Social Media Lookover
Objective: Develop an understanding of how the social media page is currently being used
Thought Stream: So far, I’ve seen the Facebook page being used for a lot of good. Articles detailing how much the clients of Meals on Wheels enjoy their visits from volunteers are great, along with information about fundraisers such as Lunchbox.
Just knowing the little I do about Horizons, there were two main things that I noticed. The first was there was a heavy emphasis on the Meals on Wheels program, more so than the rest of the programs at Horizons. This is probably due to Meals being an accessible opportunity to many volunteers, but is still something of note. Dating back since the start of the year, NTS has had one post about it, Survivors’ maybe one or two, one about financial wellness, and the rest were all Meals on Wheels.
The two main goals of the social media outreach is making sure there is content there, and making sure that there are people who see the content.
In terms of having the content there, I feel like more posts can be made to the Facebook page, along with possibly updating the main website with current events. A lot happens at Horizons besides the “big events” that most people would not know about, so social media is a way to show everything that Horizons does. I’ll try to think of some ideas for posts.
The Horizons Twitter at this point essentially serves as a Facebook link poster, which is not the most effective use. However, for something like Horizons, I do not know how helpful something like a Twitter or Instagram will be. Instagram is able to post photos about what’s happening at Horizons, but lacks a good way to reach out to get people on board with donating or volunteering. Twitter also lacks the depth needed. I feel like for social media, Facebook (along with updating the Horizons website itself) is the best method of promotion.
Find out who runs the Facebook. We should be able to add a donate button onto the page as a non-profit organization.




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Website Review & Notes
I.	Front Page
a.	Move contact information and location to higher on the page. Having it on the front page is great, but having it on the very bottom of the page hides it from people who might want it.
b.	In the same vein, I’m not sure if the background image of the location of Horizons on Google Maps is needed. One thing that could substitute for it is making the “Get Directions” page already have Horizons on the map, instead of just linking them directly to Google Maps. This link could be used as a substitute.
c.	Are the telecommunications issues still occurring? Otherwise, no need to have that on there anymore.
II.	Transportation
a.	Good description on what NTS is, only question is “who do I contact from here?” I assume this will be answered in a sub-page or the answer is simply “contact Horizons”, but it would be something nice to have on there.
b.	VERY minor design issue but the line that goes through the page cuts off the cars. Not a big deal at all.
c.	NTS Rules
i.	Answered my contact question right away here, plus this page helps guide people to the rules that need to be followed in order to use NTS before they are able to contact it.
ii.	Small thing, but the HTML on this page is weird for some reason with the <span> tags. I don’t know anything about HTML, but it causes a slight shift in color in the text. Shown below, the text changes from “so” to “please”








iii.	Rest of page has good information, rules are defined well.
d.	FAQ
i.	Service area link is broken, no longer works.
ii.	Otherwise, good information here. Schedule is good, most of the immediate questions that come to mind are answered. Maybe talk to Kevin(?) or whoever commonly works with NTS and see if they have any other frequently asked questions that they think would be beneficial to answer on the FAQ.
e.	Helpful Links
i.	City of Cedar Rapids, Cedar Rapids Transit, and 365 Ride links are broken
f.	About NTS
i.	Nice little page giving the history of NTS.
III.	Financial Wellness Center
a.	A lot of good information about bankruptcy counseling and “Money in Motion”
b.	The Money in Motion class website appears to most (if not all) of its image links broken. However, I don’t know whether or not this is directly managed by Horizons.
c.	Small thing, the asterisk on “approved*” isn’t explained until the Pre-filing Bankruptcy Counseling page.
IV.	Consumer Education
a.	Financially Frozen is advertised as “free for a limited time”, but the website to use the course lists a price of $25 for the online course
b.	The Money in Motion schedule has nothing on it. Not sure if this is because the schedule has not been updated or because Money in Motion is no longer offered here.
c.	The “Financial Wellness Classes” page is a bit redundant of the information presented on the Consumer Education tab, along with the individual pages for both courses.
V.	Budget & Credit Counseling Programs
a.	Under the “Online Counseling” header, the link for “information is needed” is broken.
b.	Also on this page is a mention of the “Rapid Response Counselor”, which seems like a really cool idea to me. I’m not sure if it is mentioned in other places on the site, however. Will delete if I find more.
c.	On the “Debt Management” page, a contact link for the program would be helpful, even if it is just the generic contact form.
d.	 Overall, a decent amount of information here, as long as everyone can find what they are looking for. I am not well versed in finance though, so my opinion means little here.
e.	The calculators from resources and tools are nice! Maybe show this off a little more?
VI.	Community Health and Nutrition
a.	Meals on Wheels
i.	Newsletters have not been updated in a while – is this still a thing?
ii.	On the “older adults” page, the Meals on Wheels application link is broken, along with an image on the side of the page.
iii.	On the What’s for Lunch page, there is no June or July schedule.
VII.	Community Based Programs
a.	Early ACCESS is nice, page is nice.
b.	For “Family Based Programs”, the page is a little vague, and I am not able to get a strong understanding of what the family based support programs truly provide.
c.	The Survivors’ program’s page is really well done, the only thing that I think needs to be updated is the lack of recent newsletters (if there are any!)
d.	The headshots for the Survivors’ Staff Members page will be nice to have.
VIII.	Mental Health & Wellness
a.	Probably the most well put together pages so far
b.	After going through everything, nothing to really add or fix here!
IX.	“Other”
a.	Lack of newsletters on “Horizons Happenings Newsletters”
b.	Under “News”, most links lead to nowhere, and information has not been added since 2015. Needs to be either updated or deleted.
c.	Events calendar not updated
d.