See how Events Booster promotional campaigns work – connect with us on:
Twitter @EventsBooster
Instagram @eventsbooster
Facebook @eventsbooster
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Read on LinkedIn:
“Every event could do with a boost”: Five reasons to outsource all or part of your event promotion – even if you already have a PR/marketing/social media team in place
Promoting local businesses and events – online, in print and in person
Are you planning an event? What is your worst event nightmare – that too few people will know that your event is on? That nobody will come? That you won’t get any positive feedback on social media?
Hedge against the possibility of any of that cold-sweat stuff coming true by outsourcing some or all your events promotion and hashtag boosting to us.
Events Booster (part of The Contactus Network) combines a bit of influencer marketing with lots of West London contacts, and experienced journalistic reporting to get your business or event noticed by a wide West London (and beyond) audience.
Working alongside whatever PR/marketing/social media management setup you have going, our tried-and-tested ‘promotioning’ methods spread the word about your event before the date of the event, then while it’s actually going on, and also for follow-up afterwards.
So go ahead and pick from the menu form below how you’d like your business show / music festival / sports match / awards presentation / charity fundraiser / open day / online course / stage performance / networking meetup etc promoted, and we’ll get back to you with a quote within 24 hours.
1. Not only do we retweet/share/repost from your official event feed to our social media accounts, but we’ll be creating safe, original, positive content for you or your social media manager to share in return, bringing variety to your own online streams.
2. We’ll be posting across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, including going live, and this will save you and your team time and effort, especially during the event when all hands will need to be on deck to deal with attendees!
3. Our own experience of putting on events – from local business expos to networking meetups to cricket open days – means we understand what you’re going through and know what the priorities are during an event.
4. Tapping into the Contactus Ealing network would spread your message to several thousand – possibly mostly new – contacts.
5. Our pick’n’mix list of promotional methods offers a variety of choices and costs, and can be tailored to suit any budget – big or small.
Examples of ongoing/recent campaigns
• Ealing Business Expo – 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023
• Marketing by Minal #emailautomation – 2019
• Branduin Business Support #bizsupportEaling – 2018 & 2019
• Izzy Stradlin Concert petition #Izzyconcert2018 – 2018-2019
• The Avenue Vintage & Antiques Market #W13vintagemarket – 2018
• Marketology #FacebookReloaded #Kickstagram – 2018
• Ealing Small Business Saturday promotion – 2016, 2017, 2018
• Burlington Motors, Acton: 60th anniversary – 2016
• London Broncos Rugby League club – 2016
• Acton Business Expo – 2016
• Ealing in Business – 2015
• Actonians Cricket Club’s Cricket Open Day – 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
For more info, feel free to email Carlene at info@contactusealing.co.uk
The_Ealinger was created to help connect people living and working in Ealing, published online and full of links for following up and connecting with individuals, businesses and organisations.
Have a look through all of the 58 weekly editions (see sidebar, this page, or go straight to issuu.com/contactusealing) from January 2016 to July 2017 to catch any editions you may have missed.
– Carlene Bender, Editor/publisher
Main Twitter account: @ContactusEaling – Carlene Bender
Other Twitter accounts where we post about local businesses from:
• @EalingBizExpo – Ealing Business Expo
• @EventsBooster – Events Booster
• @EalingBizDiary – Ealing Business Diary
• @EalingHour – Ealing Hour
• @PitshangerW5 – Pitshanger W5
• @ContactusNet – The Contactus Network
• @ContactusW4 – ContactusChiswick
• @EalingSBS – Ealing SmallBizSat
Not currently updated:
• @The_Ealinger – The_Ealinger
• @ActonBizExpo – Acton Business Expo
• @EalingBiz – EalinginBusinessExpo
Facebook pages:
• contactusealing
• ealingbizexpo
• eventsbooster
Facebook groups:
• Businesses in Ealing – Contactus
• Businesses in Acton W3 – Contactus
• Ealing Business Expo – Online Networking Group
• Cricketforfun in Ealing – Network and Play
LinkedIn: Carlene de Bourg-Bender
Instagram:
@contactusealing
@ealingbizexpo
@eventsbooster
YouTube: Carlene Bender – Contactus
Issuu: Contactus Ealing
To subscribe to receive the Ealing Business Diary by email for £24 a year, or £12 for six months, choose the option in the drop-down menu, type in your email address in the white box, click/tap the ‘Subscribe’ button, and pay the £24 or £12 via PayPal or card.
If you would like to “try before you buy”, send me an email at info@contactusealing.co.uk to get your first edition of the Diary for FREE. Usually there are 40 or so in-person events a month, but we have been featuring about 15 online networking events a month during Lockdown 2020.]
For online networking, have a look at our groups on Facebook: Businesses in Ealing, Businesses in Acton, and Ealing Business Expo; and on Twitter, Contactus director Carlene Bender hosts the #EalingHour tweet chat every Tuesday, 8-9pm.
List of regular and ongoing business networking events in Ealing
Follow us on Twitter for Diary reminders: @EalingBizDiary
Meet up with us in person at the Ealing Business Breakfast on the fourth Wednesday of every month: RETURNING SOON
19 March 2018
6 November 2017
9 May 2017
23 November 2016
29 September 2016
31 October 2015
19 June 2015
22 January 2015
24 June 2014
14 February 2014
3 February 2014
(i.e. fewer than six emails a year)
The Contactus Christmas special goes to W4
Great places to shop just next door
South of Ealing and east of Hammersmith is a leafy town called Chiswick (pop. 33,000), in the west London borough of Hounslow. It fits neatly in a bend of the River Thames and boasts one main commercial area: the Chiswick High Road.
Two offshoots of the high road, Turnham Green Terrace and Devonshire Road, provide a complimentary shopping experience packed full of independent shops and non-retail businesses. Read more…
Check out Ealing’s “5-star” restaurants
Lisa’s and Casa Roberta: great menus and prices
The office Christmas lunch. You don’t want to be in charge of booking it, because guess what by the time it gets to November everywhere is booked up and you’re facing telling the boss (or, as in the case of us small businesses, the other person) that it’s going to be takeaway on the one day that you’d like it to be special.
So that’s what this guide is for – to remind you to *book early*. And, if you’re a restaurant owner, there’s a little bit of insight into what makes the Christmas office lunch an occasion to remember fondly. Read more…
The cafe culture that’s making W5 all trendy
Paperback Coffee and Tea and Munson’s lead on the coffee front
Back in June 2014, a tweet showed up in the @ContactusEaling timeline. @potterkatiehook had posted a graph clipped from the Sunday Times, headlined “Could these areas be the next big things?”. Down at number six, behind York and Cricklewood, was South Ealing. Not Ealing. Specifically South Ealing.
“Trendy South Ealing”
Read more…
Liz Pilgrim back in Ealing Broadway
After over a year operating out of her Acton showroom, she’s back in offices in Ealing Broadway
Liz Pilgrim has no plans just yet to re-open (“but never say never!”) the babye shop that she’s probably best known for, that was attacked on The Green during the 2011 Ealing Riots, and which thrust her into the national limelight. Her business has evolved since then – from a retail focus into babyagency. She now represents maternity and baby brands like Boob, out of Sweden, and Babylonia, a Belgian brand. Read more…
Featuring: Top Hill Caribbean English Cuisine
From the RAC Club in Epsom to West Drayton Road in Ealing – Paul Laidlaw does a mean curried goat
To Paul Laidlaw, the food itself is the whole story: the start, the middle and the finish. Dishing up his signature curried goat from a busy kitchen at the Top Hill Caribbean English cuisine restaurant on West Drayton Road (across from West Ealing station), Paul explains that to run a food business, “you need to sleep with it and eat it”.
Read more…
Nicola Gaughan writes about the town she knows so well
From Queen Victoria to Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Charlie Chaplin and Jimi Hendrix, this town has made its name.
As a lifelong Hanwell resident (except for a few short spells away), I love knowing that our community has been in existence since about AD 959.
It’s thought the name originates from a huge stone (aka Han in Anglo Saxon) situated near the original spring in the grounds of the old Rectory.
Another name suggestion is that Hana means cockerel and weille refers to a stream. It also has a mention in the Domesday Book, as consisting of farm and meadowland, and it had a mill. Read more…
Distributors need to talk about it more, says Sean Beardmore
Network marketing still has some work to do on its image, it seems.
Despite ongoing defence of the business model in blogs, columns and online forums, a negative perception persists around what is also called multi-level marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, or referral marketing.
Perhaps its greatest fault is that it’s difficult to explain.
Read more…
It’s up to Ealing now
*Update: August 2014 – Sadly, Green Mango Cafe has closed*
Zakar Hussain’s life over the past three years has all the trappings of an Ealing Studios movie – British-Pakistani boy who grew up making wraps and chutneys in his uncle’s restaurants, moves from Birmingham to London to study catering at Thames Valley University (now the University of West London, on St Mary’s Road). He falls in love with Ealing, and decides to fulfil his dream of opening an Asian street-food cafe cheerily called “Green Mango Cafe” on just the perfect spot: The Green, in Ealing…
“Help me to rebuild my business,” he says in this Contactus video.
Read more…
Zakar Hussain’s life over the past three years has all the trappings of an Ealing Studios movie – British-Pakistani boy who grew up making wraps and chutneys in his uncle’s restaurants, moves from Birmingham to London to study catering at Thames Valley University (now the University of West London, on St Mary’s Road). He falls in love with Ealing, and decides to fulfil his dream of opening an Asian street-food cafe cheerily called “Green Mango Cafe” on just the perfect spot: The Green, in Ealing…
But Zak’s story is still caught in the limbo between a happy ending and disaster, because after just five months of opening his cafe, he loses everything: the London Riots of 2011 sees his new shop, his livelihood, his savings of ten years, gone, washed away. Now, having exhausted all other forms of funding, Zak has turned to the local community to help; crowdfunding-style, he is asking for financial donations from the public, via Paypal or credit card on his website www.greenmangocafe.co.uk.
“Help me to rebuild my business,” he says in this Contactus video, “Any donations, I’d really appreciate it … please, [donate] whatever you can, help a small business like mine, and help me rebuild the community.”
Zakar Hussain – hoping to reopen Green Mango Cafe in spring 2013
“The weather’s getting warmer, I want to reopen soon!” says Zak, having a skinny latte now in somebody else’s cafe elsewhere on The Green in March 2013. It’s just about two years since he opened Green Mango Cafe, and also, actually, just about two years since he suffered the worst thing that could happen to his business. The rioters had attacked stores on The Green, a row of small indie and semi-indie shops just off Ealing Broadway, and set fire to the convenience shop on the corner, Ealing Local. The water damage from the fire services putting out the fire next door warped the café’s wooden floors, flooded his basement and ruined equipment, stocks and furnishings.
“I never expected this,” he adds. “When you start up a business, you never imagine something like this could happen. Like the insurers said, it’s like an ‘act of God’.” It’s the nitty-gritty of his insurance arrangement that has kept him back from starting up business again, but it’s not something he wants to go into much detail about.
The Green: Zak’s shopfront a few days after the riots of August 2011
“It’s hard to really explain why I’m the last shop to reopen,” says Zak, 36, a still-confident character who credits the gym for keeping him sane and who manages to joke about losing his hair over his business. He’s also had to delay wedding and family plans until his cafe is up and running again.
“Because of my circumstances, I couldn’t apply for the kind of funding that other riot-hit businesses could; I couldn’t get a lump sum on a plate enabling me to rebuild; I put my house up for sale, I’m trying to get another bank loan, I’ve borrowed money from everyone I know just to stay alive, to keep on top of the Council tax bills, the gas and electricity and wifi bills that keep coming.
“I’m still living the nightmare. There’s no roof on the shop, there’s mold and rust and water damage everywhere.”
Pathways, the local independent charity who own and lease out much of The Green, have given what assistance they can to help Zak recover, says Peter Thomas, head of finance at Pathways.
Other shops on The Green got off relatively lightly, and were able to quickly recover from smashed windows and some amount of looting.
The Khurmy family, owners of the burnt-out corner shop re-opened under the Spar brand in February 2013 (see our Contactus video from their reopening day here), to a nationwide hurrah.
Liz Pilgrim, who found herself the media spokesperson for Ealing’s riot-hit businesses, has moved on and up in her business, and no longer trades from The Green, but has moved her expanded babye boutique to brisk online sales, and relocated to bigger showroom-type facilities in Acton. Responding to Zak’s video plea for donations, she tweeted: “I hope Zak gets sorted soon.”
“Thirty-thousand pounds” is how much Zak says he needs to get building work done to a level where he can throw his doors open to customers again, to bring back to life the UK’s only Asian street food cafe. Zak Hussain hasn’t given up on Ealing, he hasn’t let go of his dream. So let’s work together to rebuild this cafe as a community, and give it our best support. Join us in donating to a local business cause – and help the Green Mango Cafe story to have a happy ending.
Website: www.greenmangocafe.co.uk
Twitter: @GreenMango_Cafe
Facebook: greenmangocafe
Contact Zak: greenmangocafe@hotmail.com
Carlene Bender
March 2013
