Blogging first steps for small charities and fundraisers

Jo Hendry has just cycled 230 miles from the top to bottom of Wales to raise money for the charity she works for, Crossroads in the Vale.

She’s not a Twitter, Facebook or social media addict and she’s never dared look under the bonnet of a website.

Now she’s a confident blogger whose Wheels across Wales site played a key role in raising the profile of her challenge and charity, welcomed scores of comments from supporters and helped raise well over £3,000. Apart from an investment in time and enthusiasm, the project cost precisely £0.

So what could other small non-profit organisations or individual fundraisers learn from Jo’s experience? (more…)

The Printed Blog is dead. Here’s to have-a-go hero Karp

The Printed Blog is no more. After six months, 80,000 print copies and 100,000 downloads, founder Joshua Karp has pulled the plug on the world’s first newspaper based exclusively on blogs and user-generated content.

Despite “signifcant personal investment”, the project simply ran out of money. But, says, Karp: “I may be nuts, but I have zero regrets.”

I don’t think Karp is mad – I think he’s a hero. And he’s exactly the sort of person who will define the boundaries of tomorrow’s local media by having a big idea and the balls to see it through.

In a lengthy and heartfelt goodbye on his blog, Joshua also runs through the lessons he’s learned. Far from acting as a warning to other have-a-go heroes, they should serve as inspiration. (more…)

Jo makes her stand on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth

I recently wrote a joyful post about self-styled “itinerant creative person” Jo Roberts. She’s the artist leading the Corby Press project … helping Corby launch its new multi-million swimming pool complex with posters made by community groups using blocks of wooden type.

She was also over the moon when I last spoke to her, having just bought a 1866 Albion printing press weighing 17cwt. A woman who like to makes an impression, clearly.

So it came as no great surpirse to learn she is taking part in  Antony Gormley’s astonshishing One & Other project in Trafalgar Square. This is the brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT project that will see a different person (chosen at random from around 16,000 applicants) take their place on the empty fourth plinth every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break. (more…)

Michael Jackson ‘collector’s item’ digital edition showcases some fancy publishing footwork

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been inundated with online-only subscription offers to my favourite magazines.

It’s no surprise. With publishers facing falling ad revenues, digital editions are manna from heaven. They cost peanuts to produce; they’re oozing with green credentials, and instant delivery to your inbox cuts out White Van Man, waste and a mad scramble for shelfspace.

They’re also fully searchable (which feeds a legacy archive) and carry social bookmarking and sharing tools – so something that started life as a humble PDF suddenly gains an inbound marketing leg-up.

From a reader’s perspective they give you what you always had from your lifestyle or gadget mag … with the benefit of video, the aforementioned social media tools, the option to print all or bits of it, plus access whenever you want, wherever you want. They’re usually cheaper. And you can even have the mag read to you by Joanna Lumley (I could be lying there. But I’d subscribe to Crochet Quarterly for life if I could have her read it to me at bedtime). (more…)

Journalists: An army of secret inbound marketeers

Fascinating. Over the last few days, I’ve chatted to a UK regional development agency, a charity and an international media training organisation about the changing face of communication. In all three cases, the conversation ended on the same theme: inbound marketing.

It’s the practice of being found and valued by your target market, rather than just throwing your product, service or message at it like boiled spaghetti and hoping it sticks (that’s the outbound model we’re all used to).

For me, inbound marketing is as much an attitude as a toolkit. I mean, who’s not nervous about navigating through the swirling solar system of social media, information moving at lightspeed and technology that changes constantly? Look on inbound marketing as just a different sort of map for a different sort of journey. (more…)