Six reasons Google should be a part of your digital media strategy

When American Legion posts, districts or departments plan out a digital media strategy, the first thing to consider is an email address to sign up for digital services. It’s not advised to use your personal email because you might not always be the one handling the media information. You want to keep your personal account separate from The American Legion’s.

There are many free email services to choose from such as Yahoo or Outlook, or one from an Internet service provider like Comcast. The following are six reasons why I personally think a Gmail account is great for a digital media strategy. A Gmail account:

• Is free.
• Is easy to use. You can create labels to organize emails coming in and process email automatically.
• Comes with a Google Drive account and up to 15GB of free storage space. With Google Drive you can write press releases and meeting minutes, and produce a newsletter. Google Sheets helps keep finances organized in a spreadsheet.  These documents can be created right from your phone, tablet or laptop, and they are always available online.
• Has tools to start a press release blog for your American Legion post. And it’s free.
• Comes with an online calendar that you can embed on your post or department website, or share through email. You can make calendars for meetings, special events and holidays that can be shared.
• Gives you access to Google Sites, a website building program.  If your post needs a website, you can make a basic one through Google Sites and share the address with others.  If you have a domain name, you can point the name to your website in a few simple steps.

Google services can be a great way to get connected in a digital media strategy and stay connected into the future.