While continuing to significantly increase our on-line rating, and to dramatically boost our ranking in the search engines, we are also developing our off-line presence! The motivation for this site promotion campaign is to get interested people to go on-line to find the labour-related resource they need.

Specifically, we'd like to attract:

• surfers who find that they don't have the resources to process masses of search engine results


• infrequent internet users who like to get online, get what they're after, and get offline


• regular print media readers who don't go online to 'look around'

Being a conduit for needed and valuable information, the XPDNC labour directory provides referrals to labour-related web pages. We specialize in moving surfers through our site as quickly as possible, sending them onto the content-laden resource they require.

Some of the web sites we list post a link on their site back to the XPDNC site. Other sites, which are not listed on the XPDNC site also post a link to the XPDNC site. We thank them for endorsing our service. The theme and overall content of these other sites is not directly related to labour issues.

A couple of examples illustrate this situation: a chemical info supplier lists the XPDNC Health and Safety Links page, a regional community service page lists the relevant state-wide XPDNC Labour Links page.

These common-interest sites have determined that our site offers free, valuable assistance others don't. That's why they've indicated an interest in including a reference to our site in their printed materials. When you see a link to our site in printed form such as brochures, handouts, or take-ones, let us know through email . We'd really like to know!

Example Simple Media Ads

We have received email from groups that indicate an interest in spreading the word about our site in off-line media. Some are prepared to rally the community to support organized labour's vision of organizing the unorganized. They indicate that they regularly prepare a flyer, leaflet, newsletters, community calendar and so forth and would like to refer to our site there, at no cost to us!.

Community focused interest groups appear to be in the forefront of this initiative. We really do appreciate this interest. This is free advertising for our site.

Several pointers we can pass along about print ads:

• you have six seconds to grab a person's attention


• keep it short, simple, flowing and clear

In its basic form, an ad for our site needs a title such as "Labour Directory" and our address, "www.xpdnc.com", that's all. If you want to refer to a specific page of our site in basic ad, simply use some form of our page title, and mention the page address, i.e., "Health and Safety Links" "www.xpdnc.com/links/h&s.html" is clear enough. There might be some potential for our title/address pair to piggy-back along with some other free ad that you are placing.

A more detailed ad would contain several lines. We present two ads below that could be used, space permitting, that give the reader a little more of a concept of our site.

Example Print Media Ads

Recently, newspapers have begun presenting a section containing classified ads for web sites. This new section stands out from the regular classified ads section. Under titles such as "Internet Directory", "New Economy Feature", "On-line Directory" and "Web Sources", web site owners can place an ad about their site. Typically, these ads run for a period of thirty days. The newspaper sets the minimum specifications for the basic ad. Specifications are used to define the ad within these special sections including:

• 100 characters of text content in total


• title, three lines of text content, one line for URL


• limitations on font style and size


• no logos or graphics


• appropriate content rules

Ad pricing does vary. For a national daily newspaper, the price per ad can exceed $500 US. For a regional daily newspaper, the price drops to half that. Community daily newspapers providing local content charge even less. Ad pricing in weekly, biweekly and alternative newspapers that cater to special interest groups have much lower fees. Of course, viewer exposure to these ads is reduced since these papers are published less frequently and have a much smaller circulation.

We are taking the time to consider including these ads to our targeted media mix in order to broaden the exposure of our site .Due to the cost of ad placement, we'll probably wait a while and try to gauge the effectiveness of this ad type before we invest our time and money into them. If you have placed an ad of this type then send us an email to let us know your ad's response rate. Messages concerning outstanding results from any other off-line media successes are also appreciated. The more cost-effective print media campaign the better. We'd really like to know!

We are presenting this mock-ad for those who have not noticed these sections in their newspapers. Even though we haven't come across labour related ads in the media yet we've included several fictions ones in our fake newspaper section to fill in the layout to better illustrate the point. Of course the genuine print media ads appear in black and white, we've shaded them in for emphasis only.

Example Internet Classified Sections To Place Our Newspaper Ad