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Attracting People to Appleby and Eden Valley.
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Contents
1.
Introduction
2.
How to use social media, this website and other digital
techniques
3.
For event organisers: How to use
#westmorlandevents
4. For Hotels and B&Bs: Include our events
in your website
5. For shops, pubs and cafes: Tweet
using #shopappleby
6. Appleby's Digital Strategy:
Understanding the big picture
7. Eden Valley's Digital Strategy:
Stronger Together
8. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Appleby and its surrounding villages are brimming with natural and
historic interest. Its community of businesses and organisations host a wealth of
interesting and varied
activities. While it's not difficult to track down Eden Valley's
places of beauty it is less than obvious what's going on in the community,
both for its residents and visitors.
One of the criteria people consider when visiting or settling
in a region is the
vibrancy and variety of its community and entertainment. If the valley doesn't
make its attractions and events easy to find we risk other destinations taking
the lion's share of visitors and new residents and the
prosperity they could
bring.
What follows are the components of a digital strategy for Eden
Valley, its towns and villages that address these issues. |
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2. How to use social media, this website and other digital techniques
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It's not easy to gather an audience to which you can market your
products or events. Very few businesses
and organisations will be able to gather and hold an
audience on their own. However, by
combining our individual contributions we can create an
interesting package of content to attract an audience we can all
share.
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Use Twitter as part of a
content distribution strategy, Facebook for broadcasting
content and
Google for explicit searches to publicise your business
and events.
This website uses Twitter and Facebook to capture events for
publication but we rely on you communicating them correctly
using Twitter #tags and Facebook event geographic locations.
Using Twitter:
If you want to promote an event simply
Tweet its details with a large format picture, ideally square, using the hashtag
#westmorlandevents. Your event will be:
1. Captured by
@applebycumbria in Tweet Deck
2. Depending on the nature of the event, published on
Appleby's and/or
Eden Valley's Events Calendar
3, Indexed by Google within a few days of publication
4. Highlighted in Google to create 'Rich
Snippets' that are distributed by Google is searches
5. Depending on the event added to
Appleby's or
Eden Valley's Twitter Event Collections
6. Distributed automatically to partner websites across the
valley like
48 Boroughgate B&B Tweet at least three weeks before the event so that Google
has the opportunity to distribute your event.
Using Facebook:
If you are creating public Facebook Events
make sure you use their drop-down list of locations, e.g.. type
"Appleby, Cumbria" in the event's location field and then select "Appleby, Cumbria, United Kingdom"
from the drop-down list. Doing this means Facebook can, and
will, push your event for FREE
to the 70,000 Facebook users who live within 35 miles of
Appleby. Create your Facebook event at least three weeks
before the event so that infrequent Facebook users have the
opportunity to find your event.
If you have a website use Facebook share buttons and
communicate page content via
Open Graph
commands. Please write to editor@appleby-in-westmorland.org to request a FREE
introduction to Open Graph and other social media techniques.
Using Google: Google provides a number of services to
help people discover your business and its events. It's
unlikely you will use Google's 'Rich Snippets' in your
website. That's OK because we do that on your behalf. There
are other services Google offers which you should use on
behalf of your business:
1. Put your business on Google Maps
2. Understand how to deploy SEO techniques within your website
3. Don't use graphic posters in your website to communicate
content. Google cannot index it.
4. If you have a content rich website use an XML sitemap to
communicate frequency and priority of its pages
These techniques are too complex to discuss here. Please write
to editor@appleby-in-westmorland.org to request a FREE
introduction to them. |
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If you run a
shop,
cafe,
service company or
local organisation, then a picture representing your
business is fed randomly into the right-hand column of articles on this website. The
picture is linked to your web space i.e. your website, social
media site or an article about your business. As we publish more and more
articles about Appleby and Eden Valley your business will
be seen by more and more people, hopefully bringing them face
to face with you. Below is a random selection of pictures
representing some of Appleby's local organisations. Click one
of these and it will take you to the organisation's web space.
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Marketing is about reaching out to new customers, gradually
getting into their heads so when they need the thing you
sell it's your business they think of. One of the ways to do this is
write about your product in a knowledgeable and engaging
way. The town's website can help with that by
publishing
articles you write. Articles (advertorials) like, 'The 10 best ways to...'
are popular. |
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3. For event organisers: How to use #westmorlandevents
To get your event on the No.1 ranking website for 'Appleby Events' we recommend you
TWEET using these parts: |
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Keep the title of your event short e.g. "Garden Open Day". Ideally the
title should be no longer than 25 characters, including spaces.
This is because the text of the title may eventually
appear in google as a live 'Rich Snippets' link. If the
title is too long then it will be cut down to 25 characters. |
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The date of the event e.g. 30th September |
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The time of the event e.g. 10am or 10:00 or
including an end time 10:00 -16:30 |
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The location of the event e.g. 27 Bongate,
Appleby. |
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The price of the event e.g. £5 child £2.50
If the event is free say so |
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Twitter provides 280 characters but for some events this
might not be enough space, so include a link to a web page or
Facebook event. |
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Use the hashtag #westmorlandevents so this
website's editor and others can find your event. |
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It's better for your business or organisation if readers see your tweet with
your logo rather than @applebycumbria's. We can only use your
tweet in the collection distributed to hotels and B&Bs if you
tweet using the same professional style the town tweets
with.
Tweeting an A4 type poster designed to be read on a
notice board is not an effective way to communicate to people
using a smartphone. The content of a graphic poster can't be
read easily on a phone and it can't be indexed by search
engines like Google.
Tweet with a large (600px)
square image representing the event.
Generally it is MUCH better if the image does not contain text
unless it's large, bright and bold (see left). A lot of text
on top of a photographic image is difficult to read on a
phone.
If you tweet using the same style as the town's tweets, with
icons to represent date, time, place, price, link, telephone
etc. then we will use your tweet directly in the events
calendar. This means it will appear on
the valley's partner hotel and B&B websites. Using icons as we do
gives you more space for your message saving you from using
words and phrases like "call", "tickets available at", "held
in" etc. all of which will cost you an extra 30+ characters
out of the 280 available to get your message across.
If you don't have image cropping software you can crop
pictures via imageresize.org.
If you need help using the cropping service contact editor@appleby-in-westmorland.org |
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4. For Hotels and B&Bs: Include our events in your website
At the moment visitors to most Hotel and B&B websites will find
"Things to do" and "What's on" pages looking
out-of-date, sparse or uninviting.
This website maintains the largest collection of
events in Appleby and
Eden Valley, typically about 150 of
them. The collection is always up-to-date with new events added on
a daily basis.
To add events to the collection organisers only need to tweet
details of the event with the hashtag #westmorlandevents. This is
worth the effort because:
1. Appleby's Events Page ranks No.1 in Google.
2. The event tweet will appear on partner websites around the
valley.
Appleby's Events Collection is easily displayed in any website
using a single line of code. The more Hotels and B&Bs that include
the calendar, the more attractive it is for event holders to tweet
using #westmorlandevents knowing their event will be seen on
many websites across the valley.
It's a positive reinforcing circle of benefits, but only if Hotels and B&Bs add
their town's or the valley's calendar to their
website. The one line of code
needed to display one of the calendars is available below.
An event calendar is available for each town and the valley covering the area
defined by
three 10 mile circles around the valley's three towns.
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Appleby |
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Eden
Valley |
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Kirkby
Stephen |
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Penrith |
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Which ever calendar you choose, it's a win-win-win situation. Hotels present a vibrant valley with
lots to do. Event holders get more people to their events and
Appleby, and its villages, attract more visitors and prosperity.
You can see what the Appleby calendar looks like on
48 Boroughgate B&B.
The graphic below represents the events distribution strategy. It
has hot-spots taking you to the live implementation of these
services. |
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5. For shops, pubs and cafes: Tweet using #shopappleby
Traders (that's shops, restaurants, cafes, galleries and market
stall holders) can all tweet a message about some aspect of their
business using the hashtag
#shopappleby.
The tweets are curated
by this website and fed on to this website's
home
page,
shop and cafe pages. The same collection of tweets will be
promoted via QRCodes in shop windows together with the QRCode
for valley's events.
The format of the #shopappleby tweet should follow this guideline:
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Traders are assigned a day on which to tweet
to ensure a steady stream representing 'The High
Street'. |
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Traders should try to keep to the
assigned day and not use #shopappleby more than once per week. |
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Traders must tweet from their branded Twitter
account, not their private account. |
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Tweet using one large landscape rather
than a portrait picture. More than one picture does not
display well. |
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The tweet is NOT intended to communicate an
'offer' although making the occasional offer is OK. |
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The tweet should not contain more than one
other hashtag e.g. #shopappleby and
#visitcumbria. |
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If you can, try to craft an engaging, full and
interesting tweet rather than just a short phrase. For
example if we had a cobbler in Appleby,
they might tweet:
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I often wonder if the shoes that find
themselves as neighbours on my shelf ever greet each other if
they happen to pass by in the street. Bring your shoes to us to
meet other locals. Who knows who you might meet on my shelf. #shopappleby |
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Which is much better than: |
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10% of shoe polish. #shopappleby |
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Hashtags are only of any value if they are used as part of a
campaign, as in #shopappleby, or if the hashtag is already
popular, as in #visitcumbria. For a list of popular business hashtags see
Hashtags For Likes. |
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We aren't all accomplished photographers.
Thankfully you can find licence free pictures via google, ones that have
been "labelled for reuse", as in this search for
flowers.
The owners of these pictures have already given you permission
to use them for your business. |
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6. Appleby's Digital Strategy: Understanding the big picture
This website isn't just a website. It's a strategy. A collection
of tactics and services to bring people together, providing them
with access to information, capturing their experiences, sharing
their views and feeding them with relevant, useful and interesting
content. It's a reflection of what goes on in the real world, but
bringing all that activity together in one place so residents and
visitors alike can see how vibrant a community Appleby and it's
surrounding villages are.
Below is an interactive graphic that represents most of the
components of this website and its supporting social media. Each of the eight components is discussed here,
including the
flows of information between them. Collectively these feed content
to 'The Public'. An explanation for each part is
given below. You can move your cursor around the graphic
looking for hot-spots that will, with a click, take you to the
live content it represents. |
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We start with the website represented
by four categories of content, namely
old pictures,
events,
shop messages and
articles. The content for these comes from the community
via partner posts (see No.3), Tweets using the hashtag
#westmorlandevents (see No.7) and 'The Public'. The shopping
messages are displayed on the website's home page as a
Twitter collection (See No.6.1) |
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This is the
Town's Facebook Page where content (articles) from
residents, traders and local organisations are shared with
followers of the page. A Facebook page is often the first
taste of content someone will discover. It is one of the ways
'The Public' will discover the content available on the
website, the other being searches via google or notices in
traders shop windows advertising via QR Codes. |
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Partner organisations give a
commitment to provide regular content. In this example it's
pictures of old Appleby published in the
town's Facebook Group at No.4. The group posts are indexed on
this website so they can be searched based on some
criteria. In this case the picture's 'decade' and 'location'. |
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The town's Facebook group allows residents,
and visitors if they would like to join, the opportunity to
discuss local issues or share pictures of the valley etc but
also to receive notices from the administrators about upcoming
events. It also acts as a
help service and as such has already reunited
lost family members. |
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Traders, i.e.
shops,
cafes & pubs, can tweet with
#shopappleby collectively creating a stream of content
that 'The Public' can use to find out what's available on
Appleby's High Street. These tweets are filtered at No.6.1
providing content for twitter and non-twitter users alike on
the town's website. |
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The tweets using #westmorlandevents and #shopappleby
are curated by the town's twitter account. Curating the tweets
from the town's traders and local organisations prevents
spurious content being driven to the town's website. As part
of this strategy the town's shop windows will display QR Codes
linked to the twitter collections of event organisers
#westmorlandevents and traders
#shopappleby. |
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This is the collection of users that host
events. It includes local organisations, businesses, traders
and artisans e.g. Appleby's
Remote Cinema and the
Eden Valley Trust who use #westmorlandevents to get their
events included in the town's calendar. |
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The collection of event tweets at No.6.2
can be embedded into any other website. This allows B&Bs and
Hotels to include Appleby's events in their websites so
prospective visitors can see what's going on in the valley.
This means that when an organisation tweets an event with #westmorlandevents
the notice appears on many websites across the valley such as
The Barn at Well Green in Great Asby. |
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7. Eden Valley's Digital Strategy: Stronger Together
The contents of Appleby's digital strategy (above) is represented
by the bubble 'A' below. Similar digital strategies can be
implemented for Penrith 'B' and Kirkby Stephen 'C', defined by a 10 mile radius around each. The
common thread for
these is the online magazine
Eden Valley
Eye and its Facebook group
I Love Eden Valley (launched 4th March 2019). 'I Love Eden
Valley''
provides a place for residents and visitors to
share their pictures of the valley. Importantly tourists can
ask residents for recommendations for activities, events,
accommodation and walks etc.
The full geographic reach of the three settlements is shown
here. They collectively cover Eden Valley to the northern
limit of Eden District, including the eastern edge of the Lakes.
Each settlement's events calendar will
include small local events within their 10 mile scope.
Eden Valley's events calendar will only publicise the major
events within the scope of all three settlements.
Where possible Eden Valley Eye will include events shared via Twitter by the three settlements using
their respective hashtags, namely
#westmorlandevents (Appleby), #penrithevents and #kirkbystephenevents.
Eden Valley Eye will write articles about the Good Life, Town Life
and Country Life within the scope of Eden Valley and its
settlements, sharing them in the group 'I Love Eden
Valley' and offering articles to the national press.
The name of the valley's group, 'I Love Eden Valley', has been chosen to
mirror the
very popular 114,000+ members Lake District Facebook group called
I Love The Lake District. |
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8. Conclusion
I hope our combined efforts expressed through a collection of
content rich websites and social media venues opens up
communication between you, residents and visitors to Eden Valley.
The digital strategy's goal is to get more people to visit Eden Valley and its towns, spend money and come
back for more. Take a good look around this website and if you have
any ideas or need any help then feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Oliver
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