking stock of the various Microsites they have developed over the years and exploring what is the best approach moving forward.
As always in life, there is no simple one-size-fits-all answer. If pushed, I would tend towards the latter i.e. not to Microsite as we find having one brand perceived as one site delivers better results over the long term. However there are good reasons for and against having several Microsites with different looks and feels:

Good reasons to have several different Microsites:

Bad reasons to have several different Microsites

Hopefully you will recognise some of these from your own experience! Very often, the question is more one of reviewing the legacy sites you have and determining whether they have a future, sometimes making difficult decisions to close down sites. By making these decisions, you often arrive at the answer to the Microsite question. I find another way of approaching this is to ask how you see either the BBC website (mentioned in my last blog) or Cancer Research UK's websites - are they one site or several Microsites? Most people I find perceive them to be one site whereas in reality they are comprised of many Microsites - it's the strategy and clear branding which makes them feel like one site.

One great example of how to manage the Microsite question has been the series of websites we have developed for Scripture Union. At the outset of this major digital project, we established that the different audiences for the different types of projects required distinct Microsites. However we wanted to ensure that it was clear that each Microsite was clearly owned and developed by Scripture Union.

We therefore established a branding approach which had three tiers:

This clear positioning has helped Scripture Union have a clear answer to the question posed above. You will have your own reasons which bring you to your answer which may very well be to have several Microsites - I just ask that you do it for good reasons!

Jim Raymond is Commercial Director of Baigent Ltd, a digital agency specialising in websites, online fundraising and online strategies for charities.

I spent last weekend with a Scout Group in Brighton who had invited Henry Allingham, one of the UK's only 3 living survivors of the WW1, to become a Scout.

Normally we don't get involved in local stories but this was different...we thought it had enough interest to give it legs to make it a national story. Specifically the following points helped project it to a national level:

- The story was taking place at the time of year when WW1 veterans are in the news

- Henry had been profiled on the BBC TV a few days before so was already in the news

-Investing Henry would make him the oldest living Scout in Europe

- There was an automatic Arah... factor with a Scout giving an award to Henry 100 years after he first joined.

Henry had wanted to join the Scouts 100 years ago but was unable to do so because his mum could not afford the Uniform. The 6th Brighton Scout Group decided to invest him 100 years after he first went along to his local Scout group. I thought this would make an interesting story that would get national coverage. And I was right. We got the story covered in the Times, The Sun, BBC online and a slot on BBC Five live and some local BBC local radio as part of the paper reviews. The whole story only took a couple of hours to pull together and was really touching to be part of.

If you want to see how we turned a really local story into something that worked nationally check out these links:
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1951008.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5181640.ece

Simon Carter, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications at The Scout Association

Committed volunteers can personalise a campaign and motivate people to take action.

This is something US President-elect Barack Obama was well aware of nearly two years ago. It was then that he started to get together his army of volunteers who were so crucial in helping him win his election campaign.

Volunteers, of course, are the lifeblood of charities - especially volunteers affected by a charity's cause or with links to the issue campaigned on.

But volunteers are not always given the chance to have their say on how charities communicate.

Over the summer, we've been working with a major charity to put together their annual review. I've travelled around the country with one service user interviewing other service users from various projects supported by the charity. Her questions, words and thoughts, as well as those of the other service users, have shaped the annual review. These service users became communications volunteers.

It's been an extremely enjoyable process for all involved and we feel like we've produced a relevant, unpretentious and moving annual review that tells the charity's story.

Charity communicators can work with service users and volunteers to make their communications better.
Here are five ideas of how you can do this:

1. Focus groups. What do service users and volunteers think of your communications? Do they think the words you use are appropriate or that the branding is current? Organise a focus group to find out.

2. Case studies. Build up a database of volunteers and service users who are willing to talk to the media. Interview them and write their stories up into case studies which you can supply to journalists when they phone.

3. Annual review. Consider including feature length case studies of service users in your annual review which show the change your charity makes to people's lives.

4. Use their ideas. Set up blogs that service users and volunteers can easily contribute to. Get them involved in filming a short video for YouTube. Ask regional offices to run with national campaigns.

5. Use their words. In reports, leaflets, web pages, campaigning materials and newsletters. Whatever communications project you’re working on, think about how you might be able to include the words of service users and volunteers.

Trina Wallace is a writer at ngo.media, an editing and copywriting agency for charities and the voluntary sector.
ngo.media produce a FREE, monthly Good Writing for Charities. It contains top tips on charity writing. To sign up visit: www.ngomedia.org.uk

That's a question we put to one charity communicator recently as part of our Joseph Rowntree Foundation research project investigating poverty and the media. Yes, was the answer, followed immediately by of course.

I'm part of the research team from St Chad's College, Durham University, partly because I'm an academic and partly because I work as a media practitioner - sometimes in the third sector. And I'm beginning to think charities are missing a trick. Not their comms personnel - always hard worked and often running to stand still - but their executive staff.

The reason? A belief - misplaced in my opinion - that anyone can 'do media'. Too often comms teams (sometimes a 'team' being just one person desperately trying to keep up across a number of media) are seen as just a service department. Yet increasingly analysts are suggesting that charities' comms teams could, given proper support from their executives, help shape and influence the media agenda in a more structural way by organising and producing content.

I and my research colleagues would be interested to know what you think, either through posting a comment here or by emailing: richard.else@durham.ac.uk. In the new year we'll be reporting our findings but in the meantime - for comms staff who see an undiminished workload ahead, here's what I do to counteract that attitude that 'doing media' is simple. I tell people my hobby is brain surgery. It's a fulfilling pastime: it keeps my mind working; is a useful skill and helps reduce waiting lists. I love it.

Of course, such an idea is preposterous, but, by the same token, why do the same people think 'doing media' is easy? Let's just take still photography: from James Agee and Walker Evans' pioneering Let Us Now Praise Famous Men onwards, through Philip Jones Griffiths Vietnam images, to the work of Dutch photojournalist Geert van Kesteren in Iraq, 'doing media' well has always been as difficult and demanding as any medical procedure. But the rewards can be great in terms of impact and enabling a ground swell of opinion for change. And isn't change what we all want?

Perhaps charity executives need to take a longer view - away from the media release - to discover how their own comms staff can, given the resources and support that other departments (like policy and planning) often receive, be a more effective instrument for change in a rapidly evolving media landscape. One where, to give just two examples, people, especially the younger generation, take content from non traditional outlets and where audiences are looking for alternative viewpoints. It's about gaining trust and respect that what you produce is credible and then using the existing methods of drawing people to that content.

Richard Else
Professorial Fellow, St. Chad's College, Durham University.

Charities do love press releases: many, many hours have been spent poring over every word, every comma, every quote and every nuance of a release. One recent calculation was that there were 100,000 press releases from charities every year. The irony is that most of these are destined to end up unread, unwanted and uncovered.

The old adage goes that if you throw enough mud at a wall some of it sticks. That may be so (though I've never understood why anyone would want mud to stick to a wall). The problem is this: the competition for press releases is now truly fearsome. Ask any journalist and they will tell you they may get up to 200 electronic press releases a day and they will tell you that most of them are left unopened let alone read.

So what's the alternative? I think charities need to try getting press coverage without a press release. For many charities this lack of structure could be truly scary. How would the CEO get his or her quote in? How would the charity make sure that the journalist got the story right?

In reality the process is simple. Pick up the phone and pitch to the journalist in 30 seconds the story you are planning. Ask them if they would be interested in this story? What additional information might they want? What are their deadlines? Offer them an exclusive if you think that would make a difference to getting them to cover it.

Getting press coverage without press releases will help your organisation build relationships with journalists far more effectively. Go on, be daring, and see if your organisation can cope.

Joe Saxton is chair and founder of CharityComms. In his day job Joe is driver of ideas and co-founder of specialist research consultancy nfpSynergy