Hello, it’s Victoria Withy from Raring2go! Magazine here – not in Raring2go! Towers currently but coming to you from the spare room in my house. Like many of you, I am working from home during this odd lockdown time that we are all going through. We had all expected to be out and about over the last month enjoying the early spring sunshine, the Easter events and activities, the reopening of many of our favourite places and the new offerings from others.
Our spring issue, which was distributed in early March, was jam-packed with so many amazing and fun events, activities and places to, eat, shop and play taking place throughout Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire in March, April and May. The magazine, which is known, loved and trusted by families in our local area got into the homes of 33,000 of them via school bookbags, libraries, venues, shops and attractions and enjoyed reading it and planning what they were going to do.
We know that you had a great plans for spring and summer and were looking forward to welcoming local families through your doors.
Sadly, things changed - but out of adversity comes opportunity. It’s been great to see that many businesses have found ways to keep operating during this time – some of you have adapted how you offer what you do and some of you have changed what you offer and others are doing totally different things.
We also had great plans for our summer issue – our 52nd one – to celebrate the start of my thirteenth year in business – and Raring2go becoming a teenager (like my daughter!) but as your plans have changed – ours need to as well.
We have been looking at ways to best support you during this challenging time and to help you keep your business in front of our family audience. We have been running a daily ‘Raring2go! Discovers…’ on our FB page and have featured many local businesses and initiatives in these. However, the ‘noise’ on social media currently is loud and voluminous and cutting through it to reach your audience and engage with them is not easy. We’ve been actively searching for the best things for families in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire every day – and finding things hasn’t been easy in the noise and clutter of the social platforms.
One of the strengths of our printed magazine is that is collects the information families are looking for and puts it directly into their hands – and this is supported by our website (which we have just refreshed!), monthly newsletter and our social platforms. The reach we have across these is strong and the family audience is engaged and interested in our posts and content.
With schools and other key outlets closed and events cancelled we have also had to think about how we can support you and ensure that families area hearing your messages and know what you are offering and how they can buy from, or support you during this lockdown time. We don’t want to pause our efforts to help families hear about the best of our City and Shire.
SO, this summer’s Raring2go! will be a little different – we are publishing two six-week digital e-Zines. The first one will be out mid-May till end June and the second early July till mid-August. This will allow you to tell people what you are offering now, and as things start to change and lockdown lifts, what you are offering as the summer progresses and into the autumn term. We are hopeful that schools will be back and businesses open again by then but if not, we will keep supporting you with six-weekly digital issues until we can get our printed magazines into the hands of our huge family audience again.
The e-Zine offer isn’t ‘just a magazine online’ – and we’re not offering adverts but business features with embedded video (a live, a taster class, an interview etc) and links to your social pages – its about you showing our readers what you do – directly, effectively and interactively – and we will get you, your message and your business in front of families.
We are keeping each e-Zine compact to keep it as cost effective as possible and to ensure that you get the most impact from it.
Along with the business features we will include the usual strong editorial content that we have in our printed magazines and online events that people can join in with (until we can go out and about to our usual events again).
I really hope that our interactive, digital e-Zines will help you tell people what you’re offering and how your operating by cutting through the noise and clutter using the Raring2go! vehicles and platforms and that our efforts will support and enhance yours. We really want to help you to come out of this not just surviving but thriving – we’re in this together and together we will get through it.
Please give me a call on 07795 118228 or email victoria.withy@raring2go.co.uk or DM me for a chat!
Replies
Well done Victoria. Tough times - but with new opportunities too! Great to see what you're doing with Raring2go! on video and online
Thanks Andrew - there are always sliver linings and ways of doing things differently - it sometimes takes a bit of time and a leap of faith to try them!
Now is not the time to 'go dark' - we need to keep supporting our local businesses and keep our family audience up to date with what businesses are doing!