Web tips: I wanna tell you a story
Post categories: webtips
| 10:27 UK time, Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Here's an aside to our blog, How we bring stories to you, as more and more contributors have been contacting us of late asking how best to get publicity for their stories, campaigns, adventures and ideas for local action.
You can obviously tip-off the other firstly, but there's a lot more you can do.
Let's use as a study the case of Matt from Hawarden who was in touch overnight:
"I'm currently organising a 360 mile charity walk around the coastline of Wales from the 7th until the 26th of July 2008 and was wondering if I could request your help. I'm completing the walk for the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and hard of hearing or (RNID) which I feel is a great cause as I myself suffer from mild hearing loss. I'm looking for exposure about the event outside my family and friends circles in order to raise as much as possible for the charity."
So, what can Matt do to maximise publicity and to help raise more money for his cause?
1. Get a blog - there are lots of free sites even local newspapers like the and provide them as well as major sites such as . The big sites are particularly helpful because you can update you blog using or taken from other places. [We'll explain more below]
2. Next, set up an account on a photo and / or film sharing website such as and which allow you to send photos and films direct from a mobile phone or by email as well as from your computer.
3. OK, so now you've got the basics. The neat thing is sites like flickr.com allow you to post a photo from there to your blog in just a click. Why is that good? Well, you send it to the site and it deals with all the technical stuff to do with uploading and storing a photo on the web, and it means you've already boosted your profile on the web by being on two sites at once. [To link your photos to your blog just follow the tips in 'your account']
With an account on film sharing sites you can grab the code in the section marked "embed" and then add that to your blog as well.
4. If, like Matt, you're going to be on the road for a while and may not be able to sit at a computer to write long post entries for your blog, you could microblog [sharing the briefest of updates] using via mobile phone and embed the feed from that in your blog too. Then, every time you update via twitter, it updates your blog with the snippet you just shared like this one from us:
Heard the call of the peregrine falcon as I walked to the office - amazing
- posted by
To link your twitter account and blog, go to your account settings and follow the link (You can also add Twitter to your site) . It will give you the code you then need to paste in your blog. Open your blog and look to 'add feed' and then paste the code here.
5. Promote it. Now you're up and running, add links to relevant websites and suggest they back link to you. We are all local to somewhere so make sure you send your links to the relevant local Press as they maybe interested in what you're doing. Here's our blogroll of local blogs of interest.
And finally...
The great thing about all of this is that a blog serves as a diary, allowing real time updates and, once you've finished, the blog becomes an archive.
The blog and the other features will obviously allow Matt to update his friends and promote his cause to a wider audience - in his own words - and he won't have to wait for the Press or Media to do it for him. Plus, they will be able to highlight his story on their pages and link across to his site where he can ensure that it's up to date so people keep coming back for more.
Good luck.
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