Scottish Running Guide - Spring Edition

[Sunlit Forres]

To all Scottish clubs:

Scottish Running Guide are preparing the spring edition for publication. It's free to have your events listed in the mag, which is widely distributed round the running community free of charge. I'd like to encourage SOA clubs to submit details of their events. I put Moravian's on there from time to time for example http://scottishrunningguide.com/race_listings.php/09/02/2014/altyre_2014__moravian_orienteers_national_ranking_event.

Create yourself an organiser's account http://scottishrunningguide.com/organisers/login.phpand it's a simple process from there. To have your event included in the April to July event list, you need to submit details by 17 Jan to allow for checking by the final copy date of 24 Jan.
http://scottishrunningguide.com/

And while you're at it why not advertise in Runner's World too http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/events/addeventnonmember.asp

[Sunlit Forres]

There is also a http://northernrunningguide.com/race_listings.php/03/2014 and http://southernrunningguide.com/

[graeme]

And while you're at it why not advertise in Runner's World too http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/events/addeventnonmember.asp

Because I don't have a subscription?
Would anyone like to post a RaceTheCastles notification for us?

[Sunlit Forres]

I don't subscribe to the mag either Graeme but I created an account a few years back to register the Moray Forest Runs series. Anyone can create an organiser's account as far as I can see. Nowadays I add the occasional O event every now and again when I have the time. Frankly I doubt that having orienteering events listed in Runner's World will produce many new punters, but it's free publicity.

[graeme]

OK, it asks for subscription number but then ignores it.

[MikeShires]

Frankly I doubt that having orienteering events listed in Runner's World will produce many new punters, but it's free publicity.

I've been listing all TVOC's events on Runner's World for the past 18 months or so and, according to our event feedback forms, we've had at least a dozen runners come due to seeing them listed on here. So it's definitely worth doing, as it's free - although it depends how you describe them. I market ours as 'No ordinary run! Orienteering at...'.

Not only is Runner's World worth doing, but there are several other running websites where I also list all our events. Our research shows that website listings accounted for 11% of our newcomers last year - so, of the 300 or so runs we had from IND competitors, around 33 came after seeing online listings.

The websites I chose were:
Runners World (definitely worth doing, as many running clubs take their event listings off here, as feeds directly to their own websites)
Find A Race
Running Diary (excellent website, as they email everyone with your event details who has registered to receive such details - we had around 150 emails sent out for each event)
Good Run Guide (costs to subscribe, but you can get a free month membership, so I joined for free and listed all our events for the next year!)
Britain On Foot
Race Calendar
Women's Sport Network

Together with around 30 other website listings (which were more family activity related), these formed an important part of our recent marketing activity.

[Sunlit Forres]

I do agree Mike. However, you could spend half your life adding events to all manner of sites. Most clubs are unlikely to have that luxury. I agree with you about Running Diary. Their race alerts are very good. I guess if all clubs had someone who could dedicate most of their waking hours to decent publicity I'm convinced attendances would rocket. PR is simply something that orienteering plc is not, as a general rule, very good at. Perhaps because it's hard enough work staging events and many of us fret a bit too much about the technicalities. Fortunately most of our events are top notch, and when we do get newbies to attend, they tend to be the best advert of all - especially when a club has a culture where members are encouraged to engage with newcomers, and committee members introduce themselves to anyone they don't recognise. Moravian does this, and the 8 new members as a result of last Saturday's event is not untypical.

Has anyone has much joy from BBC Things to Do? I've tried a few events on there but I don't think it's had much of an impact.

Back to Scottish Running Guide. With some useful advice from SOA's Communications Director Ross McLennan, I've submitted an article to SRG. It seems to have gone down OK. The reply from editor Terry Brennan is encouraging:

"Thanks again for your help with this and you’ve planted a seed in my mind about how we handle orienteering in the future."

I'm intrigued. Keep those event registrations coming all you Scottish clubs!

[SeanC]

It is true that most clubs don't have a publicity officer, and many are doing no publicity (to non-orienteers).

Publicity could be seen as tedious admin work. But clubs seem to manage to do other boring admin jobs to a high standard, land access, accounting, risk assessment.

I think the problem is with club leadership (I mean this in a friendly way). Committees will rightly ring the alarm bells if the accounts are a mess or land owner liaison is haphazard, but if there's not much publicity there is often much less urgency.

I'm hoping Mike will cheer us up and highlight some of his publicity techniques that don't take much time. I suspect facebook advertising isn't that time consuming. I know Runners World allows you to re-use event details which speeds things up. With say 4 hours a month what can be achieved?

This is also an area where BOF and/or the regions can also take leadership, to spread best practice and ideas. There was some talk on this at the BOF development committee a few years ago and everyone was keen on the idea.

[MikeShires]

I would agree with you Sunlit Forres, but there are clever ways of entering event details on multiple websites at once. Many websites allow you to copy event details from an event to a new one, thus you only have to change the date and venue details [Edit: as Sean says above]. For others, opening up the 'add event' link on a dozen tabs at once and then just copying each section of text into each tab takes no time at all. I keep a Word document with various paragraphs describing our events, which I just copy the most appropriate paragraph from (be it targeting runners, families etc), straight into a website listing, and then just duplicate that for a dozen events or so. That way, I find that entering a dozen events takes around 5 mins per website. I have very limited spare time myself, but a half hour here and there works wonders.

I've also found that local magazines take their own listings from event websites - we had a family come to an event last year who had seen the event advertised in 'Families magazine', which I'd never heard of! It turned out the magazine had taken their event listings from the local AONB conservation board website, on which we were listed. A local newspaper also got in touch prior to one event last year, as a reporter had seen the event listed on their website. We've also had interviews (one live and one recorded) on the BBC Radio Oxford prior to our last two events, as the radio station saw the event listed on the local Council website, and contacted us. Website listings definitely have a lot of good knock-on effects.

Re. BBC Things To Do, we've been regularly getting 2 or 3 people at each event who say they came because of the event being listed on there. I even had a couple of emails from the BBC Things To Do team last year, saying that our events were among the 'most looked at' events that weekend, which was surprising, but shows that the listings do attract attention. Good photos are essential for BBC listings, as that's what attracts people's attention - they need to be 608 x 342 pixels.

[MikeShires]

Hi Sean. I think you're right that publicity is seen by many as a tedious office-like role. As I have a background in marketing, I guess I'm lucky, and I get a genuine buzz out of turning up to an event and seeing loads of newcomers and queues at the registration tent! (not sure those club members manning the tent would agree though...!!)

FB advertising is definitely one of the less time consuming tasks - I just pause and un-pause an advert every few weeks, running it for a week or so prior to an event. So that probably takes up a few minutes a month! Running 'promoted posts' is also quick and easy to do - either promoting direct to fans of the page, or to those in a particular area, with particular interests.

One other thing I've done on FB is to join lots of local groups - be they event groups, local interest groups, etc, where people post details of forthcoming events and activities. Some of the Oxford-based groups have around 6,000 members! So, spending 5 mins posting details of the next orienteering event, with a link to the FB event page, is a great, quick and free way of spreading the word. It does seem to generate interest too and has resulted in some newcomers coming along.

Also, emailing pdf flyers to local running clubs is quick to do - I just write one email, attach the flyer, and then forward that individually to each running club secretary (as I like to send personal individual emails, rather than spamming a load at the same time!) - I had good feedback from several secretaries and many running clubs posted the flyer to their online forums. This is partly what resulted in a greater number of runners at our last event than previously.

[MikeShires]

PS sorry for hijacking your thread about the Scottish running guide....!!

[Sunlit Forres]

One other thing I've done on FB is to join lots of local groups - be they event groups, local interest groups, etc, where people post details of forthcoming events and activities. Some of the Oxford-based groups have around 6,000 members! So, spending 5 mins posting details of the next orienteering event, with a link to the FB event page, is a great, quick and free way of spreading the word. It does seem to generate interest too and has resulted in some newcomers coming along.

That's a dead good point Mike, and one which even I have latched on to. Here in sleepy Moray we have FB pages such as We Heart Moray that has 3,500 followers. They (unprompted) put up a flyer for the event I'm running with Lossie High School which I've decided to "share" on our own page and pay £6 to promote to a hand-picked audience.

I note that the TVOC FB page is always current, with regular additions (and an amazing 452 followers). I suspect this must be a great way of keeping pulling people in. I always refer people to Quantico Orienteering Club in the USA. They used to be a pretty "standard" club, but with some great marketing and imaginitive use of Facebook they're positively booming (almost 1,000 followers). It's obvious thay have someone with superb marketing and design skills (matched by passion for O). Not many clubs are so fortunate but I do agree with Sean that club leadership should start taking much more interest in how the club is promoted and viewed by the outsider. Using Scottish Running Guide (attempting to stick marginally to the thread!) is just one way of many, but what we should all remember that a club with 100 members is a club with 100 publicity officers. Everyone can do their bit in their own way and that's a culture we need to try to develop and encourage.