Promoting Your Website

I. The Basics | II. Advanced Promotion | III. Evaluating Your Promotional Efforts  

Promotion and Driving Traffic to Your Web Site

II. Advanced Promotion

Create local partnerships.
Get help from other local organizations, particularly organizations that you work with already. Such partnerships provide sensible opportunities for cross-promotion -- online, in print and elsewhere - and are beneficial to all involved.

Building cross-promotional components into your partnerships and sponsorships with other organizations can be simple - other organizations link to your web site (or specific parts of your web site) and you link to their sites. Or, it can be more involved.

Examples:

• WWNO has an underwriting sponsor for their events calendar. WWNO provides a logo and link to their sponsor's web site on their calendar pages.
• WBUR partners with the Massachusetts Arts Council. Online, WBUR promotes and links to their web site, and the Council links to specific sections of the WBUR events calendar in addition to other cross-promotion.
• WNPR's events calendar, Culture Connect, was developed in partnership with Connecticut Commission for the Arts and is sponsored by Lincoln Financial. The cross promotion provided by the Commission is extensive. For example, with the Commission's support, WNPR sent out a series of letters introducing Culture Connect to regional arts councils. That mailing prompted the New Haven Arts Council to invite WNPR to attend a meeting and do a short presentation, which was well received. Many members of the New Haven Arts Council now submit events to Culture Connect.

Create a media plan.
A media plans helps you focus and work efficiently. It can be simple to elaborate.

Example: WNPR's Culture Connect events calendar has designed a comprehensive media plan. Highlights of this plan include:

• On-Air
  Scheduled promos specific to Culture Connect both on-air (daily) and on TV (weekly). They received a good response from these promos. In fact, 25-30 percent of participating arts organizations heard about Culture Connect through an on-air promo.
• Online
  Will produce branded logos, images and promotional text for Culture Connect and distribute to participating arts organizations for use on their web sites and in their newsletters.
• Print:
  
  • Produced press releases at the Culture Connect launch and issued additional press releases announcing grants received.
  • Will create PDF posters promoting Culture Connect -- simple 8 x 11 grayscale posters for participating arts organizations to print out and post.
  • Will create bookmarks for libraries to hand out.
  • Will create postcards that participating arts organizations can mail out.
  • Will place newspaper ads promoting Culture Connect.

>> III. Evaluating Your Promotional Efforts