Thursday 16 June 2011

Apology to Thanet District Council about their promotion of The Big Event.


This post relates to yesterday’s post, see http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2011/06/thanet-district-councils-new-local-news.html and my complaint to the council that their RSS feed was working incorrectly.

I have had an assurance from Thanet District Council that that this is due to fault with Google and not a problem with TDCIT, see below.

Dear Mr Child,
 
Customer Feedback Reference:28711
 
Thank you for your email which was received on 15/06/2011 and for bringing this 
issue to our attention.
 
We have investigated the problem and discovered that this has occurred due to an 
issue with Google provided readers and not as a result of bug within the TDC RSS 
feed. 
 
I agree with you that the Margate Big Event should feature as the main news 
event on our feed and indeed it does. The top article in our feed is “Line up 
for Margate’s Big Event” and this is showing as the top article in all readers 
not provided by Google. It appears that Google has been caching a few old posts 
incorrectly which has resulted in old posts showing at the top of feeds viewed 
through their reader. 
 
This should be an isolated incident but we will monitor this and have reported 
this to Google directly.
 
In promoting the Big Event 2011, we use a variety of channels to ensure maximum 
coverage. These include:
 
Leaflets handed out over May Bank Holiday and at the Margate Meltdown as well as 
30,000 delivered to households across Kent.
Flyers to local Margate schools.
450 Posters at many locations in East Kent.
Banners on thanet.gov (on every page), This is Margate, Youth Matters, visit 
Thanet, visit Kent, visit Britain and Kent online.
Twitter updates.
Facebook.
TDC switchboard phone message.
Eposter, posters and leaflets to our partners to distribute.
A direct Mail campaign across Kent.
Press ads in Thanet Extra, Canterbury Extra, Folkestone Extra, Ashford Extra, 
Medway Extra, East Kent Mercury as well as front page editorials and double page 
features in our free local papers.
1 week of radio promotion across KMFM.
 
We expect the Big Event 2011 to again be well attended. In addition, the new 
location of the Margate seafront will help to boost income for local businesses 
and promote Margate as a tourist destination. 
 
Thank you for the support you are showing to the Big Event and for highlighting 
the problem you have encountered with the RSS feed. I hope that clarification of 
our promotion campaign resolves your concerns about attendance and that you 
enjoy the weekend.
 
I hope that this response resolves the matter to your satisfaction.
 
If you are not happy with our response, you may write to us with your reasons 
within the next ten working days, requesting a further review.  
 
In order for us to respond as efficiently as possible, please ensure that you 
quote the above reference number and address your communication to ********** - Customer Feedback Co-ordinator, Business Services.
 
Yours sincerely
************
Corporate Information & Communications Manager

1 comment:

  1. One of the locals (from Margate) was spot on about the "Big Event" bringing err...an even bigger event of traffic chaos. One could even be mindful that the changes (from Palm Bay) were orchestrated to bring the visitor numbers up for the Turnip centre

    At least you cannot be blamed for that then Michael, although I suspect the stazi will attempt this?

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.