I have been busy improving my What’s up in Kyoto business website. Besides working in the back at stuff you cannot see (yet), I have added a page on getting around in Kyoto, which mainly means public transport, but also cycling and walking. I am not 100% happy with it since it is just a wall of text right now, which is never good. I am still looking for free photos to lighten the mood a little. Also, I want to replace the text links on top with the appropriate icons, which will probably happen some time in the weekend.
I am busy entering events into the calendar and I have started a whatsupinkyoto facebook page as well. It would be nice if you could like the page, hint*hint… There, I am posting a daily event chosen from those of the calendar. At the moment, it is quite heavy on exhibitions (I wish I had enough time and money to see them all!) but I hope that I get to know more different types of events in the future.
Speaking of which, I have also opened a whatsupinkyoto twitter page, but I haven’t started tweeting yet, meaning: you can follow if you like – please do – but there’s nothing going on right now. Interestingly, within Japan, twitter is more popular than facebook, so it is good to have a twitter page for a Japanese business like mine. Also here the idea is that I have one tweet per day with a selected event. Later on I may increase the volume of content sent to both twitter and facebook, but it is also a question of time, of course.
I am also thinking of starting to advertise the page. First of all to event providers in Kyoto, where I keep sending out an advertisement letter to museums, theatres, etc. So far, no bites, but I am patient. Second, I want to attract the Kyoto tourist crowd. Since I like buses and trains – and many tourists take them, not to speak of other Kyoto-ites – I was thinking of running simple ads in the Kyoto city bus. This is what I came up with, do you like it?
Unfortunately, advertising in a bus or subway is prohibitively expensive, at least for the time being: It costs about 6000 EUR for 2500 posters placed in buses and subways – for four (in numbers: 4) days only The number doesn’t sound that bad I admit, but I have to think in terms of overall budget, and this is about 1/4 of my whole business budget for a whole year… So, no bus ads for the moment. I still think that advertisement in public space is the best way to go, and on Monday I have an appointment with a Kyoto advertisement company. I hope they’ll have some ideas on what to do with somebody as tiny (and stingy) as me…
I’ll keep you posted.
Are there places you could leave leaflets? (e.g. library, tourist info, community centre, pubs, language schools, university campus, …)
Maybe acquaintances/friends could put them on their company’s blackboard (if they have something like this…)
Ask friends to namedrop you in their blog/vlogs…
Maybe some newspaper might be interested in an Interview with a Gaijin (mastering soroban for example) and they’d include your business information…
Good luck! 🙂
Hmmm… friends?? I have heard about something like that…
😉
Yes there are a few places where I could leave leaflets, haven’t thought of universities or language schools though… I’ll talk to the advertising agent on Monday if he has more ideas like that.