1. Danielle Warby
daniellewarby.com
Social Media Marketing Strategy
March 2010

2. Executive Summary
Overview
The Sydney Fringe is a multidiscipline cultural showcase that offers our audience and your customers the thrill of
discovery and the opportunity to experience independent new works that are tangible and authentic.
The focus of the social media strategy is on developing dialogue and conversation with our key audiences and to provide
them with several ways to engage with us, and each other, around the Festival.
The strategy will assist in the long-term goal of presenting repeat festivals. An effective social media strategy will mean
the Fringe does not have to initiate momentum in the lead up to the next Festival as there will already be an established
and engaged audience.
Achieving success with social media will take time and dedicated resources on a daily basis.
What is the Sydney Fringe?
The Fringe will take place for 16 days starting 10 September 2010 in more than twenty venues in an intense
Newtown/Marrickville/Enmore precinct, all stuffed full of creative goodness.
What manner of creative goodness?
We'll range from edgy, alternative theatre to major concerts, from visual arts openings to brief encounters in surprising
places. There'll be free one-off events, all night parties, and performances of all scales in disciplines as far-ranging as:
•
visual arts
•
sports and games
•
film
•
digital arts
•
comedy
•
music
•
theatre
•
musical theatre
•
circus / physical theatre
•
dance
•
cabaret
•
children's and family programming
•
and special events
Brand values
•
•
Eclectic
•
Authentic
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Independent
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Creative
•
1
Thrilling
Local
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

3. Social Media Priorities
It’s proposed we take a staggered approach to implementing the social media strategy in order to best utilise our limited
resources and focus on the areas that will give us the greatest return on our time.
Our social media communications are divided up into three stages and five parts:
Pre Festival:
1.
artist submissions (to 1st April)
2.
audience awareness (to August)
Immediate lead-up and During:
3.
audience engagement (August and September)
Post / Long term:
4.
partner support (venues / sponsors / staff / volunteers)
5.
continued engagement with artists and audiences
Below is an outline of activities. More detailed information can be found in later sections under each social media tool.
Stage 1 (Part 1)
Now to 1st April
•
Review and approve social media strategy
•
Allocate resources and roles within Fringe staff and external bloggers
•
Provide DW with Fringe email address to set up social media accounts
•
Approach Foursquare to discuss the possibility of a partnership (DW)
•
Set up blog
•
Complete and distribute necessary Guidelines (DW)
•
Set up Facebook Page and notify Group users (DW)
•
Update Twitter design (DW)
•
Promote new social media assets on website and email
•
Continue to advise artists of submission deadline
Stage 1 (Part 2)
1st April - August
The focus of this stage is to set up new social media accounts and continue building the number of fans and level of
engagement from existing assets while planning for the intensive period of the campaign (Aug - Sept).
•
•
Add friends, contacts, etc to social media accounts using Fringe contact lists and search
•
Complete design of Fan Page
•
Promote Fan Page
•
Plan Twitter competition
•
Finalise Twitter lists for Festival partners
•
Build community links
•
Finalise bloggers and blogging timeline, match with interviewees
•
Finalise Video timeline, match with interviewees
•
Begin commenting on blogs
•
Communicate to artists the Facebook Event guidelines and begin creating Event listings
•
Work on Foursquare partnership. Finalise by July
•
Complete website integration with social media assets
•
Input venues and events into Google Maps
•
2
Set up other social media accounts: Delicious, Flickr, Vimeo, MySpace, Google Maps
Set up Online Advertising
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

4. Stage 2 (Part 3)
August – September
At this point, most social media activities will need to be performed daily and often.
•
Execute the planning outlined in the previous stages
•
Seek permission and redistribute any user generated content
Stage 3 (Part 4 & 5)
October – November
•
Wind down most communications
•
Thank relevant people
•
Seek feedback from participating artists and fans
•
Decide which assets to keep running and update website with social media integration
Assumptions
I’ve made the following assumptions in creating this document due to time constraints and other factors:
•
•
As I’ll be coordinating and implementing most of this myself, I’ve not provided much instruction. However, if
anyone needs me to explain anything further or provide any assistance, I’m more than happy to help in person
or I can provide guideline and best practice documentation
•
3
I assume we WANT to use social media so I’ve just picked what I think which tools fit best without explanation
I’ve not explained how social media marketing differs from traditional marketing or the differences in tone and
language. I assume all of you are aware of this through your own use of Facebook (and other tools). If we stick
to the Fringe brand values as a guideline, we’re on the right track.
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

5. Our Community
This section of a strategy would normally consist of an analysis of competitors and the best way to counter their
offerings. In the world of social media, which centers around conversation and community, this approach is considered
somewhat outdated.
The Sydney Fringe should not consider itself to be in competition with other arts / entertainment providers, instead, we
should look at ways to work together with others in the arts industries to promote not only the Fringe, but other festivals,
venues and artists not necessarily directly involved with the Fringe.
The aim of this approach is to:
•
Set up the Fringe as a resource for the community so in our off season, there is some interaction with our
website and social media assets
•
Increase the audience for the arts as a whole
The arts community is a strong, vibrant community with existing networks and communications channels. These existing
channels are to be leveraged and expanded to include the wider community with an interest in the arts and residents of
the inner west.
Members of the arts community who already have a strong online presence are to be engaged in conversation which will
hopefully lead to assisting with the spread of information about the Fringe online through their websites, forums, blogs
and social media.
Below are some examples of places to start and this list refers to those NOT related to the Fringe, as they will be
covered in a later section. It’s expected this list of contacts will continue to grow.
Festivals
We will focus primarily Australian Festivals but also include international festivals, particularly those heavily involved in
social media with large numbers of engaged followers.
Websites
Large International Festivals:
•
http://sxsw.com (our benchmark with respect to social media usage)
•
Further search to be conducted, suggestions welcome
Festivals the Fringe is modeled on:
•
Kris to provide details
Twitter
•
http://twitter.com/DanielleWarby/australian-festivals
•
http://twitter.com/DanielleWarby/festivals (over 1,000 followers)
Both these lists are to be duplicated on the Sydney Fringe account.
Facebook
Australian Festivals:
•
http://www.facebook.com/AustralianFilmFestival
•
Search to be conducted: 78 from facebook.com for intitle:festival intext:"location * australia" (use google)
These lists should be built and maintained on delicious (see section on delicious below)
MySpace
•
186 results for festival in Australia (use MySpace search)
Flickr
Search for Festivals by name. E.g.:
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sydney_festival
Venues
The above is to be repeated for Australian venues and their websites added to Delicious.
4
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

6. Artists
For artists using social media I’ll be relying on Fringe staff and their networks to pass on details or to add their links to the
Delicious account, follow on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace as appropriate.
Media
Included in this section are event listings websites, blogs, online magazines, journalists etc.
Below are a list of media to be added to Delicious, expanded upon and their sites checked for artists and other
connections:
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http://www.throwshapes.com.au/
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http://www.twothousand.com.au/
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http://www.thescavenger.net/
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http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/
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http://www.artfiles.com.au
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http://www.onyamagazine.com/
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http://www.sidestreetsydney.com.au
Twitter
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http://twitter.com/sydneyfringe/arts-publications
Arts Organisations
Twitter
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http://twitter.com/sydneyfringe/arts-organisations
Sponsors
I’ll be relying on Fringe staff to pass on details so I can add their links to the Delicious account and search our social
media assets.
Funding Bodies
As above.
5
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

7. Our Audiences
Our audiences are quite varied and include:
•
Initially: partners
o
o
Venues
o
Sponsor prospects
o
•
Artists
Funding bodies
Then: public
o
Arts lovers (willing to travel)
o
Popular culture lovers (willing to travel)
o
Locals (will to try something new)
o
Heavy social media users, local and with some interest in the arts (to spread the word)
Pitch to artists
•
Be part of something new & exciting & concentrated & big
•
Get your work in front of respected industry figures
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Incubator for Sydney Festival
•
We take care of much of the hassle
Public Demographics
From all over: patrons flock to Newtown arts and entertainment venues from the south (20%), the north (18%), the east
(13%) and other parts of Sydney with only 6% of attendees local to Newtown.
Well off: 28% have incomes greater than $80K pa, and 48% greater than $60K pa
Young: 40% are aged between 25 and 34, and another 27% between 35 and 44.
Role of the Social Media program
•
•
Adding extra channels of communication between artist and the Fringe
•
Directing artists towards resources
•
Connecting artists with each other
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Showing all partners we are ‘with it’
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Promote all partners to our personal networks as appropriate
•
Send out sponsor messages as appropriate
•
Listen, measure and respond (where appropriate) to buzz surrounding the Fringe
•
Raise awareness of the Fringe amongst our publics
•
6
Attracting artists missed by other communication methods
Identify user generated content for redistribution
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

8. Objectives
Below is a list of key objectives for both the Fringe as a whole and the Social Media Program specifically. Setting
objectives like number of followers or fans is problematic as there are many (some dodgy) ways to build these up and
proclaim, ‘success!’. The real measure of success is engagement but understandably, this is harder to measure. Having
said that, I have provided some numbers and provided these followers and fans are obtained by legitimate methods
(through our existing networks), we should see these numbers translate into engagement. Essentially, we would like to
see these engagement figures rise steadily in the lead up to the Festival opening.
The key objectives for the festival:
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To receive 100 - 200 artist submissions
•
50,000 festival attendees
Key objectives of the Social Media Strategy:
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2,000 Facebook Fans by Festival Opening
•
1,000 Twitter followers by Festival Opening
•
Steadily increasing number of Social Media mentions
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Deepen engagement (refer to ‘Measurement’ at the end of this document)
Current Online Communication Activities
Website: http://thesydneyfringe.com.au/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=212713897783&ref=mf
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sydneyfringe
7
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

9. Social Media Marketing Communications Plan
The following activities are proposed:
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Listening
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Blogging
o
•
Blog Commenting
Facebook
o
o
Group
o
Events
o
•
Page
Facebook Commenting
Twitter
o
Twitter Lists
•
Foursquare
•
MySpace
•
Flickr
•
Delicious
•
Google Maps
•
Video
•
Additional Activities
o
o
Email
o
•
Online Advertising
Mobile
Website
o
SEO
Listening
The single most important thing for us to do in the social media space is listen, monitor what is said about us and
respond where appropriate.
Current listening tools:
•
Social media mentions: http://socialmention.com/search?q=%22sydney+fringe%22+festival&f=rss
•
Twitter search: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22Sydney+Fringe%22
•
Monitoring Twitter conversations to and from The Sydney Festival:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from%3Asydney_festival+OR+to%3Asydney_festival
•
Google Alerts: “Sydney Fringe”
Blogging
The blogging program is to be coordinated by Maeve Marsden and myself. Whilst it is anticipated that Maeve will author
a large proportion of the posts, she will not be available until June and in the lead-up to and during the Festival, it’s also
unrealistic for her to be able to manage the 1 post a day workload for our peak period.
We propose relying on Fringe staff and members of the arts community to fill the gaps and assist with the blogging
program. Maeve has provided me with a list of contacts that I will be approaching.
I’d also suggest approaching bloggers the Fringe staff already have contact with and asking them to guest post on our
blog.
8
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

10. Suggested Blog Content
1
Frequency: Once a week
Tips on submitting
Who we’ve got submissions from, links to their sites
Who are our venues. What venues are still available. How to source your own venue.
2
Frequency: Once a week to daily (August & September)
Profile of artists
Profile of staff
Profile venues, including what’s currently on there
3
Frequency: Daily - Look for user generated content
Review of shows (look for blogs / tweets of attendees and ask them to review)
Photos from shows - Flickr feed, link to public Facebook albums
4
Frequency: as needed
Wind down blog
Thank you messages: sponsors, artists, volunteers etc
Promote next shows at key venues
5
No Action
Blog Schedule
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March: Every Friday
•
April: Every Friday
•
May: Every Friday
•
June: Every Friday
•
July: Every Friday and Tuesday
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August: Daily
•
September: Daily
•
Post Festival: As Required
Commenting on other blogs
Commenting on blogs written by artists, venues, entertainment guides, etc helps to raise awareness for the Festival and
provides us with valuable inbound links which generates traffic to our website and assist with search engine optimisation
(SEO).
Please refer to the ‘Guidelines for Commenting on Blogs’.
Myself and Maeve will be able to do a little of this and I suggest we ask staff and volunteers to help out as they are best
informed about the Festival and the arts industry. Each staff member to do this should have a profile on the Fringe
website and use this URL when leaving comments to drive traffic to our site.
Facebook
Currently the Fringe has a Facebook group. A group is a great tool for encouraging discussion and interaction but for
promotion, a Fan Page is better. Anything we post to a Fan Page will appear in fans’ news feeds and fans’ interaction
with us will appear on our fans’ profiles.
I recommend we create a Fan Page to target festival attendees and change to focus of the current group to be a
resource for artists to communicate with us and each other on the Festival process.
Fan Page
On a Fan Page, it’s perfectly OK just to predominantly talk about ourselves and those working with us.
9
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

11. Ask all staff to suggest the Page to their relevant friends and networks. Promote on emails, website and blog.
Notes:
•
When posting to the Page and commenting on other posts, all administrators post as The Fringe
•
There are two ways to communicate: status updates and email updates. Email updates do not go to fans’
inboxes but to a separate folder called ‘Updates’ which I’m not convinced gets us many eyeballs. Status
updates display on our wall and in Fans’ newsfeeds.
•
When sending email updates to fans, keep them real short. Preferably link to website or blog posts.
•
At all times we monitor and engage in conversation
•
What do we do about negative feedback? Refer to the Guidelines.
1
Send email updates: Once a week
Create a submissions tab with brief details on the submissions process, link to website and link to Group
Create a landing page tab for non-fans to arrive on. Overview of festival.
Status updates naming who we’ve got submissions from, links to their sites, general news about the festival
etc.
2
Send email updates: Twice a week
Change submissions tab info to ‘submissions closed’ (remove closer to the Festival date but before next
stage)
Status updates: Start posting events (see below), links to blog posts, festival news
3
Send email updates: Twice a week
Status updates: event reminders, links to blog posts, “tonight we’re going to see xyz, who’s with us?”
Post photos from shows, encourage staff and audience to post shows
Post links to reviews by the media
4
Send email updates: as needed
Call for opinions from Fans about events and festival as a whole
Thank you messages: sponsors, artists, volunteers etc
Promote next shows at key venues
5
Monitor
Facebook Group
To note:
•
•
1
When posting to the group, administrators post as themselves
Emails from groups go into ‘actual’ inbox on Facebook
Send email: Once a week - reminder that submissions close April 1st
Wall posts naming who we’ve got submissions from, links to their sites
Promote Group to venues looking for performers
Assist with artists connecting with one another
News from venues looking for performers
Links to website articles / blogs posts on submission process
2
10
Frequency: Once a week - how to promote show, official Fringe event listings.
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

12. 3
Encourage posting of photos and videos on our Fan page
Congratulate artists on shows
Post links to reviews by the media
4
Ask for feedback from artists
5
No Action
Facebook Events
It’s proposed that the Fringe creates event listings on Facebook for all of the events throughout the Festival. We would
then add key people from each event as administrators of their events and encourage them to promote the official event
listing to their networks. This will hopefully reduce the likelihood of multiple events being created and fragmenting the
audience.
Events are one of the easiest things for users to share through Facebook and my harnessing this, we can hopefully also
drive traffic our Fan Page and website.
1
No action
2
Create event listing for each event during the Festival as dates are confirmed.
Create images for each event using photography supplied by the artists combined with the Fringe logo
Add event organisers as administrators of their events to enable them to make updates to the information
Promote each event to our networks as appropriate - advice: we should pick and choose who we send events
to, we don’t want our friends getting annoyed by the volume
3
Post photos and videos to the event listings. Concentrate on those with more than one show.
4
No action
5
No action
Other communication on Facebook
Festival staff and volunteers should, as appropriate seek to become fans and join other groups within the arts and
participate in conversation. Guidelines can be provided on how to do this but essentially, we want to avoid any spammy
behaviour.
Twitter
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as
tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the
author's subscribers who are known as followers. Since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following
individual authors. (Wikipedia)
Some terminology (Source: http://katekendall.com/2010/03/16/twitter-noobiquette):
•
@reply = how you converse with someone
•
RT = retweet (directly quoting someone else’s tweet)
•
DM = direct message (private)
•
# = tag to collate tweets or to micro-reference your thoughts/consciousness stream
How should we use Twitter?
Twitter is primarily a tool for conversation and sharing and sometimes we can use it to promote ourselves.
The Twitter account can be utilised by various members of Fringe staff if required or content can be filtered through once
person. It’s recommended that the link on the Twitter profile points to a page on the Fringe site dedicated to Twitter. It
should contain a profile of each of the staff members using the account. Each tweet sent by Festival staff other than the
main user of the account should be followed by their initials (i.e. ^SM).
11
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

13. Building up followers and engagement on Twitter should be the main focus initially followed by providing information
about the Festival and our artists in the lead-up to and during the Festival.
We should nominate a hashtag for the festival and publicise it through twitter and on our website. Hashtags, words or
phrases prefixed with a #, are used to group posts together by topic (for example:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23sydfest) and are added to tweets. We can then use RSS feed for our hashtag to
syndicate this content on our website and in Facebook under “What people are saying about the Fringe”.
A hastag should be as short as possible so as to not take up too much room but still be descriptive and unique. We will
need to decide on one. Perhaps ‘#SydFringe’?
Twitter lists are a great way to group and promote people we follow or recommend. We are limited by Twitter to 20 lists. I
suggest we create lists for:
•
Fringe Artists
•
Fringe Venues
•
Fringe Sponsors
•
Fringe Staff
•
Australian Festivals
Twitter can be used for contests, simple ones involving retweeting, and this is a great way to gain followers and spread
the word about the Fringe. Simply offering free tickets should do the trick but before the Festival begins, we should
consider a contest offering a Festival wide pass to all events as the one thing that will get people interested more than
free stuff, is LOTS of free stuff.
Listening to conversations around keywords and responding as appropriate. E.g.:
•
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22Sydney+Fringe%22
Twitter (as well as Facebook) is a good tool for offering last minute tickets at a discount (if necessary).
Foursquare
What is Foursquare?
Source: Wikipedia
Foursquare is a location based social network and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends
and update their location.
Foursquare is also a game where points are awarded for "checking in" at venues and users can also earn badges by
checking in at locations with certain tags or for check-in frequency.
Users can choose to have their Twitter and/or their Facebook accounts updated when they check in.
Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as
suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.
Why we should seek a partnership with Foursquare
As is, Foursquare has gained some traction in the social media community but it still has a way to go. Where the real
possibilities of the platform have been shown, especially in relation to an event like the Fringe, are through it’s recent
partnership with SPIN magazine the South by South West (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, USA.
(http://www.spin.com/articles/check-foursquare-win-passes-spins-2010-sxsw-bash)
With a partnership with Foursquare we would be able to work with them on creating specific badges, run scavenger
hunts and offer a prize (say, a Festival pass for 2011) for most events attended. The ability for users to add tips (or
reviews) is also a good way for buzz to build around Festival events.
Foursquare would also offer our partner venues a way to begin playing in this space and they would continue to gain
value from the network once the Festival is over.
Lastly, no one in Australia has done this yet. It’s an opportunity for the Fringe to create something unique as location
based social networks, Foursquare in particular, are considered to be the ‘next big thing’ in social networking.
Using Foursquare without a partnership
There are two things we could do:
•
•
12
Add tips to each participating venue with the dates of shows being held there
Have venues create profiles and offer prizes or incentives to attend their events
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

14. MySpace
Yes, you read right. MySpace. Rumours of its demise are much exaggerated and since we’re talking about the arts
community, they are on MySpace in droves.
Having said that, activity on the site is low and it could be we don’t have the time and resources for this one. However,
MySpace does now have applications (including twitter integration) so time spent elsewhere can feed content into our
MySpace page.
My suggestion would be to set up a basic profile, connect with our key partners and performers, set up some integration
with other social media sites and check it occasionally. Mainly the profile would act as a placeholder and direct traffic to
our website. It’s also easy (and acceptable) to add friends of friends of friends and so on, to build up our contacts on
MySpace, it’s just time consuming to do manually.
If we have a volunteer or intern who is familiar with MySpace willing to look after this, that would be ideal.
Some numbers
•
185 results for festival in Australia
•
23 results for director in Australia
•
113 results for artist in Australia
•
11 results for venue in Australia
•
27 results for photographer in Australia
•
500 results for photography in Australia
•
100 results for arts in Australia
•
190 results for film in Australia
•
207 results for comedy in Australia
•
500 results for music in Australia
•
97 results for theatre in Australia
•
94 results for circus in Australia
•
462 results for dance in Australia
•
16 results for cabaret in Australia
•
54 results for performance in Australia
•
5 results for acting in Australia
•
8 results for actor in Australia
Some key profiles
•
http://www.myspace.com/factorytheatre
•
http://www.myspace.com/theaureview
•
http://www.myspace.com/the_red_rattler
Flickr
Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular
website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that
they embed in blogs and social media. (Wikipedia)
Flickr allows users to store up to 200 images for free. I’d suggest upgrading to a ‘Pro’ account which allows for unlimited
photo uploads and costs US$47.99 for 2 years.
How can we use Flickr?
Create an account for the Fringe and give key staff access to it to upload photos during the Festival.
Syndicate the images via RSS on the Fringe website.
Add all artists, venues, etc as contacts to the Fringe account.
Create a public group for artists and Festival goers to upload their images to. Use as a source of user generated content,
publish (with permission) on our blog, website and Facebook.
13
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

15. Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Delicious uses a
non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms.
(Wikipedia)
Delicious is a great resource for both Fringe staff and our artists, venues and festival goers and will help set up the
Fringe as a go-to resource for our audiences and assist us with our long-term goals of keeping up awareness of the
Fringe outside of the Festival period.
How can we use Delicious?
Bookmark and tag the following items and use the generated RSS feed to syndicate content on the Fringe website:
•
Third party articles about the Fringe
•
Event reviews
Bookmark and tag the following, link from the website as a resource:
•
Friends of the Fringe
o
Artists
o
Venues
o
Sponsors
o
Staff
o
Media
•
Venues throughout Australia
•
Australian Arts Organisations
•
Arts media
•
etc
Google Maps
Google Maps can be used to create a multimedia map of venues and happenings during the Festival.
We could use third party software or create our own map for embedding on the website.
For example: BlockWild is a Google Maps mashup that allows users to post, search and discover location-based,
community-generated content like events, social groups, classified ads, jobs, real estate and Yelp reviews.
The site is a great way to see what is going on around you. The site geo-locates and relies on user-generated content.
For discussion.
Video
Create a profile on Vimeo to upload video created by Fringe staff and volunteers.
Perhaps we should go for a lo-fi look (unless anyone has a contact with experience who wished to take this on?).
If any artists use or incorporate video in their work, we should look at seeing if they are able to contribute content
Videos to be embedded on the Fringe website
1
No Action
2
Frequency: Once a week
Profile of artists, rehearsals – call for artists to submit video
3
Frequency: Daily - Look for user generated content
Filming of shows, show comments from performers
4
No Action
5
No Action
14
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

16. Additional Activities
Below are some suggestions for integrating social media with existing activities. I’d like to have further discussions with
relevant people about whether this is possible and look at expanding the below.
Online Advertising
We should consider running a low budget, targeted online advertising campaign through both Google and Facebook.
This type of advertising has many advantages and considering our restricted budget, would be money well spent.
Facebook Social Ads
The targeting capabilities of Facebook advertising are quite powerful, allowing us to reach specific users. Some
suggestions would be to run campaigns for:
•
•
Growing our Fan Page
Specific events. Perhaps co-funded by artists
Google AdWords
Google AdWords could used to target people searching from in and around Sydney for events similar to those we are
presenting. Some suggestions:
•
•
Piggy back of Sydney Festival’s name to raise awareness for the Fringe
Specific events. Perhaps co-funded by artists
Email campaigns
Social media should be incorporated into email campaigns where possible to best promote our social media assets to
our existing contacts.
Something as small and as basic as a link in a sidebar will suffice.
I also advise adding sharing capabilities to the newsletter to allow for readers to share items through their networks on
Twitter and Facebook.
Lastly, we should consider updating the email signature of each staff member with a Sydney Fringe email address to
include links to Facebook and Twitter as well as the website.
Mobile Campaigns
iPhone
We should look into building an iPhone application similar to that of the Sydney Festival and the Melbourne Food and
Wine Festival:
•
http://www.melbournefoodandwine.com.au/the-festival/free-festival-iphone-app
•
http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/Plan-Your-Festival/Optus-Festival-Buddy2/
Given our resources, this may not be possible and there are several other alternatives that we could look into. For
discussion.
Website
The website is to be the hub of all social media activities, the central point that pulls the whole social media
communications plan together.
I’ve made some suggestions as to possible website content as well as laying out how we can integrate our various social
media assets with the website.
I’d like to have a chat about the website, how we plan to grow it and which of the following I’m able to implement.
Content Guideline
1
Provide submission information
Offer marketing help (see Melbourne festival), social media classes.
Introductions to other artists via twitter (create a twitter feed of confirmed artists)
15
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

17. 2
Develop a Google map of venues
Profile artists
Profile staff / volunteers
Profile venues
Profile sponsors / supporters
3
Switch focus to the blog for daily reviews, photos and video
4
Switch focus to easily maintains social media assets such as Twitter.
Continue to promote events at participating venues (through twitter with RSS feed to website).
Promote sponsors (only if we love them as this is in addition to any agreed sponsorship. don’t use this as a
bargaining chip unless you can be sure of being able to resource these activities).
Support and promote staff / volunteers with a thank you page and ‘where are they now’ including links to their
websites or social media profiles as appropriate.
5
Maintain focus on Twitter and add Delicious.
Display feeds from blogs of select artists, our twitter, RSS of Delicious bookmarks (providing resources to
artists and news about the industry)
Provide links to other festival websites.
Sign up for next years festival (email list).
Blogs
A summary of our latest blog articles should feature on the home page with a link though to the blog. This should appear
seamless to the visitor.
RSS feeds from the blogs of venues / artists participating in the Festival could also be syndicated on our site.
Staff profiles
I recommend all staff and key volunteers at the Fringe have a profile on the website. This serves two purposes, one, to
put a human face (well, several human faces) on the organisation and two, provide a way of showing our appreciation of
our volunteers and promoting the work they do for us.
Some features to be considered for each profile page:
•
RSS of twitter feeds and blog comments.
•
Links to personal / professional home page and social media profiles (if desired)
Facebook Integration
Facebook Page badge to be placed in appropriate location on the site to encourage interaction with the page and other
festival goers. Fans can join without having to click through to Facebook.
We should also look at using Facebook Connect for website sign-in. For discussion.
Twitter Integration
Twitter profile link: to twitter page on the website explaining who monitors / talks on twitter and a link to their profile.
We already have a Twitter feed from the Fringe account on the home page. In addition, we could also consider:
•
Feed of all tweets using our nominated hashtag
•
Feed of twitter lists of our artists / venues / sponsors / etc
Delicious Integration
•
Feed of any news, reviews about the Fringe
•
Link to resources for artists
‘Share this’
To enable visitors to the website and blog share content, we should include a sharing widget on all pages.
16
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

18. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is an ongoing process and many of the activities listed above, such as blogging, commenting on blogs, purchasing
Google AdWords and importing RSS feeds will assist with improving our Google rank.
In addition, I’ve outlined a few suggestions below and I’m happy to discuss this further if it’s decided we would like to
spend any significant time on SEO.
Keywords
One of the first things we need to do is to decide what keywords we would like to optimise the website for. I have made
some assumptions and come up with the following list:
•
Sydney Fringe Festival
•
Sydney Fringe
•
Sydney Festival
•
Inner West Festival
•
Newtown Festival
•
Marrickville Festival
•
Enmore Festival
Off site
Below is a list of suggested actions to be undertaken off site:
•
Locate all websites that link to ‘fake’ festival sites. Contact them and ask them to update those links to point to
our site
•
Identify relevant sites (particularly .gov and .edu) we could approach for inbound links
•
Find websites that rank highly for our keywords and using Google’s inbound link search to discover who links to
them, approach them for inbound links
Website
Below is a list of basic suggested changes to the current website:
•
•
Utilise H1 & H2 headers better. Currently the H1 header is an image with no keyword text
•
META tags: Add description to each page (otherwise Google just pulls content from the page)
•
Update the footer to read “The Sydney Fringe Festival”
•
17
Change the titles of all pages to: Sydney Fringe Festival: Enmore, Marrickville, Newtown - ‘Page Name’
Perhaps add a page about the history of Fringe Festivals in Sydney. It’s an opportunity to add keyword heavy
copy and also to proclaim we are the ‘real’ Fringe
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010

19. Measurement
In addition to keeping track of numbers of fans / followers / friends / video views for each network, I shall also provide a
weekly update of the following:
•
Number of total Social Media Mentions of “Sydney Fringe”
•
Facebook
o
o
•
Number of interactions (wall posts, comments, likes) with the Page
Number of visits to the Page
Twitter
o
o
Engagement
o
Influence
o
Generosity
o
Clout
o
Velocity
o
Retweeted
o
Referenced
o
Referencing
o
Updates
o
Lists
o
•
Impact
Hashtags Cited
Number of Blog Comments
All to be taken with a grain of salt!
18
Author: Danielle Warby
shout@daniellewarby.com
Date: March 2010