Branch out and have a tweet:A look at online branding and exposure in the age of digital

communication

Michelle O’BrienMarketing and Online CoordinatorEdinburgh International Festival

PART 1: An effective website

PART 2: Using multimedia to sell your product

PART 3: Email marketing

PART 4: External promotion

PART 5: Utilising social networking sites

PART 1.

An effective website

Design

• Most important info above fold

• Limit flash

• Horizontal or vertical navigation bar

• Logical progression through site

• Clear menu hierarchies

• Prominent search box or site map

Usability

• Testing– links and functionality– browsers– connection speeds– resolution

• Access• Monitor

– traffic flow– paths– drop-off points

• Feedback options• Keep fine-tuning

Effective marketing tool

• Strong branding• Consistent tone of

voice• Clear call to action• Minimum click-

throughs to purchase• Regular updates• Google Analytics

PART 2.

Using multimedia to sell your product

Try before you buy

• Video clips

• Audio

• Image galleries

• Podcasts

Promote

• E-bulletins• News updates• Spread content• Submit to directories• Inform other arts

organisations• Encourage user-

generated content • Regularly update

Don’t deter users

• Limit flash and applications

• Provide prompts for audio/video

• Complement your product

• Don’t let multimedia get in the way

• Always include your URL

PART 3.

Email marketing

Branding and consistency

• Branding– style guide– simple yet elegant– template

• Consistency– tone of voice– subject headings– mailing intervals– mailing time and day

Content & layout

• Be personal, not intimate• Keep sentences and paragraphs short • Summary of contents with anchors• Article headers and info bites with click-

through to full story • Keywords in bold for scanning• Hyperlinks = more info• Limit to 4 or 5 topics

Incentives

• Not just straight advertising tool

• Gain trust by offering value for subscription

• Run competitions and prize giveaways

• Include ‘forward to a friend’ and social networking links

• Provide teasers to entice readers to further engage

PART 4.

External promotions

Online advertising

• Increasingly important part of marketing mix

• Banners• MPU for rich media• Expandable creatives and

video overlays• Search engine results page• Advertorial• E-bulletin advertising or EDMs• Micro-sites• Social networking advertising• CPM, CPC or CPA

Promotions

• Discounts or ticket giveaways

• Arts organisations• Press competitions• Sponsor channels• Targeted

promotions to groups

Further online exposure

• PR sites– prweb.com – pressbox.co.uk

• Blog directories– technorati.com

• Twitter directories– twibs.com

• Link building: always include URL

PART 5.

Utilising social networking sites

What are social networking sites?

• Free online services• Fluid online communities with shared interests• Users build profiles and contacts, share links,

upload photos and videos, write blog entries and respond to other users activities

Twitter

• Micro-blogging• Users send and read tweets

in real time• Text-based posts up to 140

characters delivered to followers

• Applications– tweet-deck – t-whirl– twitterberry

• Over 5 million joined since February alone

• Get the word out fast

Facebook

• Large-scale site with many applications for various types of networking

• New ‘pages’ for organisations offer statistics on users

• Viral effect as users see and follow their 'friends' activities

• Builds awareness by appearing in feeds

• Recently taken over MySpace in popularity

Flickr

• Photo sharing community• High resolution, user-

friendly online galleries• Users upload, tag, comment

on, edit and share photos • Greater public access to

extensive image libraries• Tag photos with key words

to maximize search results• Always include your URL in

captions

Blog

• Contraction of weblog• ‘Online diary’ in reverse-

chronological order• blogger or wordpress• Easy to embed multimedia• Keep fresh • Monitor traffic by

embedding statcounter.com• Register with Technorati,

Blog Catalog, MyBlogLog & other niche directories

• Promote through interaction on similar industry blogs

YouTube

• Users can upload, view and share video clips

• Displays movie clips, TV clips, music videos, amateur video blogging and short original films

• Public can watch videos, while registered users can upload

• Accounts of registered users are ‘channels’

• Tag videos with key words and URLs to improve search results

Vimeo

• Video-centric social network site

• Supports embedding, sharing, video storage and user-commenting

• Options to create channels or groups

• Reputation as catering to artistic crowd due to higher resolution and better HD support than YouTube

Wikipedia

• Free online encyclopedia written collaberatively by volunteers

• Articles edited by public• Updates vetted and false,

non-factual or subjective info removed

• Check what is written about your org is correct and up-to-date

• Limited options

RSS feeds

• Abbreviation for ‘Really Simple Syndication’

• Web feed format used to publish frequently updated webpages in standardised format– blog entries– news headlines– multimedia updates

• Subscription gives ability to see updates without visiting a website

Other social networking sitesMySpace - network of profiles, groups, blogs, photos, music & videos

- more music focussed and younger demographic

Second Life - virtual world enabling residents to interact through avatars

- group activities, create/trade virtual property or travel the grid

Linkedin - business-oriented portal for professional networking

- connecting with colleagues and associates plus upload CVs

bebo - similar functions to MySpace but younger (teen) demographic

- acronym for “blog early, blog often"

del.icio.us - social bookmarking service for discovering/sharing web links

- tag and view bookmarks added by similar-minded users

digg - social news sharing site

- voting on stories/links is digging and burying

Benefits of social networking

• Market research• Increase audience reach• Improve brand reputation• Develop customer relationships and loyalty• Networking opportunities with other arts orgs• Gain credibility and trust with thought leadership• Low cost• More effective than conventional advertising• Protect your brand• Increase traffic to website • Improve your site ranking

Effective social networking

• Define your goals• Schedule updates • Content is King• Publish specialised or additional content• Reveal ‘behind the scenes’ info• Encourage interaction through incentives• Make a policy on negative feedback• Respond quickly and publicly to contributions• Promote• Cross-promote

ConclusionNielsen Online Consumer Generated Media Report

• 78% of users download and stream content• 84% of users share content online

Getting started• what are they saying? • what are they doing? • branch out and have a tweet!

More info• eif.co.uk/interact• michelle.obrien@eif.co.uk