by Eric Pudalov, Community Events Coordinator
As I felt the urge to write a blog entry this morning, I realized I had almost no idea what to blog about. I do know that although this is a nonprofit blog, and although we’re located in Atlanta, I somehow manage to relate everything from TV shows to movies to completely different businesses.
Therefore, I once again turned to one of my personal favorite blogs, The Fight Against Destructive Spin, for inspiration.
Yesterday, August 12, they featured a guest blogger, Kris Schindler, a managing partner of Start Thinking, LLC, a marketing, advertising, and public relations firm in Wichita, Kansas. The particular blog post, entitled Open 24 Hours: Marketing Messages Are Everywhere, drew attention to the fact that whether we like it or not, advertising is ubiquitous.
As an example, she cited the fact that her PR team stayed at a Hampton Inn recently, and how “its complimentary amenities by Purity Basics invite guests to ‘Clean your body’ and ‘Clean your face.’
While our organization, and others that provide services rather than goods, may not find our brand in supermarkets and hotels, that doesn’t mean that communication is any less important for us.
In the past, we’ve created t-shirts with our brand on them, as well as mugs, Frisbees, and other items. More recently, this blog, our main website, Facebook, and Twitter have proven to be especially useful tools.
Nonetheless, I still get the feeling that there’s more we can do to get ourselves out there to the public. Perhaps this means advertising our brand in more subtle ways, such as bumper stickers, or being present at events that reflect our cause.
We’ve already tried the banner ad/Facebook ad idea, which ultimately didn’t produce the results we’d hoped. Although a number of people clicked on the ads, not very many clicked through to our homepage, which was our ultimate intent.
We have also been discussing using videos and photos more, on both our website(s) and in print media, respectively, to better illustrate what we do.
With our “Golden Goals Awards” coming up, I would really love to advertise the heck out of it, if at all possible. Perhaps it’s about time we got around to using digital video for that purpose. This is all the more important since the awards are geared toward more than just people that GCSS serves, but anyone in the disability community.
I’m thinking that maybe a YouTube video, or a video on our main website, showing some of what our day programs do as well as illustrating the “Oscar/Golden Globes” theme that we tend toward, would be appropriate.
Perhaps it’s time to return to our “content calendar,” and see how to best use the resources we have, plus any additional ones we can drum up.
Of course, that, too, would involve its own separate advertising. Any suggestions?
Creating Opportunities for Developmentally Disabled People
Our Facebook Page
VSA Arts of Georgia
Georgia Community Support and Solutions
The Fight Against Destructive Spin
Follow Us On Twitter
Hey Eric! Thanks, as always, for including us in your post! If you don’t mind, I’m going to give you a link that gives you a good idea to feed your writer’s block. We called it “crowdsourcing the blog content” and let people tell us what they’d like to see on the blog. It worked really well and, when I don’t know what to write, I go there for inspiration. Everyone can do this really easily…and people love to give you their opinion!
http://www.spinsucks.com/spin/crowdsourcing-the-fads-blog-content/