Guide to writing an Action

Caption : Organ donation Action by Amy Photographer : ActNow

An ActNow Action page presents information on actions and events you can take to support a particular issue (or issues). You can write it in one of two ways:

1. As a summary list of multiple Actions
2. As a detailed description of one ‘thing to do’
3. As an event

You can link (associate / relate) this page to as many themes, issues, organisation and other actions as you like.

Title

• Keep your title clear and brief.
• Try to make it obvious which issue it relates to.

Description

• This is a summary of your Action. It appears as the ‘grab’ at the top of your story and is also displayed in search results.
• Make it snappy and convince the reader to read on.

Body text

One Action

If you are presenting one Action, make sure you include all the details of what the reader will need to know in order to take up the action. Things to include might be:

• location
• time needed
• skills needed
• organisers contact details
• background to action
• why do it
• who is benefiting
• where does the money go
• what has the group accomplished so far
• what else could be achieved with your help, etc?

Multiple Actions

If you are presenting a summary list of multiple things to do, the way you categorise these things is crucial. You might want to categorise your Action by:

• type (group all the money things together, all the communication things together, all the government things together, all the volunteer opportunities together etc.)
• state (group all the things happening in SA together and likewise for the other states and territories)
• simplest to most complicated or vice versa (donating money versus writing a letter to a politician versus putting together a forum)

You don’t want to make it too long. You want it to be simple and straightforward. If your list is longer than a page, consider putting up a few Action pages. For example one on all the ways you can give or raise money, one on all the politicians you can write to or send a petition to about the issue, one for all the volunteer opportunities available OR one for each state and territory, and so on.

Event

Make upload one Action for each event. Include details of:

• the group that is organising the event
• the place where the event is being help
• the date the event is being held (include this in the body but also fill out the ‘date of event’ field on the ‘create content’ page. This will enable members to bookmark the event, so it is displayed on the calendar on their member profile.)
• the time the event is taking place
• a link to more event details (if available)

Final pointers

• You want people to take action immediately. So make your ‘thing to do’ emotive and persuasive, but remember to keep to the facts.
• If you have had personal experience in acting on this you might want to write an action story and link it to your Action page.
• You can associate your page with organisations or groups that are relevant to the actions you are presenting. If an organisation isn’t represented on ActNow you can request it
• Check out the toolkit to see if there are any tools to help someone do the things you suggest. If there are include them as related content. If not, consider sending a page request
• Is there any other related content? An issue page? Another Action? Opinion piece? Photo gallery? Multimedia? Story?. If not, consider writing something yourself or making a request.
• It’d be great if you could include a photo. Remember though to make sure you have the photographer's permission to upload the photo and that you attribute the photo to them on ActNow. You can do this by writing their name in the ‘photographer’ field BEFORE pressing ‘upload. Remember to select the photo as a thumbnail and to embed the image in the body text. See Text Formatting Instructions (located as link under body on create content page) for help.