Do you know how Tidelines works and how posts show up in your email inbox? It takes input and ideas from many sources, a team of dedicated volunteers, and a lot of coordination to make it all happen.
What is Tidelines?
Tidelines is an online information resource that provides the community with daily posts on local activities, events, organizations, and diverse topics of general interest associated with the greater Seabrook and Charleston areas. During emergencies, Tidelines relays official announcements and other important information.
In addition, the Tidelines website, (tidelinesblog.com) provides easy access to all published posts as well as an abundance of useful information organized as “Do You Know,” “Who Does What?” and “Hurricane Hints.” Tidelines also distributes information through its TidelinesAlert Twitter account which notifies subscribers about urgent local traffic, weather, and emergency conditions.
Who reads Tidelines?
Tidelines has grown exponentially since its inception in 2014. Subscribers consist mainly of Seabrook Island homeowners and renters. As of October 2021, Tidelines has 2,443 email subscribers and 614 TidelinesAlert followers.
We occasionally survey our subscribers to learn how we can continue to improve and evolve. Recent feedback from our subscribers indicated that they prefer to receive approximately three posts per day that offer a variety of content. We look to continuously learn and improve to meet the needs of our subscribers.
Where does Tidelines content come from?
Submission requests are sent to Tidelines via email using a prescribed format. The Town of Seabrook Island, SIPOA, and many different Seabrook Island organizations provide regular submissions. In addition, the Tidelines volunteer team shepherds various organizations to proactively monitor for upcoming information or events happening in the greater Charleston area.
Over the past year, Tidelines has published approximately 100 posts per month or three per day.
How do Tidelines posts get created?
Each Tidelines volunteer editor signs up to be the “Editor in Charge,” or EIC, for a week, approximately eight different weeks, throughout the year. During this week, the EIC is responsible for monitoring the Tidelines email inbox, ensuring incoming submission requests meet editorial guidelines, editing submissions, and creating and scheduling posts.
Most posts are scheduled to be published at 6:00 am every morning. Periodically, important announcements received during the day will be posted at 5:00 pm. Posts of a more urgent nature (water outages, traffic alerts, weather conditions) are published immediately. It is the EIC’s responsibility to shuffle the schedule so that we can maintain an average of three posts each day. Sometimes, a post gets published inadvertently in the middle of the day. (We are only human and mistakes do happen.)
Tidelines Team members meet twice a month to discuss ideas for future topics for posts, to review the status of various subcommittees, and to discuss any current issues and how best to resolve them.
We hope this provides you with some insight as to how Tidelines operates and some information on how, when, and why posts are published.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image credit: Tidelines WordPress library, Alamy stock photo)