A few weeks we hit a major milestone — 3 million readers.
That’s pretty good for a web site that New Rochelle powers-that-be claim “no one” reads. 3 million is a lot of “no ones”!
Every now and then I like to give readers a little update on what’s going on behind the scenes. This is an especially good time to do that because we are going to be making some upgrades to the site in the coming weeks so do not be surprised if the site appears to suddenly change or even go down for a little bit. This time I am getting some professional help from the folks at Convey Media. Readers might call that when the site went down for a couple of days a few months ago, it was Convey Media that got us back on line.
Not only was that a good advert for them but a good reminder for me that sometimes it’s best to bring in the pros.
The most exciting part of the plan is that we are upgrading to a newer version of the software we use which will allow us to offer a mobile-optimized version of the site so the site will display in a mobile format by default for readers connecting via a smart phone or tablet. This was not such a big deal when we did out last upgrade when less than 10% of our readers visited the site from a mobile device; today that number is more like 60%.
We have also put a greater emphasis on the email newsletter — once we realized about a year ago that more people were reading Talk of the Sound via the email newsletter than any other way. If you are not already signed up for the newsletter you can register your email address here:
CLICK: eepurl.com/jJhdL
We really like getting folks signed up for the newsletter because they get the articles in their inboxes whether they remember to check the website and the newsletter includes links back to the site for every story.
Some web sites do not like to share their stats — we do! How else will you know if we are being successful if we do not tell you where we were, where we’ve gotten to and where we hope to go.
Our web site is getting about 2,400 readers a day, on a rolling average over the past few months. We have about 4,400 people getting the newsletter. We have more than 1,600 followers on Twitter and another 750 on Facebook. We have other social media and RSS so that combined we are reaching about 10,000 readers a day. The number is actually far greater when you add in Likes, Favorites, Forwards and Retweets.
For example, we just started getting our Twitter stats for the first time and we’re a bit surprised and more than pleased to find that our Twitter impressions are at about 180,000 a month.
I am not exactly sure how you would add up all the ways our stories get out to readers but it has become a darn big number of a small hyper-local web site. According to people in the business, there is no hyper-local site like Talk of the Sound that does those kinds of numbers. So, however you add it up its a lot.
And that would then tell you why we have seen a big increase in ads running on our site — hopefully folks not only don’t mind but will make a good effort to click on our ads and support our advertisers. That money helps us keep the site going (no one is getting rich at Talk of the Sound I can assure you!)
What we have done with the ads is mostly take on national advertisers through an ad agency. They sell a lot of our ads — Good! They take a big cut of the pie – Not Good! So we are very interested in direct local ads so if you want to reach a lot of New Rochelleans and promote your business consider running ads on Talk of the Sound.
I want to say a word about Twitter. I am well aware that many folks giggle at the name or disparage it or just don’t get it. To that I would say that, in my view, the BEST way to enjoy Talk of the Sound is via Twitter. Here’s why — it’s what we put into our Twitter feed and that’s it great on a mobile device.
First, Twitter is free and you can just READ stuff so do not be intimidated by what you are going to SAY on Twitter because you do not have to say anything.
Second, pretty much any media outlet or media personality or sports team or TV show or whatever has a Twitter account so you can add all your favorites to your Twitter account and each time they publish a new news item (i.e., a tweet) you can read it on your phone. And we figure Talk of the Sound will be among those you follow.
Third, our Twitter account is really good. Every article published on Talk of the Sound is published on our Twitter account so you do not miss a thing (even our newsletter is sent each day as a tweet). I personally read EVERY media outlet and look for EVERY story about New Rochelle I can find and tweet those news items so you not only get everything from Talk of the Sound but everything about New Rochelle from News12, Journal News, New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, CBS2-TV and the rest. We also live tweet from breaking news events like fires, police activities or various public meetings — along with photos and videos. I also make it a point to add in a few humorous items and what I consider “local flavor” tweets where your neighbors make observations about the day, the weather, breaking news or whatever is on their mind. And we have a few folks who really contribute via Twitter like James O’Toole’ Boomer Ryder, Amy Heyman, John Karl and others. I am basically on my iPhone all of my waking hours (and I often wake up in the night and check twitter too!). If you watch, you will see that the Talk of the Sound Twitter is basically a 24/7 operation.
What I really like to see from readers is that they make very good use of their smartphones — hence my desire to mobile-optimize the site — and the best way to do that is to get on Twitter, and tweet out photos and videos, observations and interesting web links so we can all share news and information about New Rochelle. If you do not know how to do this — find a nephew, a grandson or a neighbor and ask for help. It’s worth it.
That’s about it for now.
Keep on reading, get on the email list, get on Twitter.
Not everyone is a journalist but everyone can be a news-gatherer.
Oh, one last thing. A pet peeve.
When you shoot video or take photos with your smart phone – TURN IT SIDEWAYS. You want to be shooting in the same aspect ratio as a computer monitor or a TV set — that means wide width, less height and then means rotate that phone 90 degrees to get the best photos and video.