The release of announcements actually has four purposes:

To these ends, several things have to be taken into consideration.

Content

Provide the necessary data but keep announcements short and to the point. People will stop reading an announcement—or, even worse, your announcements in general—if they are bored with too many details and/or digressive phrasing. If you provide too little information, they will get upset, too. Make sure enough information is given but encourage people to visit the web site to find out more.

Keep the content focussed and don't include information about too many topics. One or two is usually enough.

If the announcement covers a topic that not everyone may be familiar with, add a short explanation after the normal announcement text, and before a standard footer.

It is good practise for official announcements other than the initial event announcement to always have a footer with a statement about what Warpstock is, when and where it will take place, and where to find more information. That way, people who haven't read previous announements have less difficulty to get up-to-date. An example footer:

The ninth Warpstock Europe conference will be held at the City Hostel in Düsseldorf, Germany from November 14 to 16. Warpstock is an annual conference for the OS/2 and eComStation operating systems and related technology. It is dedicated to information, education, support, and exchange and addresses users, developers, and software vendors. To achieve these goals, the event offers seminars and workshops, exhibition areas, and room for personal exchange.

More information is available at: http://www.warpstock.eu

Warpstock Europe is powered by warpevents.eu
Warpstock is a trademark of Warpstock, Inc.

The same in German:

Die neunte europäische Warpstock-Konferenz findet in der Zeit vom 14. bis 16. November im City Hostel in Düsseldorf in Deutschland statt. Warpstock ist eine jährlich stattfindende Konferenz zu den Betriebssystemen OS/2 und eComStation und verwandter Technologien zum Zweck der Information, der Weiterbildung, des Supports und des Austausches und wendet sich an Anwender, Entwickler und Software-Hersteller. Dazu bietet die Veranstaltung Seminare und Workshops, Ausstellungsbereiche sowie Raum für persönliche Kontakte.

Weitere Informationen erhalten Sie unter: http://www.warpstock.eu

Warpstock Europe is powered by warpevents.eu
Warpstock is a trademark of Warpstock, Inc.


Release strategy

To both attract and maintain attention, you have to find a good frequency for announcement releases. Too rare, and people tend to forget about the event or even suspect that it might have been cancelled. Too often, and they get on people's nerves. Our recommendation is no less than once a fortnight and no more than twice a week, preferably with a pause in between.

You may want to delay an announcement a bit to give people time for "recovery" from the previous announcement. Also, you may consider splitting an announcement about more than one topic in two to increase the frequency.

Where to announce

For the announcements to be effective, you have to reach as many potential visitors as possible. Because of that, announcements have to be sent to a number of news services, both in the OS/2 community and outside.

OS/2 community services

Unfortunately, not everybody in the OS/2 community reads the same news services and not all news service carry the same news. As a result, you should post your announcements at least to the following:

Non-OS/2 services

In case of external news services, do not flood them with announcements. Send the initial announcement for the event and later one that includes presentation topics, especially ones that are also of interest for non-OS/2 users.

Drafts

Prior to the event

After the event