Plexus Media was recently invited to attend a seminar organised by Business Link, called Marketing for Cash Strapped Times. Always eager to learn on behalf of our clients as well as ourselves we went along with notebooks and pens in hand, despite the early start!

The seminar really got our minds working overtime and raised some very interesting questions. As a seminar on general marketing tips it was very useful, covering everything from brand identities and websites to PR and search engine optimisation – in other words how to make yourself easier to find on Google.

However, as a seminar on Marketing for Cash Strapped times, we don’t really think it lived up to its name. Mainly because it skated over or ignored some of the best ways organisations can market themselves on a budget – or for free!

As marketing and communications professionals working in the voluntary and community sector, we’re acutely aware of the need to make the most of precious budgets. After all, budgets in the sector are nearly always hard won and over-stretched and should be used to the best of their ability.

As a result, we frequently use open source software such as Wordpress to create our clients blogs and websites. The actual software is free so our clients only pay for the time it takes us to design and customise their website, making it unique to them. Plus, there’s open source software available for sending email newsletters and conducting online surveys for example, both very useful ways that businesses can market themselves on a budget.

In addition, the seminar also failed to mention digital printing, which is a lot cheaper than traditional litho printing but just as good in terms of quality for small print runs.

Another area missing was how organisations can make the most of free social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

All in all the seminar was interesting but made us realise just how much we’ve learnt from working in a sector where making the most of clients’ budgets can literally be a matter of life and death, and at the very least the health and wellbeing of all those people supported by the sector.

Plexus Media are proud to have added a new printer to their ever-growing team of approved suppliers.

CRi Digital based in the Radford area of Nottingham, have come on board to help Plexus Media fulfil its print requirements. Not only this but whilst also taking time to consider the environment, using vegetable based inks, FSC papers and generally recycling 90%of their own paper waste.

CRi Digital are a welcome addition to the Plexus Media team of suppliers and from the work we’ve had completed to date we have high hopes for the future!

Just back from the Swedish leg of the Spire project. What a place. Hjo (kind of pronounced “you”) is a small town of about 8,800 people. Some real eye openers are that for such a small population there are 17 social workers – here in the UK there are single social workers with case loads that big! During our four-day visit we saw one instance of graffiti, but not in Hjo itself, two pieces of litter and very little chewing gum trodden into the street. Alcohol is jolly expensive and its purchase controlled.   The roads are well maintained and traffic relatively light. Last orders at the bar on a Friday night is 10:30, that is supposing that one can find a bar open this late. Everyone seems to take a break at lunchtime for a cooked lunch. The workday begins at about 8am.

 A huge thank you must be sent to Anna and her team for the fantastic hospitality we enjoyed. During our stay we were given a tour of the town by the city architect that included a fleeting visit to the last remaining tinsmiths in the area. All of the guttering for the wooden houses in the city are hand made. Another highlight of the trip was a lecture given by the trout preservation ecology group, who have restored fish stocks to the town’s lake single-handed through their clearing of the tributary streams.

 A visit to Utväg was an inspiring bonus for the trip. Lovely to meet Christina again after her recent trip to Harborough.  Utväg is a centre supporting people who suffer from domestic abuse, or violence in close relationships as it is known in Sweden. Here women and children can begin to come to terms with domestic abuse and develop processes for reconstructing their lives. For me one of the innovations of the centre is the treatment of men as the perpetrators of domestic abuse. Treat the cause as well as the effect in an effort to break the cycle of abuse.

Fantastic stuff.

Link to Hjo: www.hjo.se  
Link to Utväg: www.utvag.se

For more information on the Spire project visit www.spirecentral.org

A while ago we were asked if we could import a client’s twitter feed into their WordPress website. A bit of research showed that there are many tools that could do this. We wanted to gather all of the tweets into a weekly digest that automatically posted to the blog as a digest update.

There are a number of tools and plugins that profess to do this. As is the way with open source the results are varied in both practical usability and results. After three different plugin tests we settled on Twitter Tools. The fantastic plugin by Alex King. Simple to install and configure, this is a great plugin that doesn’t try and do too much. It delivers one task really well and is clearly documented (in English) and consequentially we have no concerns over recommending it to all.

Here is the official offering:

Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

• Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)
• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

Browsing through the Summer 2009 edition of The Co-operative Magazine during this morning’s coffee break I came across an article about blogging and saving the planet.  The article relates how three individuals have used blogging to share their environmental passions. {Click here to read the online version of the article for your self}

Tracey catalogues her family’s drive to de-clutter and lead a less consumer driven life. www.bookofrubbishideas.co.uk

Joe monitors the use of plastic bags for his post consumer waste reduction campaign. http://plasticbagwatch.blogspot.com

Karen blogs about her battle to go a week without putting anything in the rubbish bin through a combination of careful shopping and recycling. http://therubbishdiet.blogspot.com/

All three of the featured blogs have three things in common. They are all written by people who care dearly for their subject matter. Their enthusiasm shows through.  All three blogs are well read and finally, none of the blogs are about the technology. The blog content is more important than the blog website.

Our communications role in the Spire project got well and truly underway today as Plexus played its part in the Local Partnership Conference on Domestic Violence Abuse – held in Market Harborough.

The conference, which was attended by all the European partners involved in the project (with the exception of Crete who was tied up with the European elections), focused on the impact of domestic violence in two very different ways.

Firstly, with a presentation from Professor Carol Hedderman, a leading expert on domestic violence from the University of Leicester. Secondly, with a drama performance called Cracks of Light, which aims to illustrate how domestic violence affects people’s lives. As you can imagine, it was a very powerful performance, encompassing the whole range of human emotions.

Our increased understanding of the issues will really help us when it comes to producing communication materials for the project, plus of course, we’ll be working very closely with all the partners involved. We met the partners prior to the conference – and they also presented their findings from focus groups ran to find out how people view domestic violence in each of the project areas – Crete, Spain, Sweden and the UK. As you imagine, the findings were very interesting, revealing some fascinating differences and similarities between countries.

Plexus is all set to conquer Europe after being awarded the contract to produce communications for a European project tackling domestic violence in rural Europe.

Project leader Harborough District Council selected Plexus for the job on the strength of our previous work within the voluntary and community sector. The other partners represent the European equivalent of district councils in Crete, Spain and Sweden.

The project, named Spire, has been launched to specifically raise awareness of domestic violence in rural areas, as the problem is often ‘hidden’ and victims can often find themselves isolated. Rather than being aimed at victims of domestic violence, Spire aims to engage voluntary and community groups that have regular contact with rural communities – and are therefore in a great position to help and support both victims and perpetrators, whilst understanding local issues.

Plexus has been commissioned to produce a full suite of communication materials for the project, including a website, leaflet and training resources. As you can imagine, we’re very pleased and proud to be working on the Spire project – watch this space for more very soon!

If you’d like to find out more about how domestic violence affects rural areas in the UK here’s a recent news article from the Daily Mirror  – outlining the results of a survey carried out by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes.

Plexus’ project manager has just completed a stint as interim programme manager at National College for School Leadership. Over the past nine weeks Alan has been in mobilisation mode for a new Department of Children, Schools and Families programme called Achievement for All. Working in partnership with National Strategies and NCSL the programme will work towards narrowing the achievement gap between children with special educational needs and disabilities and children without special educational need and disabilities. The programme is initially set to run for a two year period.

Alan says, “This is a fantastic project which hopefully will have real impact of children’s school lives. It does feel good to be back in mufti though!”

For further information on NCSL please visit  http://www.ncsl.org.uk/

Saturday 21st March 2009

A few months back we were able to assist Nottingham Teaching College to upgrade their free WordPress blog to a self hosted WordPress website. This enabled NTC to style their website how they liked without the constraints of a ridged template. Their email address now matches their web address too. This small piece of work was delivered through a Capacity Builders programme run by Nottingham’s own Base Camp project.

Nottingham Teaching College is a voluntary run centre of learning based in Nottingham’s Radford district. Established in 1978 the college has helped the community develop skills and qualify in all manner of subjects ranging from basic food hygiene right through to Master of Business Administration (MBA).

It was with a sense of privilege that we were invited to attend the College’s 2009 graduation ceremony held at Radford Unity Complex on a warm and sunny March afternoon. NTC is a small volunteer run operation so we were not quite sure what to expect but in the event we were uplifted by the College’s achievements and proud for their graduates.

The college were able to award 17 degrees through he University of London as well as numerous City & Guilds qualifications. All of the graduates and faculty looked splendid in mortarboards (or turbans), gowns and hoods. Councillor Khan, who took the opportunity to pledge support for the College, awarded the certificates.

We wish Nottingham Teaching College and their students the very best for their new term. Long may they continue their important work.

Nottingham Council House Ballroom 26/2/9

Plexus Media were delighted to attend Connected Nottingham’s celebrate a Connected Nottingham event today. Not sure what to expect we were surprised at the quantity and diversity of the flagship project being undertaken in the city.

The opening address from Jane Todd, Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council, was concerned with Proud. Proud of the city, proud of the city’s achievements, proud of the city’s standing in the UK, proud of the city’s growing stature in Europe and further.

We were then treated to a whistle stop tour of some of the reasons why Nottingham should have hope in these times of recession.

Cisco explained their vision for connected networks. Queens Medical Centre explained how their Medical Grade Network made sense in a large busy hospital. Cisco returned to tell us that QMC was to be a European flagship model for connected networks for a conference of nation state health ministers to be held in Barcelona in 2010.  Nottingham Trent University told us all about their WiMax Forest project (see more about this here), BioCity explained how Nottingham’s Science City status is helping to achieve one in five jobs within the city being in the science sector, and finally but in no way least, GameCity told us that no one from the States or Japan had any problem with Nottingham and we should get better at telling people in the UK what we are up to as a city.

We were also told to play more.

To find out more about Connected Nottingham please visit www.connectednottingham.org.uk