Last year we were involved with the coordination of the Paddle Something Unusual where a series of unlikely floats took to the seas. This year we set out to improve the website. Last year’s website was a slick and comprehensive affair but it was not readily editable by the many volunteers who comprise the paddle team.

The Paddle is a social event and so required the facility to bring together all the online threads and make it the focal point of a community.

We built the site using a page structure which echoes the various areas of action such as water events, land events, kids, entertainment and music. The music area of the site was given a custom menu as it is almost an event in its own right. Wordpress’ post functionality allows us to add press releases and news in a separate format and with RSS feed generated for simple syndication. Additionaly the website’s URL structure was improved upon with clean addresses and a simple navigational structure. We were also able to repoint old web addresses to the new ones via 301 permanent redirection so that bookmarked pages and backlinks could still find the requested content. The site is a rich source of accessible information and is fully SEO optimised.

Social media plugins were implemented on each page to read from the feeds generated by the event’s various outlets such as Twitter, YouTube , Facebook and Flickr. We were also able to echo the structure of the Flickr galleries onto the gallery page on the website.

The site’s IA (Information Architecture) was agreed upon through meetings with the Volunteer team , A1Surf and DSA ;whilst Mayermedia and Bionic Graphics provided both branding and graphical direction.

The result has been an engaging and feature rich website which allows a disparate team to add content as the festival grows, which looks great.

Further Information is, of course, available at www.paddleroundthepier.com
The event takes place on Hove Lawns, Brighton, East Sussex on the weekend of July 2^nd and 3^rd this year – 2011

If you are a charity event which wants help in any way with your online ventures then please contact us, if we have free time we will be happy to help.

Aloha

There is another side, however, which has been labelled with the acronym of GMOOT – get me one of those.
This is where a webmaster/ site owner decides that they “just outta have some social media” on their website.
They want the colourful little icons which associate them with youth, Web 2.0 and cool. So, they may get an account on each of these platforms, but then what?

Does your flower store really expect to have fans on Facebook? Should your iphone case emporium expect to have so much to say that people will follow your Tweets? In many cases the answer is a resounding no and it is not long before these pretty icons lead off to pages last updated a year ago with the text “Wow, we are on Twitter at last” or suchlike.

However, there is no doubt that a strong and well organised social media presence can do wonders for your online marketing strategy. If you have a product or service which can be regularly updated in some way, that has a real place in the world of frequent updates, Diggs and suchlike then it really is worth investigating how best to present your company on these ‘new’ stages.

Like so many things online, and indeed in life, it is worth doing only if you are going to do it well.