BuzzTart

The Australian Festive Season is traditionally the time when all business goes quiet – only to wake up again on Australia Day. This period between Christmas and the end of January is a fertile time for PR professionals to be thinking about their clients’ media communications calendar for the whole year. It’s also a time when radio stations and metro dailies are crying out for topical stories.

Radio stations employ stand-in presenters during this period while newspapers and magazines often work with skeleton staff. They need ideas that are going to entertain, excite and inform.

Here are some surefire ways to increase awareness and attract media coverage from Christmas through to Australia Day.

1. Random acts of kindness
Many people are faced with personal and financial challenges at this time of year. Tell people about your charity or volunteer work and the difference you make*.

2. Trends and opinions
Tell media about your event and especially any anecdotes or strong opinions that were shared – or any trends you’ve noticed in holiday conversations. Include pics if you have them.

3. New Year sales and promotions
In January, everyone is looking for a bargain. Now’s the time to announce your special offers, deals and sales.

4. Run a competition or survey
While you have some thinking time, plan a competition with a prize suited to your customers. Surveys also work well in media – the larger the survey group the better but even small surveys work.

5. Good news week…
Are you looking forward to a prosperous New Year? Tell people about it – we all want to hear inspiring stories about business growth.

6. Take pictures and record video
Make 2011 the year when you capture everything you can as an image or video. The combination of text and video is the most powerful trend in media. Back it up by announcing your video’s existence in a news release so it will be shared widely.

7. Be bold or crazy
Do something mad, fun and not too dangerous…. Or play it safe and make bold predictions about the year ahead. As with point 6, record them on video as well as text to increase their pulling power.

* Join Donortec for great discounts on software and hardware for nonprofits.

Australian nonprofits; nonprofit technology, free marketing, free PR, free publicity, media, media release, press release, public relations, social marketing, social media

It’s open season for conferences in Australia, and I’m keeping my end up. In the past few weeks I’ve attended 3 conferences interstate, and I’m struck, even moved, by a definite trend. At all three I have been ‘reunited’ with people I have met through a web-based social network: just for example, at Connecting Up in Brisbane I met Brett Hooker of Roarz and Kim Sheree of CarpeDiem , whom I met through LinkedIn via the amazing Sonja Bernhardt (the networking guru and IT entrepreneur) .

Also at Connecting Up, I met Beth Kanter, international blogging legend, who has just encountered Australian blogging queen SilkCharm through Twitter – I met SilkCharm at the national Public Affairs Conference in Sydney after being introduced to her through Liz James of social networking business GaggleHouse (more to come soon on that subject).

Any claims that cyberspace makes people antisocial have been smashed by the social web.

I am sure all this synchronicity will have a deeper impact, let’s watch what happens next. PS: join me on Twitter

No I don’t know how it works yet either.

Australian nonprofits; nonprofit technology, CU2008, NPTech, social networks