Subject: Please Contribute to "Perspectives," Abt's New Blog!
From: Thierry van Bastelaer <[email-masked]>
To: Thierry van Bastelaer <[email-masked]>
Cc: Mary Maguire <[email-masked]>, Caroline Broder <[email-masked]>, Sarah Armstrong <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:18:06 +0000

Dear IHD colleagues:

I am pleased to let you know that Abt is developing a new blog, named Perspectives, which will appear on the homepage of our website: http://www.abtassociates.com.  This blog is a channel for all of Abt to communicate our thought leadership and the impact of the important work we are doing.

Whether junior, mid-level, senior, home office, or field staff, anyone within Abt is invited to contribute to Perspectives.  Blog posts can be sole-authored or co-written, and authors can contribute as little or as often as they’d like.  We particularly encourage our field colleagues to share their thoughts, findings, perspectives, and ideas through the blog.

To that end, I would like to invite each of you to think about topics you would like to contribute to Perspectives.  Is there a hot topic your team is working on that would make a great blog entry?  Is there research with policy implications that would make sense to comment on or post on our blog?  Are there any stories from the country where you work that would inspire other development professionals?  Is there an opportunity for future engagement that we should be signaling to our clients?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, please contact me with your ideas.  To make sure that IHD contributes to the blog at regular intervals, we will agree together on a timeline for the submission of your draft.  Corporate Communications will then work with you to edit your entry, after which they will post it.

As you consider blog post topics, it may be helpful to spend some time reviewing some of our competitors’ blogs, e.g., Urban Wire (Urban Institute), or Degrees (FHI 360), to get a sense of how organizations similar to ours are using blogs, and what they are posting.  Also, the attached Editorial Guidelines describes the process for getting approvals for postings on Perspectives, and the Five Golden Rules document will give you useful pointers to write a compelling blog.

We look forward to working with you and your teams to make Perspectives a success!  As always, please feel free to contact me with any question.

Best,

Thierry

This email was sent bcc to All IHD.

Thierry van Bastelaer, PhD | Vice President and Technical Deputy Division Manager | International Health

Abt Associates | 4550 Montgomery Ave. | Suite 800 North | Bethesda, MD  20814

+1 301.347.5827 (office) | thierryvanbast (Skype)

www.abtassociates.com