Blog

It’s August - summer is slipping away, and we are gearing up for a November launch date for to test the beta version of Walkalong. Beta testers are needed for this phase so that we can understand how youth see the site and how they are interacting with WalkAlong. This feedback will help us to improve the website and ensure that is achieving our goals. So, how do we attract 150 Canadian youth to help us test the site? Our committee was full of ideas.

• Having testers from different geographic regions was not seen as particularly important, but having both academic and non-academic audiences captured is very important.
• Our committee members themselves are very involved with different organizations, and would be happy to promote it.
• There are a lot of clubs and networks here are UBC who work with the mental health community. After the beta test, we should introduce the site as a tool to their employees and volunteers, and they can pass it along in their daily routines.
• Posters and advertising on public transit routes
• We were told “social media with this will be huge for you”
  
  • Facebook would help if we needed to target a specific area or demographic we were not reaching
  • Twitter- people click on Twitter links more than on Facebook, and another plus is that it that the feed is immediately sent to your email inbox
• There was a general consensus that the traditional flyers on campus were not given attention
• We could reach out to the health authorities
• We could purchase a google sponsored advertisement, so that WalkAlong will appear first in a google search even when the site is brand new

Please do check out our Facebook page and our Twitter feed and sign up to be a beta tester here [http://www.walkalong.ca/sign-your-private-beta].