Online promotion

In this day and age, there are an awful lot of ways to communicate with the audiences you want to reach. This gives you many opportunities for promotion and publicity. This is useful because it would be a shame if no one knew about your initiative or project. Thanks to the Internet and other digital applications, you can communicate more quickly and easily with your supporters. Also, the times when you can communicate are more numerous than when you can only use "offline" promotional tools. We could write a whole internet full of articles on this subject, but for this article we will focus on the most common forms of digital communication.

The website

Nowadays, an awful lot of people and organizations have their own websites. This is often the central point of promotion around an initiative or project. You buy a piece of Internet (web hosting) and come up with the right domain name. Then you set up the website with information for visitors. If you are a bit handy you can often do this yourself, but you can also hire someone else to do it for you. From a website you can easily create links to other websites or to social media. In addition, your website is an important tool for the findability of your initiative through search engines.

Social media

These days, everyone has one or more social media accounts. Think of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. New social media are being added daily. Young people in particular are often active on different social media than the established order. Therefore, always take a good look at which social media is best to use for a specific target group. There are also big differences in the use and possibilities of each social medium. Therefore, first take a good look at what you want to do and in what way you want to have contact with your supporters. Social media is a very good way to really communicate with the people you want to reach. It is not just meant to send your information, although many people mostly do that. You can easily respond to each other and it comes across as more personal than a means where you only communicate one way. You increasingly see interested parties asking their questions through social media direct-messages, for example. Make sure it does not become one-way traffic because then people drop out faster and you do not build a relationship with your target group.

Digital calendars and agendas

In another knowledge base article you will find some links to websites that include a digital calendar. Here you can often add your initiative or project for free. Always check whether it fits your initiative or project (for example, in terms of theme or region). It will also contribute to findability through search engines. This is because the number of links from external websites is an important indicator for Google and other search engines.

Online media

All journalists and newspapers are also represented on the Internet. They search for content themselves and they are pointed out by other people to interesting news events or initiatives. Therefore, the digital world is also an important part when it comes to generating free publicity. You can often easily submit things or upload your posts yourself on local media websites. Again, this ranks well in the search engines because their websites are often completely set up for that and news articles are often indexed better than advertising.

Advertising through digital avenues

There are also many ways for paid promotion through the Internet and social media. For example, you can have posts on Facebook and Instagram shown to your target audiences as a "sponsored post. You can also, for example, have a banner or article placed on a partner's website that already has many visitors. The search engines also have advertising options. In doing so, paying will get you higher in the search results.

How do you rank in the search engines?

Even without paying, there are things you can do to be found sooner through the search engines. One of the most important things is repeat business. In fact, it is good to be found through multiple digital avenues. The combination of a website and social media is always recommended. In addition, how much is 'talked about' also counts. When others mention your project or initiative through their website, it counts. There are now whole books written about 'search engine optimization' or 'SEO'. If you know little about it, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube or parties that can help you (often for a fee).

Digital content

Make sure you vary considerably in what you communicate through the digital highway. Your goal is to capture the attention of your target audience. It is more appealing to them if you use videos, photos and sounds to support your story in addition to texts whenever possible. Share many and varied messages via social media, ask questions of your supporters and let them contribute ideas or offer them a look behind the scenes.

Design

Good promotion stands or falls with the right look of your communication tools. Always think carefully about the design and layout. You can do that yourself or you can hire a graphic designer to do it for you. When designing the so-called artwork, one of the things you try to do is determine the right colors and shapes of your promotional tools. This way you can make sure that it has a unique look that suits your initiative or project. This helps ensure that your target group recognizes it, remembers it and preferably gets a good feeling about it.


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