A guest post from our new comms intern Jenn & her perspective on our latest social media campaign (@msjennjennPR)

For those of you who see‘#’ and are looking at the text abbreviation of Northumberland, please don’t judge me and think I’m one of these young ones who can’t spell and write everything like I tweet it!

It’s actually the brand of a great campaign I am currently involved in, Northumberland Fun.

As a relatively new member of the communications team, working as an intern for about 10 weeks now, I was excited to get on board with this campaign. I knew the team had run a similar campaign last summer so I was keen to see how I could help update it and bring something new to the table.

Northumberland Fun has been running since 1st August and provides an unlimited resource of fun things to do for residents and visitors to Northumberland through Facebook and Twitter and the use of the #NlandFUN hash tag.

How we have done this is by creating some great relationships with local businesses and promoted their fun-filled product, service, venue or event – all for free, encouraging anyone in Northumberland in August to visit and experience what they are offering.

As I said, the promotion we have done through our social media pages has been free, but we have been encouraging businesses to donate competition prizes to our Northumberland Fun prize pot, something that has been a major success. I feel this is where I have played my biggest part, exercising my fresh-out-of-uni communication skills, contacting and promoting the benefits of getting involved in this campaign to these businesses and organisations.

Prizes varied from family passes for Kirkley Hall Zoo and Chillingham Castle, a three-month county wide parking pass and a two-night stay in a Northumberland Cottage, which had more than 700 entrants in only 3 days!

Even if a prize or special offer isn’t available, we are promoting those that are using the #NlandFUN by promoting them as ‘Site of the Day’ directing traffic to their websites, Facebook or Twitter pages.

We had some great ‘Deals of the Day’ from our tourist information centres that were running special offers throughout August, offering 10% off ticket prices at the likes of Paxton House and Bamburgh Castle.

Last year the campaign was really successful and with two weeks still to go we have already surpassed the targets we set ourselves for the whole campaign and the numbers recorded 12 months ago.

Everyone’s idea of a ‘fun day’ is different and this is a challenge we are definitely winning by offering such a broad range of ideas, ensuring everyone is a happy customer when they use #NlandFUN. Whatever the weather and whatever your age, there is something fun to do in Northumberland!