THIS MONTH has been the busiest January on HU12 Online since 2016. This vindicates the decision to return once again to publishing ‘news’ rather than just ‘What’s On?’ listings.
We have recorded over 12,400 page views in January so far. The busiest posts during the month have been those dealing with planning issues i.e. the old Hedon Post Office and the development at the Hedon Haven. The second most popular post, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the piece regarding the Meet and Greet COVID-19 volunteers. But our series on Walking has also proved popular with the what3words links being the most frequently clicked.
Our audience is comprised of those 452 subscribers to HU12 (whether those that click the notifications boxes when making a comment, or those that directly subscribe via Mailchimp to receive emails when the website is updated), but also we are followed by those that click through from our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) which now includes those clicking through from the Nextdoor Network. We have over 3,700 followers just on Twitter albeit that has been built up over a decade.
We also have the traffic coming to us from the image-focused networks Flickr and Instagram. One of the biggest sources of visitors to the site is via search engines; Google and Bing.
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So what’s next?
HU12 Online will continue with its news reporting role and we do request that those agencies that have public messages to share with our very local audience contact us with their material at hu12@gmx.com.
- We will continue to develop our Walking series over the next few weeks – please do send us in your experience of exercise walks, the routes you use, your observations, along with photos.
- Our Competition Corner will look at widening the type of competitions offered. We know the puzzles are being looked at and tackled via social media, but do leave comments with your answers or suggestions.
- Our Quick Links will be a permanent feature on HU12 Online – a place where you can always find useful local information.
- And of course not forgetting What’s On? Whilst public events have declined with the pandemic, there are still locally organised online activities that can be promoted
- We hope to relaunch our Wednesday Writings feature which did get very popular a few years ago. So we ask readers to send us in your creative writing, poetry and other creative works for possible publication on HU12 Online.
- We have ambitions to do more video blogging (vlogging) and podcasting – but watch this space.
- We use WordPress to publish this website. We can’t necessarily run adverts on the site in the same way that we used to. (From 2012 – 2016 we used web-hosting services which allowed ads, but since then HU12 merged with the old ‘Hedon Blog’ which restricts what we can do). However, in cooperation with WordPress, we are going to experiment with an ads service.
And finally, of course, we can do so much more with help from local people. Send us your ideas for articles and other features that you think would provide a service to local communities. And if you feel you can help with community blogging then do get in touch with your ideas about that too.
Ray Duffill hu12@gmx.com
