Last week I was down in Huntingdon for the PCA’s newest training workshop. Not damp, woodworm or waterproofing this time, but digital media, which is Jane’s term for what some call Social Media.
As a small independent contractor I haven’t the money to spend on such courses and the PCA generously put this on free for members. I keep up to date on preservation issues, but with internet enquires forming a large part of business now, it’s only a fool who ignores this area, so I made time to attend.
Jane came along with her online PR manager Jo Foster. The basics of the world wide web were covered and then attention was given to the the four areas which need consideration:
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Customer Communication
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Brand Exposure
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Traffic to your site
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SEO (search engine optimisation).
These were discussed at length with studies on what type of media influences each.
They moved onto the main portals for exposure:
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Facebook
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Twitter
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Flickr
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Linkedin
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YouTube
The pros and cons of each were talked about of course, but Shepherd’s have cleverly designed a matrix to cross reference the first four items with each of the portals, colour coded and all……brilliant and so easy to understand. This enables fine tuning of the type of media and hosting, against the goal of traffic generation.
In addition, their was sufficient detail to cover some technical aspects, which are easily missed, like how to fine tune tagging, images, videos and build a large web presence with just a few simple steps.
The course wasn’t that well attended and those who missed out really did just that, I came home full of new ideas and with sufficient printed notes to make a difference on-line. Delegates included some of the PCA’s little guys like me and bigger players too; I was sat next to Rentokil’s attendee, she’s probably more used to having a high spec firm like Shepherds at her service..for me though, it was a rare treat.
Overall I was more than impressed and my thanks go to the PCA, Steve Hodgson and Jane Shepherd PR for taking the time to help me and my business in this way.
Bryan Hindle CSRT CSSW
