If you’ve read through our Work With Me page and still have some questions about what the different products consist of, this page should answer them.
Creating your online presence goes far beyond your own website and Facebook page. Mindful Healthy Life is here to help! Together, we can ensure that natural-minded families in Metro DC know about you and what you have to offer.
1. What’s the difference between a promotional piece (promo piece) and a recap?
A promo piece tells people about your event before it happens. It helps drum up enthusiasm. It makes people see the event as bigger than just you. Someone else is talking about it on another website!
And yes, a promo piece should help increase attendee numbers. and build a buzz so that even the people who don’t make it to the event will be looking for it next year!
Email jessica (at) mindfulhealthylife (dot) com to request a Rate Sheet
We’ve written promo pieces for lots events, from local gardening festivals to health conferences to birth & babies fairs as well as national events that come to DC, like the Green Festival and MommyCon and the Moms Clean Air Force Play-In for Climate Action. Click here for examples of promo pieces.
By contrast, a recap is an archival piece that you can point to after the fact to show potential new attendees what you have to offer and to show sponsors and potential investors what they are supporting.
A recap piece is especially good to have if your event isn’t drawing traditional media. And even if you do get other reporters at your event, it looks good for your event’s future appeal to parents for it to be covered on a reputable and family-friendly platform like Mindful Healthy Life.
This recap will be a solid feather in your “What people are saying about (your event)” cap. If you plan to repeat the event, this recap then becomes a piece of next year’s promotion strategy.
Email jessica (at) mindfulhealthylife (dot) com to request a Rate Sheet.
We have written recaps of school environmental showcases and school gardening events, real food competitions, and yoga festivals as well as national events like the National Kids Yoga Conference and the Moms Clean Air Force Play-In for Climate Action.
Click here to see more recap pieces we’ve done.
Visit our Work With Me page for more offerings.
2. Wouldn’t it make more sense for me as an event planner to spend money on a promo piece?
Well, that depends on your goal.
If your attendee numbers are small, then yes. We should do a promo piece that we can then share widely, and part of your fee will go toward boosting the post so it gets in front of more eyes ahead of the event.
If, however, you expect to fill almost to capacity or to sell out, then a promo piece might not be as useful as a recap.
A recap is something you can use to show investors and partners when planning your next event so that you can grow – in size, in offerings, in length, in reach. Maybe even to add a second event or another city!
3. Shouldn’t promo pieces cost more than recaps if they are getting more people in the door?
See above about goals first. Maybe you have enough people already and you value the post-event media coverage more.
Consider that a promo piece is pretty easy for us to craft together. Usually promos don’t have much in the way of images to format. Unless you really want to spend the time and money on a traditional interview and narrative written for you, we can usually do a Q&A over email that can pretty much write the piece.
It’s even kind of fun for event organizers to write these answers, because it’s more casual than your own marketing materials. You get to be the real person behind the scenes and show folks why they should come to your event in your own words. It’s like a breath of fresh air, for you and for the reader!
With a promo piece, you are paying us for our time and platform, and, to the extent you want, for boosting and sharing.
By contrast, a recap is really about telling the story of your event — a story that will live on. Most events redo their websites shortly after one year’s event is over. Then all traces of that event are erased! Our recaps keep an archive. We can even work with you to tweak our recap for an archival page on your own site. Institutional memory is really important, especially for non-profit organizations. And when parents want to know if an event is going to suit them or their family, they appreciate having a recap of the previous version to reference.
A recap takes a lot of work for the writers. We usually attend the event, which can last for hours. We take photos. We ask you for photos. We take a lot of notes. We get quotes and ask you for quotes. It’s a collaborative process that can take a while.
Recap costs will be lowest for you if you have a media point-person who can work with us to get all of the above in a speedy fashion. Most events don’t have that person, so they turn to us to put everything together and package it up nicely. We’re happy to do so!
4. Is it okay to do both a promo and a recap?
Yes, for sure! If you know at the outset that you want to do both a promo piece and a recap, we advise having the promo piece up at least three weeks ahead of the event, preferably more like six to eight weeks ahead. That way there will be plenty of other content in between the two pieces.
And it’s nice to offer a promotional code and/or a giveaway of a ticket with the promo piece. When our faithful readers check out the recap, they will recall that you were generous and they will be more likely to read about the event and share the piece, even if they didn’t attend. You want people sharing: “Wow, so mad I missed this! Looks great! For sure going to attend next year!”
5. What other ways will Mindful Healthy Life promote my event besides on the blog and via Facebook and Twitter?
We know where natural-minded parents are and can advise you on how to reach them via email lists and Facebook groups and can give you tips on coverage for other media outlets. We can tell you where to make sure you get some flyers up for traditional outreach, and we often have some great ideas of collaborators and partners. If you want this kind of marketing guidance, let us know at the outset so we can give you an accurate quote.
Also remember that Mindful Healthy Life has a free event calendar, and we offer sidebar ads for events, as described on the Work With Me page. See the Work With Me page for more details, and also check out our partnership opportunities page for details on how to get ensure regular visibility of your brand/business/organization to our subscribers.
It always looks good when someone else is talking about your business or organization.
When we here at Mindful Healthy Life write a business profile, we can present things from a behind-the-scenes perspective that allows the reader to get to know the story behind the story. Once readers feel connected to your brand, they are more likely to support your work, whether that means buying products, contributing financially, or participating in events or classes.
A profile can be a Q&A with you, like this one with Jesse Straight of Whiffletree Farm or like this one with Sally Fallon Morell of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
We can write a descriptive profile based on interviews and site visits, as in TRUE Fitness Studio Launches Give Back Program for Moms in Need. Or we can share a narrative of a personal experience working with you, like in Bronson Family Dentistry Addresses Whole-Body Health.
If you want to write about your own vision, we can publish a piece by you written with a different angle than you might write for your own website or blog, something introducing yourself to new readers, like this piece by Robin Shirley of Take Back Your Health Conference.
Doing a giveaway is another great way to introduce folks to your brand and to help them feel connected to your vision. They can be part of a profile, or we can run them as companion pieces that link to a profile, like we did here with our giveaway for MOM’s Organic Market in conjunction with our photoblog of the Arlington store grand opening and a preview we ran before the opening.
We can also offer reviews of products, services and books. They go best with a giveaway.
Content experts can share their knowledge in guest posts like Alexandra Hughes of InEssence Coaching did in this post, Ditching Overwhelm: A First Step Toward Health in the New Year. We ran this post in advance of Alexandra launching her 7-day online challenge.
These posts can also run with giveaways, like 5 Reasons Why You Should Sign with Your Baby or Toddler by Kelli Atangan of Little Steps Speech Therapy and Self-Regulation in the Digital World – A Necessary Balance by Leah Kalish of Move with Me Yoga Adventures.
Anyone is welcome to write one guest post at no cost.
Content experts writing in relation to a business they own or work for can have one guest post published in conjunction with a giveaway.
Content expert posts may be published for a fee or exchange. See the Work With Me page for more information and contact us to discuss in detail.
We hope this page clarifies the many ways we can collaborate!
For all prices, see our Work With Me page and contact us for a free initial consult and quote.
If you’d like to discuss partnerships with Mindful Healthy Life for broader collaboration, please see our Partnership Opportunities page.
Email info (at) mindfulhealthylife (dot) com for all inquiries.
We look forward to hearing from you!
