Publicise your activity | page 1www.upsu.net/training

page 2 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

Contents

Support StaffTom WormanBusiness & Marketing Manager

T: 02392 84 3417E: tom.worman@upsu.net

Jasper Snaith Digital Marketing Coordinator

T: 02392 84 3102E: jasper.snaith@upsu.net

Page 3 IntroductionPage 4 How to plan a publicity campaignPage 6 General rulesPage 7 New students and Freshers’ FayrePage 8 Posters and flyersPage 9 Social networkingPage 10 WebsitesPage 10 What’s on guidePage 11 Union media

Kelly Jones Events & Marketing Coordinator

T: 02392 84 3102E: kelly.jones@upsu.net

Publicise your activity | page 3www.upsu.net/training

Introduction

This booklet is your guide to pro-moting your events and activities, to both people internal to the Uni-versity of Portsmouth and beyond.

Information on how to plan a pub-licity campaign, procedures and rules for posters, fl yers, websites and social networking groups are discussed, as well as how to make us of the Union and University me-dia outlets.

page 4 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

How to plan a publicity campaign

The benefits of gaining good pub-licity for your group or for an event that you may be running should never be underestimated. There are four areas to consider when planning a publicity campaign:

Your target audience

Publicity is only going to be effec-tive if it is reaching the people who can potentially come to the event. Things to think about are:

• Who is likely to come?• What type of event are you

running?• Will it appeal to students or

non-students?• Can you market it to students

at other Universities?• Who has come in the past or

to similar events?• Where can they be exposed to

publicity?• What sort of publicity are they

most likely to respond to?• When is the best time to let

them know about the event?

Timeline

The most important thing to re-

member is to plan thoroughly in advance. The best thing to do is to draw up a timeline for public-ity, with clear deadlines leading up to the event itself. This way you can ensure that things can be fore-seen and checked off once they are done. Main things to consider are:

• Will people be able to book or buy tickets in advance? If so, advertising will need to happen earlier.

• How many other events are going on? If there are a lot, you will need to find a way to en-sure that people notice yours.

• What are the lead times for companies you are planning to use e.g. printing. t-shirts? Com-panies cannot normally make and deliver flyers or t-shirts within a day of you sending a design to them.

• Do not trust estimated deliv-ery times. Deliveries will take longer than you might like, especially if it was free or ‘in-cluded’.

Budget

You must have a budget for the

Publicise your activity | page 5www.upsu.net/training

publicity campaign. This should be clear in the budget which your activity treasurer puts together when initial planning happens. It is vital that the budget is adhered to. If roles are delegated, the person in charge will need to be very clear about the amount of money peo-ple are allowed to spend.

Ensure that the methods of pub-licity are carefully chosen with the budget in mind, e.g. there is no point in planning to print a thou-sand colour fl yers with a profes-sional company if your event is a small-scale one with a budget of £20.

Resources

Think about what things you have at your disposal to let people know about what you do; this can

be sponsors, a good network of ex-members, the facilities (such a printing) provided by the Union, your website, and so on.

Recommended Suppliers

The Union use, or have used, the following suppliers for their public-ity materials.

Fliers and Posters• University of Portsmouth• Express Printing Ltd• Senator Press• I love fl iers

Vinyl Banners• Colourbanners.co.uk• Venture Banners

Clothing• Brilens• Ikon Sports

page 6 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

General rulesThe Union has a clear set of guide-lines about publicity, found online at www.upsu.net/docs. The key points are:

• All publicity should carry the Union logo (see the Union Brand section).

• Display the time, date and loca-tion of the event

• Name the Club, Society, Pro-ject or other recognised group as part of the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union.

• Be no bigger than A2 in size in a printed of physical medium (if you require larger please ensure there is sufficient space by discussing options with the Students’ Union Marketing staff).

• Not contain any offensive lan-guage.

• Not contain material that may bring the Union or University into disrepute, is libellous, con-travene copyrighted materials or registered trademarks.

• Posters cannot be put up with sellotape or glue they should only be fixed using blu-tack or equivalent.

Important things to remember

• Plan ahead• Do not throw money away;

if you spend hundreds of pounds on printing posters and leaflets, but do not consider where and when you can distribute them, they are no good to anyone.

• Proof-read; no matter how professional you may want your event to appear, if there are spelling mistakes all over your publicity material, it will not be impressive.

• Shop around for the best deal.

• Know who your target audience is and play on your strengths.

• Have a good publicity etiquette - don’t take down someone else’s event.

• Be imaginative! There are 300 other Clubs, Societies and Projects wanting a slice of people’s time and money, you need to be able to stand out from the others

Publicise your activity | page 7www.upsu.net/training

New Students & Freshers’ Fayre

Every September around 4,000 new students start at the Univer-sity of Portsmouth, and Freshers Fayre provides a unique oppor-tunity for your Club, Society or Project to engage with new people and encourage them to join in with your activities. Remember though, around half of these new students are postgraduates, so make sure you tailor what you have to offer accordingly.

Freshers’ Fayre occurs on the very fi rst Wednesday and Thursday of the Autumn term in Ravelin Park all-day. This is the time when you at-tract the most new people to your Club, Society or Project, get them on your mailing lists and get them involved in your activities. You need to ensure you make a positive im-pression at Freshers Fayre n order

to give the Club, Society or Project a steady future.

All new students will be sent in-formation from the Union before term begins. A copy of the Pompey Guide and a wall planner will be waiting for each person when they move into halls.

Information which goes to new students can generally be found online, on the Freshers pages of the Students’ Union website at www.upsu.net/freshers. This is the Un-ion’s main communication method for new students, so take a look to see what information they are recieving. Also, information around the start of the year which is rel-evant to new students will always be posted on the Union’s website www.upsu.net

page 8 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

Posters and Flyers

Posters and flyers are a very popu-lar means of advertising. Whilst they are easy to make and design, can be widely disseminated and eye catching there are hundreds of posters and thousands of flyers being given out during busy times and there is often little prominant space on campus.

Poster locations

The places where posters are al-lowed to be put up are:

• Third Space poster board• The Student Activities Centre

noticeboard• Noticeboards on the ground

floor of the Students Union• Locked frame in the Library

(posters to be handed in at the reception desk)

• Locked frame in the Nuffield Sports Centre (poster to be handed in at the reception desk)

• Posterboard in Richmond Building atrium

• Posterboard at Richmond Building exit for room LT2

• Posterboard in the Portland Cafe

• Posterboard in the Portland reception foyer

• Anglesea Building foyer (ask at reception)

• King Henry Building poster-boards (ask at reception)

• Park Building basement poster-board

• Halls buildings (posters to be given to the Union’s Marketin department for weekly distri-bution)

• Eldon Building Catering outlet• Cafe Coco community notice-

board

If you wish to place a poster any-where on the Ground Floor of the Students’ Union you must have a UPSU marketing stamp on it or it will be removed. This can be gained from the Students’ Union market-ing department.

If you are holding a nightclub event outside of the Students’ Union it must be clear it is your group hold-ing the event (for example: Your Society presents Event Name in big writing and the venue in smaller writing) and not advertised in the Waterhole Bar due to competition with the venue.

Publicise your activity | page 9www.upsu.net/training

Social networking

There is more to advertising than making posters and fl yers, and set-ting up a website.

Twitter

Make sure you follow the Union on @portsmouthsu, as well as the University on @portsmouthuni. Be sure to advertise your events and activities on Twitter, the Union or University might even retweet your adverts.

Facebook

Facebook can also be used to great effect for promoting your group. It is especially good at reaching very large numbers of people. Make sure you create an offi cial facebook fan-page or group for your Club, Soci-ety or Project and keep an event

page up to date. Also make sure you like your page to the offi cial Freshers group, which will be ad-vertised via the Union’s website.

Flickr and YouTube

Flickr and YouTube are external websites which can be used to raise your Club, Society or Pro-ject’s profi le. You can upload pho-tos or videos for people to see and get a taste of what to expect, or embed them in your Facebook event page.

The most important thing to re-member for Social Networks is to carry a conversation. The word social is key here, be friendly, be concise, answer questions quickly and keep people updated through regular conversations - not spam!

page 10 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

Websites

All Clubs, Societies & Projects will have their own pages on the Union website. You can also sell member-ships and other products through our website. It is an excellent re-source for publicity and is impor-tant to keep up-to-date.

Some groups will have a website of their own. If you want to raise the profile of your activity, this is an important asset to have. Im-portantly, it cna be used to notify people about regular and special events you are holding.

The Union has website space avail-able to all sports clubs and socie-ties. It costs just £10 and includes a free .co.uk website address! Please contact the Union’s Digital Mar-keting coordinator on webteam@upsu.net

Access to the webserver is pro-vided via FTP access - the Univer-sity and the Union recommend CoreFTP free for this purpose. A MySQL server is available on re-quest that can be used in conjunc-tion with PHP to create a dynamic website or power a members fo-rum or photo gallery.

What’s On guide

The What’s On guide on the Un-ion’s website is a great way to ad-vertise events. All you need to do is send the following information to events@upsu.net:

• Title• Venue/Location• Start Date• Finish Date• Start Time• End Time• Description of the event

The only events which should be added to the What’s On calendar are ones that every student can go to, regardless of whether they are a member of the Club, Society or Project hosting the event. This might be social activites, introduc-tory sessions, concerts or perfor-mances. Please don’t send events which only Club, Society or Pro-ject members can attend.

Please ensure the title of the event is descriptive of what you’re do-ing as well as including your activ-ity. Rather than sending a title of ‘taster sessions’ send a title of ‘Un-derwater Hockey taster sessions’ as there are hundreds of activities.

Publicise your activity | page 11www.upsu.net/training

Union Media

The Galleon

The Galleon is the Union funded, but editorially independant, stu-dent newspaper. It is free and full of news, reviews, events, features, comments and games.

The Galleon is probably the most widely-read publication on campus and is read by virtually every stu-dent and staff member at Ports-mouth. It is an excellent place to try to feature your Club, Society or Project and your events or trips. There are three main ways in which to do this:

1. Write an article

If you want to write an article, you need to remember that The Galleon is meant to be interest-ing to read. Therefore, try to re-strain yourself from send in arti-cles which are purely propaganda for your group or event as this is unlikely to be interesting to most people. If you are a sports club and you have success in your leagures or competitions, make sure you send in reports of these as soon after the event as possible.

2. Get The Galleon to re-view the event

If your event is a performance of some sort, you can get in touch with the reviews team and of-fer free reviewers tickets. You will need to do this well in advance so that there is a better chance of re-viewers availability at the time you want.

3. Purchase advertising space

If you want to be able to shame-lessly plug an event, you can pur-chase advertising space in The Gal-leon. This will cost money.

Pure FM

Pure FM is the Union’s Radio Sta-tion which broadcasts online at www.purefm.com.

UPSU TV

UPSU TV is the student TV station that broadcasts exclusively online at www.upsu.tv and creates pro-grammes for CCI TV in Halls and Creative Industries plasmas.

page 12 | Publicise your activity www.upsu.net/training

University of Portsmouth Students’ UnionCambridge Road, Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO1 2EF

business@upsu.net | 02392 84 3417