Westside BID’s busy media team reached a record level of audiences during April, with nearly five million people viewing stories about the area.
The wide-ranging stories varied from the rescue of a shaggy old dog tied up in one of Westside’s car parks to the arrival of football fans from Lille collecting their Aston Villa match tickets from Popworld.
Other top tales included a video from Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne which his wife Sharon recorded specifically to thank Westside BID for honouring the rockers with the bench on Broad Street.
As is often the case with Black Sabbath stories, this one went viral, with heavy metal websites across the world wanting to use the story and video.
The BID publishes its news on www.westsidebid.co.uk and related social media every day, and it then repackages and sends the best stories which have wider appeal out to the media as press releases.
During April, the BID’s official coverage reports revealed that these press releases resulted in a total of 54 ‘hits’ in publications locally, nationally and internationally.
A clever media analysis tool called Coverage Book estimated that the outlets publishing the BID’s stories provided a total potential audience of some 646 million.
Coverage Book also calculated that 4.73 million of these readers viewed at least one of the BID’s stories during the month of April.
Luisa Huggins, communications manager at Westside BID, said: “We have a really detailed and professional operation for our news stories every day with the help of our contractors at Dyson Media.
“They are essentially former newspaper journalists who make sure that all our stories are written expertly for our own website and social media.
“Their knowledge of the external media world means they also know who to send the best of our stories to for wider publication.
“This means that we attract literally millions of eyes to activities on Westside every month, with our estimated audience reaching a new record of 4.73 million for us this April.
“This premier media operation is one of the great services we offer to all businesses on Westside. Tell us about your stories and we’ll not only publish them on our website but will also send them out on social media and to newspapers, broadcasters and websites across the world.”
ENDS
