Hedon Blog: New Year food for thoughts

Following analysing the Hedon Blog's popular posts and my favourites of 2009 then I conclude that I need to maintain a variety of content in 2010 to keep readers coming back. The very local stuff such as the post about the free bus service to the ASDA needs to be married with more nationally searchable material such as the Swine flu article. Of course on the rare occasions when Hedon provides the source of a topical news story, then the Blog can come into its own in providing a useful informative service as with the Amy Black report.

The Hedon Blog is non-party-political. But it is not apolitical as its support for the HOTI campaign shows. Therefore the Blog is perfectly placed for providing a unique local service during the 2010 general election campaign. It can provide a platform for debate and discussion and ensure that the political parties consider Hedon and its interests during their election campaigns. It can report from the 'front-line' of meetings and canvassing. It can even conduct its own straw polls of Hedon opinion and report directly from the count on election night.

During 2010 then I need to look at income generating opportunities, particularly to cover promotional costs. These might come through migrating to a paid-for service over at Wordpress.org or Typepad or setting up a seperate 'white/yellow' pages site for Hedon. I favour the latter, because the winning formula with wordpress.com is the fact that it is free, simple to use, and readily available for any community to use. Indeed even an ex-Editor of newspaper has opted to use the dot.com version in establishing his hyperlocal site The Harbourne Mile! On a personal note then my own income generation needs a kick-start also in 2010 (sic).

Hedon Blog Promotion - A Success?

The Hedon Blog attempted some offline publicity last week. Five thousand flyers were circulated to addresses in the HU12 post code area which includes all the 3,500 households in Hedon. The leaflets were copied by local printers Green Print for £120.00 and distributed by the Holderness Advertiser for £115.00 - a significant investment in publicity!

So was this exercise successful? 

On the face of it the exercise only caused a blip in hits on the site. The day before the leaflet then the internal Wordpress Stats Counter marked 113 views. On the two days of the leaflet delivery then 254 and 350 hits were recorded respectively on the Wednesday and Thursday . On the Friday views were only 162 and 104 on the Saturday.

The top posts on the busiest day were: Hedon Online 24 views, Hedon Christmas Lights 22, and the What's On page 20.

Comments on the site picked up with eight new submissions (disregarding spam and my own replies) and the Facebook Page picked up seven new fans. Two new issues were brought to my attention which formed the basis of two posts on parking problems and a derelict building.

The benefits of the leaflet drop are probably still going to be felt over the next week or so. Questions can be raised about whether the leaflet was effective and whether having it distributed with other advertising flyers was a good idea. But on balance the experiment was worthwhile - even if to rule it out as an economic option in the future!

The Hedon Blog will use offline publicity again, but probably limited to posters in key places and the distribution of business cards.

Have Bloggers out there had better experiences of using flyers to promote their Blog?