Social Media is on Song

My internship has been keeping me on my toes with new and exciting ways of thinking about communication and social media, and how these differ between the worlds of personal and professional.

One of my ongoing tasks here at Zaccaria has been updating the company's social media sites, namely Facebook and Twitter. In the live music and entertainment industry, these two communication platforms are imperative - customers and fans want information that is interesting and timely, and they want it often! As Zaccaria manages several events simultaneously, there are a number of things to consider when managing Zaccaria Events Presents Facebook and Twitter Pages. I will use any time I get (which is not often!) to scan the internet for music news and anything that might be relevant to our upcoming concerts or events.

On the Zaccaria Facebook page, my access as an "admin" allows me to see how many people our posts are reaching, the percentage of people engaged in our posts, the location of people who like our posts and our page, our most popular posts and the trends of our online marketing activity over time. This data allows me to strategise future posts - we are able to determine, before we post them, which updates are going to appeal to our target audience. One particularly important aspect of using social media as a marketing/PR/communications platform is ensuring the content is relevant. For example, if we announce the pre-sale of say The Presets tickets one morning through an eDM to our entire Zaccaria e-mail database - we then follow this activity up with a Facebook post with similar information in the eDM. I have realised the importance of, and how effective it is, to strengthen one medium by backing it up with a complimentary form of communication. Here is the Facebook post I released after the announce of The Presets on-sale.

This post reached 600 people after the first two hours of posting - a figure which is consistent with the fact that we announced through eDM the on-sale that morning.

While on the topic of being timely and relevant, another tour Zaccaria is promoting is Human Nature: The Christmas Tour. Zaccaria has been organising a number of publicity events to promote the tour, one of which was an TV appearance by Human Nature on Better Homes and Gardens. Following this appearance on a Friday night, I posted on Zaccaria's Facebook and Twitter pages to remind the public and our target audience of the tour. The idea is to keep people thinking about the event - it doesn't have to always be about announcing tickets on sale, but rather keeping our audience in the loop with the latest news and happenings of Zaccaria and the talent we are currently representing. Below is my Twitter post from this morning, which I was excited to see was "favourited" by Human Nature - meaning the word is getting out.

So there is my brief reflection on the importance of social media and how it can be utilised in a more effective way to maximise publicity by supporting another form of communication. My experience at Zaccaria has taught me that as PR professionals we cannot rely on one form of communication - we need to focus on creating a diverse, integrated marketing communication technique in order to resonate well with our stakeholders.

Is anyone else using social media at their internship, and what insights have you noticed from using it in a professional manner as oppose to just generally stalking people?

Hope to hear from some of you!

Delta

Summer Series - The Presets at Hotel Rottnest

The weeks are flying by at Zaccaria Concerts and Touring. We have been incredibly busy in the office lately with the finalisation of Kate Ceberano's WA tour, having sold sell-out shows in Perth, Albany, Bunbury and Mandurah. My last post described how we were experiencing difficulty with selling these shows and there was a chance of cancellation, however we pulled through and all concerts were a success.

Following on from this, we have been busy with the planning stages of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest as part of Rotto Live summer series - a subsidiary of Zaccaria Group and Hotel Rottnest together as partners. We announced The Presets exclusive WA performance last week and are promoting it with the tagline "The ULTIMATE Sunday Session", which my manager Pam and I decided on as a catchy and effective selling point. This particular event is safe in terms of ticket sales - at Zaccaria we know it is going to sell out because of the nature of the performing artist and the location, time of year, weather - so aside from sales, our main aim of this campaign is to raise awareness and hype of our brand Rotto Live and also our main company, Zaccaria Group.

The artwork my manager Pam and I came up with as the official promotional poster of the event

One of the main ways of raising awareness of this event and hence the Rotto Live summer series and Zaccaria Group, is by gaining the support of a significant sponsor. A key way of getting a sponsor on board is to design and develop an effective proposal, with the aim of winning the sponsor company's support because of the exciting content and details revealed in the proposal. Zaccaria's Marketing Manager Pam delegated to me the task of designing and preparing the proposal to send to Telstra Thanks in support of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest. Telstra Thanks is a promotional branch of Telstra, aimed at Telstra customers and poses as a customer loyalty program, much like Virgin's Velocity Rewards system. Telstra Thanks offers their customers the advantage of pre-sale tickets as a way of saying "thanks for being with us", where customers are able to redeem points and benefit from other loyalty-type promotions. For Zaccaria, having Telstra Thanks as the major sponsor of this event is a huge deal - we are having our event and our brand sent to Telstra Thanks WA customer database of over 50,000 people, which for us means a sell-out ULTIMATE Sunday Session at Hotel Rottnest. For Telstra, they invest a significant amount of money into our event which we use to help promote the event. Telstra then gains from the brand association with not only Zaccaria Group, Hotel Rottnest and Rotto Live, but also with The Presets.

So the preparation of this proposal to Telstra Thanks saw me conduct significant research on The Presets to develop a profile for the group, so that Telstra Thanks could identify in one or two paragraphs the significance and prestige of The Presets. I also had to search for recent artwork and photography to use in the proposal for the design and layout, which I developed in Microsoft Powerpoint and saved as a PDF - a very effective way of producing a succinct, professional looking proposal. The proposal also included tourism information on Rottnest Island and the WA market, so as to "paint the picture" for Telstra Thanks and basically outline the environment of the entire event on paper for them, to create an idea that would be as visual as possible.

After finishing the proposal and sending to Pam for review, we sent the proposal to the directors of Zaccaria for final approval, and then e-mailed the final version to the sponsorship and marketing coordinator at Telstra Thanks. Much to my delight, the proposal was successful and we now have Telstra Thanks as the major sponsor of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest. My research and copy on The Presets was also used on the Zaccaria website - check it out here to see a snippet of what I came up with.

With this sponsorship locked in, the next task was to start planning the radio and television campaign. Pam and I considered 92.9 and Nova93.7 as the key radio stations we would use for a radio campaign - however we had to choose one. To choose between the two, we liaise with the sales and production team at both radio stations to describe the event at hand, to which the radio station responds with their own proposal. Their proposal will include types of activities they will utilise to promote our event, timeframe, implementation, description and budget. From these proposals we are able to determine which station to use - in the instance of The Presets at Hotel Rottnest, Pam and I decided on both as we could target a significant share of our desired market. Listen out for our radio and tv campaigns in the next couple of weeks!!

There will be a lot of ticket give aways on both radio stations too, so make sure you tune in. Both proposals from 92.9 and Nova 93.7 were about 15 pages long and detailed some impressive campaign activities - here are a couple of pages from Nova 93.7's proposal.

I have found working on The Presets to be challenging and satisfying as I was only given the morning to come up with the proposal that was submitted to Telstra Thanks. I have found that most tasks in this environment are bound by time constraints and it is extremely important when researching or producing any work for publishing or professional, external submission, that it be correct and written tailored specifically for the target audience.

The hands on experience I have gained at my internship has been invaluable and really reinforces how important public relations, external relations and communications are imperative for business success, particularly in the music and marketing industry. Zaccaria have asked me to stay on after my internship, working for the company until the new year. I am excited to keep learning and gaining practical experience after the last three years of theoretical learning!

Til next time,
Delta