How you can help promote this site
Written by Mark Pack on 17th December 2007 – 11:55 amTraffic levels here at The Voice have grown sharply all through the year.
We estimated last month that around 10-15% of those who will vote in the party’s leadership election are readers of this site - which is significantly higher than most (if not all) other Liberal Democrat blogs.
On the other hand, it still leaves plenty of room for growth. Which is where you come in, dear reader…
Alex Foster has put together a series of adverts and articles suitable for including in members and supporters newsletters. So (if you are a Liberal Democrat!*) why not download the promotional articles and put them to use in your local party’s newsletters and mailings?
* Or indeed if you are not, but are feeling particularly magnanimous.
EDIT: the version initially here has been superseded.
Posted in Site news
17th December 2007 at 2:30 pm
Can we please have some web banners, and a Facebook group, and a Facebook application, and a website redesign?
17th December 2007 at 6:37 pm
… and NOT .pdfs, because they suck?
17th December 2007 at 11:37 pm
What would you rather have instead, Jennie?
18th December 2007 at 12:40 pm
Anything that doesn’t take hours to load would be nice. How about good old html?
A nice little webpage that one could link to from one’s (definitely not aggregated to this site, and thus read by people who don’t read this site) blog.
Blah.
I’m being uncharitable. I just think that if you’re going to try and get a message out there it ought to be in user-friendly formats, because if it’s user-friendly then more people will use it. The less user=friendly it is, the more people will not be arsed.
But don’t pay too much heed to me; I’m not a party member, and even if I were, I’m far too lazy to be an activist.
18th December 2007 at 1:13 pm
@ Jennie. I think the idea is that this is for printed publicity material, leaflets, newsletters and similar. Most local parties do them all the time, and are frequently looking for stuff to fill space. But as I don’t have much to do with prepping that sort of thing (currently), I don’t know.
It may be of use if I start making leaflets and similar when I get involved in Calder Valley—I hear tell the house may have a shiny new high spec laptop that I might be able to play with at times
@ Alex: Is a pdf the most portable for extracting it and insrting it elsewhere? I know not these things but the source file (pagemaker?) might be worth providing as a DL. If bandwidth is an issue here, I can host it, I have unlimited BW for the next 6 months, and I’ll likely renew.
18th December 2007 at 1:21 pm
“Most local parties do them all the time, and are frequently looking for stuff to fill space. But as I don’t have much to do with prepping that sort of thing (currently), I don’t know”
We’re frequently looking for more space to fill with stuff.
18th December 2007 at 1:34 pm
Yes, darling, but printed publicity material that can ALSO be used online would be useful, n’est ce pas?
18th December 2007 at 1:41 pm
MatGB, most local parties use PagePlus 11, which can open PDFs.
18th December 2007 at 1:41 pm
Which is why I was impressed with the potential of the three websites I found for Calder Valley and Halifax—each should have contents of local focus leaflets and similar reformatted for eweb reading and posted as news articles regularly. That they’re currently dormant is a shame but something that can easily be rectified.
But promoting this site online isnt’ needed in the same way, although a links campaign for local party sites might be a plan. It’s getting the people that don’t look for party stuff online to start doing so that’ll help it grow.
18th December 2007 at 1:45 pm
Ah, see, I was thinking along the lines of getting not-party-people to read it; whereas you seem to be thinking along the lines of get-party-people-who-are-not-online-to-come-online
Apologies. Singing from different hymn sheet. Will shut up now. Think I’ve caused enough trouble for one day anyway.
18th December 2007 at 1:51 pm
No no, we’re thinking the same thing. But the most effective method of getting the news out remains leaflets through doors. Yes, most people bin them, but those that don’t might look at the website.
It’s not internal newsletters, it’s party leaflets that’s being thought of. Both local party nad non-party supporters would be good to have coming here. Which is why promoting the site would be good.
@ Ryan, that’s good to know, wasn’t sure, thx.
18th December 2007 at 2:48 pm
The PDF produced was done largely with the view - as Jennie says - of getting more signed up Lib Dems to visit us online. It’s mostly for members’ newsletters.
We will be trying to get more traffic in many ways - and your suggestions are all helpful