This week we placed ourselves in the hypothetical scenario of having a £100 budget for The Yorkie. It is important to understand in a realistic and professional setting how finances apply to all aspects of a publication and recognise the factors in the process which we have not had to consider with this being a university-funded project. This task gives us a chance to apply our learning so far.

Events

A fundraiser or an event to celebrate the release, I fear, would be costly and take a lot of time planning. This could be successful in the form of an afternoon of either reasonably priced or free coffee and cake from a local independent bakery from Gillygate as an example. This would represent what the Yorkie values as a lot of stories to be covered are related to independent companies which is something York prides itself on. As the audience is predicted to be in the 18-30 category I believe events being held on university campus or local to this will be a good location to target the age group. The event could be circulated on social media, however, I think with £100 there is virtually no event possibilities as even the venue hire, or food/drink, or giveaways will exceed this cost each alone.

SparkYork is an event space with a primary purpose to support local and new businesses, this could be a good opportunity for The Yorkie to host a launch event to make use of the space and create rapport with other businesses. They may allow an event at a small cost as I imagine other small businesses face similar financial limitations in the initial phase. The budget could be used for a lot more such as content and printing.

Social Media

The role of social media in an event such as a magazine launch is invaluable, as it does not cost anything out of the budget so it acts a a huge free platform to use tactically to reach out to audience, therefore this should be made use of very effectively. It can reach the target audience with ease as the main users of social networking sites are 18-24 (Duggan et al., 2015)

1. INSTAGRAM: To reach people on this platform requires a following and to do so may mean starting with the use of hashtags and focus on tagging people and locations to appear on people’s following page and following places like independent cafes to show what content we will be including in who we follow and post about.
2. TWITTER: Again, the use of hashtags, interactions with discussions and mentions will increase the following on this platform too. posting the features in different forms such as the rare occurrence of when the BBC did a whole feature in a twitter thread using special formatted content. The 140 characters can be used initially in a professional and interactive way to focus firstly on interaction to build a following.
3. FACEBOOK: The page on facebook could begin by asking for people like family and friends to share works and spread the word as much as possible to again establish a following the create content and interact with our target audience as this is a very interactive and personal platform where messenger is popular. Gathering people’s thoughts and also joining other groups such as ‘York Moan’ to see what the target audience in York are complaining and talking about to attempt to reach them and get topic ideas for features.

Video

I think the most effective way to reach people would be to use our skills and put the budget towards either hiring equipment or having a video made to advertise and spread word about the magazine. This is something we can do with the university facilities but had we not this ability, this could be an effective use of the budget.

Media Appearances

We could contact BBC Radio York and plan our aims of what we want to get across about the launch of the first issue. Additionally we could contact Aesthetic – a magazine the university has close links to and ask to have some form of mention at the festival they hold or appear in their magazine, this could cost us as an advert which would be costly out of the budget. Thats TV York have a room located next to our newsroom which would be an easy collaboration if both parties were happy to.

“Being a memorable guest on radio or television involves more than just the interview itself. Use the social media you already have to magnify the impact of your appearance and make yourself a welcome return guest.”

Publicity Stunts and Competitions

Campaign highlight the importance of a successful publicity stunt: “A well-executed PR stunt can bring the kind of attention to a brand that money simply cannot buy, aligning brands with a particular culture or ideology, giving them ‘personality’, and thrusting them into public consciousness while often successfully bypassing traditional marketing tactics.”

To make more of an impact we could put a balloon with the logo up around York such as this Virgin Atlantic version:

Competitions for the Yorkie could be content related, the use of social media would be vital in circulation of the competitions. Creating a page of some competitions would be engaging for ‘switched on’ millennial audiences. Out of the budget the prize could be a free coffee or a free lunch somewhere independent with a voucher.

Ads

To place adverts about the Yorkie would be costly but I believe this would be beneficial as we would then take on ads in our issue which would hopefully act as a profit. The budget would not cover any reputable magazines with it being just £100, but to advertise by spreading the word through flyers and here are 10 tips on getting your magazine discovered. I like the idea of the app and video which the budget would not cover but we could create a video here at the university or if not use the budget to rent equipment to share professional videos on social media for free to promote the magazine, by asking for as many shares as possible this could spread the word very effectively.