On 5th October I made by way to JISC’s London office for a workshop on communication and dissemination. The agenda for the day can be found here, along with the presentation slides by Rosemary Stamp, who facilitated the day.
The workshop was an excellent introduction to the practical challenges of publicising a project in a competitive market place. Some great ideas can be found on Nicola Osborne’s (Social Media Officer for EDINA) very informative blog.
It was also great to meet so many people working on other JISC funded projects. I was struck by the fact that even though we are working on very different projects, the issues we face when getting our projects noticed are very much the same.
Take our blogs and Twitter hastags; we all agreed that they had been a great tool for getting information about our projects out there. But if this information isn’t interesting to the average person on the street, will anyone read it? As someone said at the workshop; “No-one really cares about your meeting or project plan, but they do care about spinning bones.”
So, when we are marketing our projects we most always think about our audience and give then a reason to stop and listen to our message. This might be an anniversary, a notable document, or an interesting use of technology. Whatever the “hook” of your project is, make sure you sell it!
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