Ideas for creating content for social media for festivals organisers - presentation for Festivals in Fife, Scotland

1. S O C I A L M E D I A F O R
F E S T I V A L S I N F I F E
C R E A T I N G C O N T E N T F O R Y O U R F E S T I V A L O R E V E N T
Susan McNaughton
March 2015

2. C O N T E N T P L A N N I N G & T O O L S
• Some ideas for planning:
• Social Media Canvas
• Mind mapping
• Content Planning Calendar
• Set up timescales for your events and plan accordingly
• May decide to focus in 2 months prior to event
• May need all year round strategy
• Partly determined by your resources
• Marketing your event may be responsibility of one person/group
• Social media for event is wider responsibility - so need process
in place for sharing with the right members of the team

3. S T R A T E G Y P L A N N I N G C A N V A S
O V E R V I E W A U D I E N C E V O I C E T E R M S C H A N N E L S
D I S C O V E R Y E X P A N S I O N C O N T E N T
O T H E R
P E O P L E

4. C O N T E N T P L A N N I N G C A L E N D A R
• You have a sample Excel spreadsheet with dates in a
column & columns for significant events and media to
be used
• If this doesn’t work for you, then create your own
methods – but make sure everyone can share as this
will be a group effort – think about Dropbox or Google
Drive for sharing

5. U S E M I N D M A P S O R D R A W I N G S T O
P L A N

6. MESSAGES ACROSS ALL CHANNELS
• Don’t re-invent messages – think of what you want
to say and the best medium to use to say it
• Who else can help you spread the message?
• Breaking down news, to spread out spreading the
news!
• Phrasing news for you to spread and for others to
pass on
• Where does social media fit into your wider
communication, PR and marketing plan?
• How can your partnerships help you spread the
word?

7. F I L L I N G T H E C A L E N D A R
• Significant events in the year – seasons, festivals
• Dates for your event
• Milestones for your event
• Significant other events in your area
• Events of interest to your specialist group
• E.g. Radio or TV programmes your audience might be interested
in
• Similar events in other parts of the country
• Regular Twitter hours - #ScotlandHour #TTOT #CoastHour

8. S O M E E X A M P L E S – 2 1 M A R C H
2 0 1 5
• Crail Festival – look for dates of similar community festivals and write
some content about them, feature artistes, photographs of Crail
• Falkland Traditional Musical Festival – check the calendars of your
artistes and see where they are before/after your event, links to
recordings, background on venues
• St Andrews Highland Games – lots of other games, always be
sharing news about sporting events, dancing events, Tartan Week
• East Neuk Open Studios – share information about your artists,
techniques, mood boards, inspirations
• St Andrews Food & Drink Festival – seek out articles about your
participants, look at food magazines, lifestyle of food bloggers, scene
setting
• St Andrews Voices - links to recordings by artistes, venue
information, behind the scenes, auditions
• Cupar Arts Festival - opportunities to create, workshop pics,

9. W H A T T Y P E O F C O N T E N T ?
• Different media will require different approaches
• Written articles
• Photography
• Videos
• Sound clips
• Content already created by others – re-use by
making comment and adding your voice

10. W E ’ R E A N E W E V E N T !
• We have no history – where do we get content?
• Use royalty free stock images to create an
impression
• http://sixrevisions.com/resources/15-best-places-for-
designers-to-get-free-stock-photos-online/
• Take close up images of some of the products you’ll
have on sale – just enough to create an impression
• Search for video/photographs taken by others at
previous similar events
• Ask participants if you can use their photos

11. W H A T G O E S W H E R E ?
• Website core place with (say) one update per week or month
• Facebook page – publish your latest web content and add some content
to get people interacting – have discussions, share photographs
• Twitter – can be more frequent updates, more sharing of content from
others
• YouTube – can collect videos from others in Playlists until you have
content of your own
• Photo galleries – set up albums within Facebook, web pages within your
site, groups on Flickr
• Pinterest - make collections of photographs others have shared to show
your vision of your event
• Instagram - mobile content key, however you can load images to your
phone then post later too

12. Likely key elements for your Festival
Printed material directs
people to Website,
Facebook, Twitter
Website content at core
Content on Website
linked to/ from
Facebook, encouraging
visits to site
Content on Website linked
to/ from
Twitter, encouraging visits
to site
YouTube hosts video content
which can be linked to from site
or other media
Flickr hosts photographs which
can be linked to/from Website
or other media.
Pinterest & Instagram
may be worth working on
too.

13. L I S T E N I N G
• You can’t be all talk! Have to
listen too
• Think about how you’re going
to do this for each channel
you set up
• Answering questions key to
helping people feel engaged
• You will also want to work out
how to measure effectiveness
of your actions

14. G E T B U S Y , G E T S O C I A L
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/SusanMcNaughton
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Susan.McNaughton.Soci
al.Media
Web: http://www.susanmcnaughton.com
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/SusanMcNaughton