More of what's to Come!

Listeners of the World,

I hope everyone found our last post very exciting and helpful to seeing a little portion of what the new OurTown site is bringing to the table once launched! I wanted to keep that vibe flowing so I decided to give some incite on another new feature of OurTown...........Social Media Integration! In this post I will dive in and explain all the new functionality coming to the site involving Americas new favorite past time.......Social Networking/Media.

Now first thing is first, and I guess that "thing" is Facebook which happens to be first among sites! Over the past year Facebook has become the number 1 visited site on the Internet making it the most important site to integrate with. We have done a lot of different things with Facebook, including our OurTown page, and Group page. But, we are not even close to being done when it comes to our local editors and Facebook!

On the new site each local editor will have an option to log on to Facebook from within their OurTown admin using Facebook Connect. From here you will be able to download events, photos, stories, etc to be shown on your OurTown page and to upload them to be shown on your Facebook page as well. Thus fully connecting your Facebook friends to your OurTown page and in turn you are getting more viewers right away. We also plan on using Facebook to connect all the local editors together to give a social forum that will include local editors, home office, and OurTown viewers!

Now on to the second social media craze...................Twitter! Where Facebook is good at a lot of different things, Twitter offers something that is invaluable to our local editors which is instant posts from OurTown to Twitter with the posting of a new story on OurTown! This will be great and keep all the stories very fresh for the viewers considering they will see a tweet for every story. You will also be able to see the tweets on each of the OurTown pages!

Now this is just a little look into what is coming on the new OurTown site! My next post will focus in on another new part of the OurTown site.

Your OurTown Super hero,

Chris

Coming Soon!

Listeners of the World,

We here at OurTown have been developing a new site with a new ad system. Since local and national ads are how our local editors make money and connect with the local businesses we wanted to give some incite to the system. Now many of the things that I'm going to talk about are not finalized for the new ad system will be released about a month after the soft release of the site this month!

Now with the ad system right now there is a lot of pressure and work that needs to be done by the local editor to obtain local advertisements. Local editors are the only ones who can put in ads, update them, place them on the page, and take them down once expired. Also another big part that makes it a little tougher is that the local editors also determine all local ad prices. Now the home office does help with ad pricing if asked and we also post many tips and guides on the subject as well. Now from the current system we have had local editors obtain many local ads while we have had other local editors who could not obtain one local ad! We saw this as a huge problem and needed to make a change!

Now that everyone is up to date with the current ad system we want to give you a glimpse of what is to come! The first big change is the new "ad portal" which will be available to everyone who visits the site. This new ad portal will act as the gateway to our local advertising on the site. This is where local editors will put in ads for there site, but it is also where the local businesses can put in their own local ad and select the area or areas that they would like it to be shown. With this simple new change we have allowed local editors to focus more on updating their site instead of pitching local businesses. If you build your site up and get enough traffic the local businesses will notice your site without you even going to their store!

Another great feature is that the local editor no longer has to place the ads on their site! It will happen automatically based on what information the local business or local editor inputs while entering the ad onto our ad portal. This also means that the site will automatically take down the ad, update the ad based on what was entered in, and it will also renew the ad with simple OK from either the business or local editor.

Now comes the big part that we have been working on here at the home office..............AD PRICING! Many local editors have been stumped with pricing their own ads not knowing how much to charge and for how long. Well we have been working on a solution for a while now and with any luck from the formula we are working on OurTown.com will set the ad prices for each individual area! Now we know that some local editors like to set the prices and we are working so that the system will support both. Now in the beginning it might only support the OurTown prices, but we will have both eventually.

With the new ad system we are hoping that local editors will get to spend more time improving their sites and less time worrying about their ads. Because in the end if you site is good enough the advertisers will come to you!

Your OurTown Superhero,

Chris

April Fools!!!!

Listeners of the World,

Today is probably one of the greatest days of the year as far as I am concerned! It is just an overall fun day, and usually is a very nice day outside. As I drove into work this morning the April fools jokes were already being told over the radio and when I switched on my blackberry it took me to Google which is now Topeka! This got me thinking about what I was going to do today to Fool people, and then I started thinking about what OurTown would do today to get people. Well I didn't fully decide on what I would do so I am going to be randomly posted things on our twitter and facebook accounts. Some things will be real while others will be totally random and off the top of my head! I think it will be fun to see the different reactions and even better considering I'm posting what I'm doing on the OurTown blog. No matter what happens today just always remember to laugh!

Your OurTown Superhero,

Dave ( I mean Chris or do I)