Online Journalism News

Photo-blog drives festival traffic

Scotsman.com, website of the Scottish daily newspaper, will be publishing a photo-blog for readers as part of its coverage of this year's Edinburgh Festival.

Scotsman.com jointly manages Edinburgh-Festivals.com, the official website for the 10 key festivals held in Edinburgh every year.

Last year's festival season was sponsored by mobile phone firms Orange and Nokia. Keen to promote phones with integral digital cameras, they worked with Scotsman.com to develop the photo-blogging area which allowed readers to post their own photos to the site. The 2003 festival photo messaging gallery included snapshots of comedians Bill Bailey, Russ Noble and Johnny Vegas and magician Paul Daniels. One image was selected each week by the Scotsman's photo editor to win a camera phone.

This year's photo-blog will follow a similar format, but contributions are expected to be much greater because of the increased take-up of camera phones. The blog will also be extended to images taken with digital cameras.

'It's an unbeatable mix of technology, mobiles, blogging and good content,' said Alistair Brown, head of online operations for The Scotsman.

"We were a bit ahead of the game last year."

The photo-blog generates valuable traffic for the site, along with free, specialised news feed services which provide festival updates for subscribers. The Scotsman positions itself as the official newspaper of the festival, and typically records increased print sales and web traffic of around 20 per cent during the summer's festival season.

Scotsman.com was launched in 1996 and recorded 1.9 million unique users in January this year. It won the Newspaper Society award for best daily newspaper site in 2002 and 2003, and is due to be updated later this year.

Last year's Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), the main arts event of the summer, attracted more than 420,000 visitors. EIF runs from 15 August to 5 September and offers more than 160 performances of theatre, dance, opera and music, as well an an extensive programme of education and outreach events.

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See also:
Scotsman.com: http://www.scotsman.com
Edinburgh-Festivals.com: http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com
Edinburgh International Festival: http://www.eif.co.uk

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
alistair brown | edinburgh festival | newspaper society | newspaper site | cellular telephone | web traffic | online operations | the scotsman | digital cameras | wireless fidelity | news feed services | edinburgh international festival | official newspaper | russ noble | paul daniels | bill bailey | johnny vegas |

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