Everything Video......

Listeners of the World,

We have begin making steps toward our new goal of making OurTown.com more video based! The first step was to make our HTML island "News Worthy" meaning our local editors now have a way to embed videos and have them be seen on our homepage and in our RSS feed. This will help increase the visibility of these videos to search engines.

Our second step is creating a Video Island that will allow our local editors to show any type of video! Right now we have a YouTube island that allows our local editors to show YouTube videos, which will be replaced by our new Video Island. This island is currently underdevelopment and should be released soon.

Our third step is the creation of our OurTown Video pages. We are currently working on this and once it is finished we will have a main OurTown Video page which will have all the videos playing on OurTown.com. Plus each individual OurTown page will have its own Video Page that will show only the videos from that town. This should help increase the SEO on each of our town pages including OurTown.com as a whole!

We are also in the process of introducing editors to our new video creation tool (provided by vADz) which will help them create their very own news clips and video ads! Please check back for more updates about our progress with increasing video in all aspects of OurTown.

Your OurTown Superhero,

Chris

OurTown VideoAnchor!

Listeners of the World,

There are two main focuses out there right now and that is Video and Local! Many companies and people are focusing in on hyper local news and targeting smaller local markets. At the same time online video is on about everyone's mind. Here at OurTown.com we have combined hyper local news and video!

We are beginning a new program with some of our local editors which will involve them being able to create their own videos covering their local news! We are introducing them to a new video editing system that will allow our local editors to create unique videos about different events and topics in their town. This addition will help bring more compelling video to hyper local events and news that regularly wouldn't have been covered.

We plan on introducing these new videos across the entire site in the upcoming months as well as video ads that will help bring relevant advertising to each individual OurTown site. Video and Local are the waves of the future and OurTown is gearing up now!

Your OurTown Hero,

Chris

New Post!

Listeners of the World,

Wow.....it has been over a month since the last post for the OurTown blog! A lot has been going on around OurTown with the new site development, process of adding video to the site (vADz Video), process of adding towns in the UK, and more! We have been very busy and wanted to update everyone on OurTown and it's progress.

- The new site is taking a lot longer than planned due to many of the changes, the development of our new ad system and process. We are still focused on getting this site up ASAP and to make sure that it will do and have everything that our local editors need. We have our new look completed and will also have our new training material and schedule when the site is ready!

- We are now encouraging video on the site in a few different ways. We have always had a YouTube feature on the site to be able to add videos, and now we are in the process of adding another solution which will help you create your own teaser videos.......vADz Videos. This will allow our local editors to add their own videos that they created. Now that is just the first part, the second part is with the addition of video ads! We are making it so that you can use the vADz Video system to create video ads for your local businesses. This will create more interest in your page and also help with the local ad sales.

- We have been adding a lot of new great local editors as of late, but one that we will be adding is a little different from the rest! Starting this week we will be adding some towns for the UK to the OurTown site. We have seen the need to be able to expand to other countries and have been working on making the site ready to handle this change. We soon hope to have many towns not only in the US, but also in the UK!

These are just a few of the many projects, additions, and changes that are keeping us busier than ever! We will start having weekly and bi-weekly updates again to help keep everyone updated with everything OurTown, Hpyer local news, Online News, and Social News!

Your OurTown Superhero,

Chris