Now all of 3 1/2 months old as a feature on this site it’s been quite fun to see your usage evolve of the buzz section that went live with the new edition of eBrandon in December. With a focus on quality over quantity and on unique and current local content that drives conversation in the community, there have been just under 200 posts since going live…. enough of a sample space to get an idea of whats working, what might not be and what direction to keep evolving into. Those almost 200 posts have an average view count of more than 2000 (this post will bring that average down a little, but some times a dude has something he needs to get out :)).
This past week saw a nice anecdote for how the section has evolved with the post about the inflatable water park coming to Minnedosa. The most important thing to me in analyzing a post is looking at how many views the actual page on eBrandon has had and this one has seen more than 13,000, many of which would’ve come organically from folks that are already on eBrandon for other purposes. Still I also pay attention to folks’ reaction on social media after posts go up and on Facebook eBrandon’s version of the water park post had a pretty great 1600+ shares, a high for any local page sharing information on the announcement.
I have an approach I believe in very much in how I’ll share a post and the process I’ll go through before it goes up to make sure that its as accurate and responsible as possible. After receiving the press release about the water park that the good folks from Minnedosa sent out I put a few extra minutes into doing my homework and writing an original post, researching facts and sources. It would be easy to simply copy and paste a press release up verbatim and share that content as if it were my own but in being mindful of the dangers of a site that takes the easy way out as a press release echo chamber I don’t feel thats a sustainable way to build a feature of value. The fact that you saw eBrandon’s post to be worthy of your views and so “share worthy” was to me a testament to the thought that a lot of users are perhaps starting to appreciate that approach.
But that one post aside, its been great to see more folks willing to share theirs and their business' stories with me as I walk the fine line between having information sources that trust me to responsibly present information that relates to them and an audience that trusts me to try my best to not simply be an echo chamber but someone that also takes their interests seriously. Since adding a new quality camera its also been flattering to see how many events are trusting me at their venue to take a few pics to share.
There’s also starting to be a neat little complimentary thing going on with our actual local media sources, one example being the Brandon Sun’s recent breaking of Original Joes’ target opening date. In doing my own little writeup I was able to cite a few interesting facts from their story and direct readers to them for the depth that we rely on media for. Then just a couple days later the Sun cited details from a buzz post on here in their story on the impending updates at Bulk Barn. The end result is a setup that benefits everyone…. the outlets sharing information and folks in Westman that rely on us to pass that info along to them.
Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone that’s seen the value in what I’m trying to do here and helped out, be it by passing along a tip for a post, taking a moment to click and read a post that might be interesting or sharing with a friend. This project has really lit a new fire in me and I’m excited to see where we can take it next!
tl;dr: I’m flattered that view counts on buzz posts are averaging over 2000 each and your social media shares and participation are pretty cool too. Merci :)