So whats new at the Bluebell Railway?

TL;DR - Social Media / Marketing is important, but I don't think Blogs are the answer.

I'll start this post with an admission, I've been on the t'internet since 1994 (or 1993, can't remember) using Windows 3.1, bespoke winsocks etc. and later on linux, so this probably marks me out as one of your "Computer nerds" that's fine, I'm okay with that label, but it does mean I've seen the progress of Social Media since all we really had was irc & usenet (there was www, but it was html1 and we had slow modems) to the current day.

Regarding this part of your initial post (my emphasis)

I absolutely agree that Heritage Railways need to further embrace Social Media, but Blog Posts are not where it is happening anymore. One of the defacto blogging site, blogspot, launched in 1999, it's still going strong, but it's older than my eldest kid !!! There is a need to keep them up to date, but really they are best used (a la GWSR) for keeping enthusiasts abreast of the progress of projects than as a marketing tool. I would argue that in many cases (Steve Edge excluded) if there are blogs being used for marketing, they should be retired and users redirected to something more appropriate.

What is more appropriate?

I would argue that a "What's on" from the main website is a primary source, and indeed, the link from the bluebell.com site (which will be run by marketing) is pretty much spot on. 1-Click and you're there (although I would ask why the branchline event is still being advertised).

Other than that my thoughts were FB, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube would be the traditional favourites and that is kind of borne out by this research
https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics


However, even these channels, in my opinion, are not where marketing should be going over the next few years.
The Smart Phone is ubiquitous. Railways should be pushing apps to their customers, initially on the basis of "you can use it to navigate to us / here are our timetables / here is what is at each of our stations / these are our events", but once it's installed you use it to target events to your customers. I'm sure there is a whole host of rules and guidelines on what you can and cannot do with data mining, but you use that to work out if the customer is an enthusiast, a parent, a general customer and you target them accordingly.

 

Yes, you can view it but, unless you log in, a big overlaid banner appears inviting you to log in (or register). Even if you click on "Not now" it doesn't go away, but moves to the bottom and still obscures about a third of the screen.

I actually have a Facebook account but I deactivated it some time ago. I couldn't see the point of Facebook, and I got fed up with all of the suggestions that they kept making that I befriended people that I'd never heard of. The only thing I had in common with these people was that we were both human beings (well, I am - I assumed that they were too).

 

At the risk of incurring the further wrath of the OP, I was going to add that the idea that you rely on a blog to get news of forthcoming events seems utterly bizarre to me. A blog, or at least any blog I've ever bothered to look at, is like somebody's running commentary of what just happened, essentially like unedited rolling news coverage. Yes, the GWSR have adopted blogs and made them work well for them but personally I still only ever look at it if I've already found out from elsewhere that something of particular interest to me has been posted on it.
Also the clue is in the title, surely? I would never even suspect that something called "What's new at the Bluebell" would have anything on it other than a report on recent happenings. So if you have found that it doesn't do what you want it to, my suggestion is that you have fundamentally misunderstood its purpose.

 

Well I do think you are taking pedantry to a new level here as well as showing a total lack of imagination. The Bluebell Blog, when it is mainatained, is a very good source for upcoming events and services, such as Kids for a Quid, Branchline Weekends etc as well as links to news from other Departments. Such news can be backward or forward looking in nature.

Suggest you read the blog itself before making such bizarre, ill informed statements, and assumptions about it and myself.

 

True, but if you really want to know something you can still manage it - although it does depend a bit on screen size, resolution and format. Far from ideal, and personally I think that any organisation or attraction using Facebook as a main tool for their internet presence runs the risk of missing large parts of a potential audience.

It doesn't have to be an either/or. Facebook is ideal for the fleetingly transitory stuff - something like the Bluebell's .co.uk site is great for more permanent information. The Ffestiniog's "Ffestipedia" likewise is a great resource, but the main Ffestiniog and WHR website is a good publicity tool. If the organisations that do Facebook in a big way, yet also have a website that is useful, then copious links between the two could work well.

Steve B

 

Excellent point. Two very different groups of people, and you need very different channels to serve them best.

Noel

 

Sorry, I thought I'd made it clear enough that I don't generally bother looking at blogs, because I don't have time to fish through that level of detail. And certainly not just to find out what's going on on a given weekend. So forgive me for assuming that the Bluebell blog would be like everyone else's blog and ignoring it accordingly. And the only "assumption" I made about yourself was that you had misunderstood it's purpose, which is not so much an "assumption" as a "fact", since you'd already pretty much admitted as much in a roundabout way, once alternative sources of the information you sought were pointed out to you. Anyway, life is too short to waste time picking silly arguments over the internet so I shall wish you well with your quest for information and move on to other things.