As 2011 comes to a close, business owners are developing their budgets for 2012. Take a look at where your advertising dollars were spent before you fall into the so-called “TRAP” (Television, Radio and Print). There is another, cost-effective and local option where some of your budget may be spent. NorthumberlandView.ca is a news and information website that has been in operation since September of 2007.

NorthumberlandView.ca has about 3,000 unique visitors each day and over 14,000 page views each day. NorthumberlandView.ca’s popularity has grown by leaps and bounds with content coming from more and more sources. People continue to discover that NorthumberlandView.ca is an excellent source of news, events and information in Northumberland County. NorthumberlandView.ca is independently owned and operated and content is posted as-is.

Look at what kind of advertising you did in 2011, look at how much was spent, then look at the Return on Investment (ROI) for those ads. You may have spent too much money on ads that might not have worked. Depending on the business, some advertising methods are better than others. Adding an advertisement at NorthumberlandView.ca to your advertising budget is a way of increasing exposure for your business online.  One advertiser has said that in addition to increasing traffic to their website, they received a number of phone calls from potential customers who saw their phone number on their ad at NorthumberlandView.ca.

When you advertise with NorthumberlandView.ca, there are no contracts. If you want to try it out for one month, or a few months, you can. If you don’t want to continue, you don’t have to keep paying for an ad that isn’t working. Ads can be changed as often as you want. If you want to split up your advertising so it’s spread out over a longer period of time, it can. Advertising with NorthumberlandView.ca gives you a number of options for how it’s done. Monthly advertising can be purchased for between $50 and $125 per month and you will get weekly reports showing how the ad is doing. The option of Cost Per 1,000 (CPM) advertising is also available for between $4 and $10 per 1,000 impressions, which means that for as little as $40, your ad is seen 10,000 times.

So when you start work on your advertising budget for 2012, consider adding NorthumberlandView.ca to your mix.

One of the things that I wanted to do when I started NorthumberlandView.ca was to allow people to connect with each other.

I added Comments to articles so people could share their opinions about what they’re reading.

I added the Watercooler (Discussion Forum) so that people could voice their opinions and concerns about what’s on their mind and to create an open dialogue about important issues.

I left both of them open so that anyone could talk about anything without having to register at NorthumberlandView.ca, even though it’s free and takes about 10 seconds.

The problem is, they’re not being used. I get the occasional comment on an article, but it’s not being used to its full potential. The only posts that come to the Watercooler seem to be spam posts. I have created a number of topics that I thought would generate interest but there has been very little activity.

Even the Classifieds aren’t getting much action. A few ads have been posted but I would like to see more people using this free service. One of the reasons I put added the Classifieds was to give residents of Northumberland County an alternative to Kijiji or CraigsList. Neither of them let you look for just Northumberland, you either have to search through ads from Peterborough, Belleville or Oshawa.

Another thing I wanted to mention is the fact that if a group or organization has an event that you want to publicize or if you have news to share, you can submit it directly to NorthumberlandView.ca.

To submit an event, simply click on “Create New” at the bottom of the Events Calendar on the right side of the page. It’s a simple form that you fill out that includes the details of your event.

Tu submit a news article, click on “Submit an article” underneath “Latest News” on the Home Page. If you want, you can also add photos. There are hundreds of templates and guides out there that will help you create an effective media release.

I’ve decided to change the name of NorthumberlandView.ca’s Discussion Forum to the “Water Cooler”. In the description I call it NorthumberlandView.ca’s Discussion Forum/Water Cooler/Coffee Shop. Wherever people get together to discuss issues that matter to them. The forum’s still free to use, you don’t have to register and I do encourage you to share your opinions on anything that you want to talk about.

You can find the Water Cooler at http://discussion.northumberlandview.ca

I have brought in a new Classifieds Section for NorthumberlandView.ca. You do have to register but It only takes about a minute. The new system is a lot more user friendly than the previous one and you can upload more photos, add more text and things of that nature.

The biggest advantage to NorthumberlandView.ca’s Classifieds is the fact that with the big classified sites, specifically Kijiji and Craigslist, ads have a tendency to get lost after a day or so. Unless you go digging you won’t find what you’re looking for. Also, Kijiji and Craigslist, for all their advantages, are not local. NorthumberlandView.ca’s Classifieds are for Northumberland County. There are no sections for the others for this area. You’d have to choose Belleville, Peterborough or Oshawa to post your ads or search for them.

This also means that for example, if you were looking for snow tires, you would have to go to Kijiji’s Belleville site, do your search, then switch to Kijiji’s Oshawa site, do your search, then switch to Kijiji’s Peterborough site. The same could be accomplished with one search at NorthumberlandView.ca’s Classifieds.

Another advantage is the fact that NorthumberlandView.ca’s Classifieds Ads are free. With the other big classified sites, the basic ad is free but if you want anything special, you do have to pay for it. The same with Classifieds for newspaper websites. You have to pay for the ads.

You can find NorthumberlandView.ca’s Classifieds at http://classifieds.northumberlandview.ca

Another thing I wanted to talk about was CPM Advertising. I decided to start offering CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) a few months ago and I have decided that starting November 1st, the rates will go up. The monthly advertising rates will stay the same but the cost for 1,000 ad impressions will rise. The Button Ad will go up to $40 for 10,000 impressions, the Banner and Leaderboard Ads will both rise too $80 for 10,000 impressions and the Skyscraper Ad will go up to $100 for 10,000 impressions.

You can download a copy of NorthumberlandView.ca’s Advertising Rate Card at http://sales.northumberlandview.ca

I’m also working on a new layout for NorthumberlandView.ca and I’m also exploring some mobile apps and a mobile site. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m always fascinated by the amount of complaining that occurs whenever changes are made to Facebook. The latest change to include timelines has prompted such vitriolic hatred that I’m sure that there are some users out there who would spit in Mark Zuckerberg’s face if given the chance.

What Facebook is doing is what Facebook does best, it is adapting and changing. The main reason that Facebook has become the dominant player in the social media world is simply the fact that it has been able to keep itself relevant. Several years ago, MySpace was the dominant player but because it wasn’t able to change, it’s now considered an online “Ghost Town” (in spite of the fact that it still has more than 120 Million active members).

Another thing that fascinates me about Facebook is the number of scams and hoaxes that appear on a regular basis. The latest one being the hoax that says that users will have to start paying to use Facebook. Put simply Facebook isn’t going to make you pay to be a member! They made $4.27 Billion with a free service, why would they risk having 99% of their 800 Million subscribers shut down their accounts rather than pay.

Let’s see… $4.27 Billion divided by 800 Million is about $5.30 per user per year. If they charged each of their users $5.00 per month (and they actually paid it) they would make $48 Billion in a year. the problem is, as I said before, 99% of the users would bail on Facebook if they started charging. Move a few decimal points and you’d see that they’d make $480 Million in a year, but they’d only have 8 Million subscribers, which would effectively put them in the online realm of “Ghost Town”.

Besides, I hardly think that the mucky-mucks at Facebook are arrogant enough to believe that users are actually loyal to them. In the online world, loyalty lasts as long as it takes to find the next big thing (For example; IRC > AIM > ICQ > MSN > Facebook Chat. Or… GeoCities > MySpace > Facebook/Google+/Twitter).

I also wanted to briefly mention that if your 90 year-old grandmother (as an example) posts something on her Wall on Facebook (provided she’s on Facebook) that says something to the effect of “OMG! WTF! This is sooo funny! U gotta check out this vid!” then it’s a pretty good bet that her account has been hijacked. It’s actually a virus called Koobfaceworm that was designed for Facebook that hacks the user’s account and sends out spam messages to their friends. It appears to be a link to a video and installs itself when it asks to “Upgrade Your Flash Player”. There is an article written about the top 5 Facebook Scams the you need to protect yourself from available at http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-scams-2010-01.

Anyway, that’s all I have for now, I know that it’s not really about what’s happening at NorthumberlandView.ca but you can become a fan by clicking here.

But since this is a blog about what’s happening at NorthumberlandView.ca… I am waiting for the latest version of the Ziluka CMS (Content Management System) to be released before I make any serious changes to the site. I am working on a mobile version of the site and I’m also looking into doing some proper Smart Phone Apps (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, etc.). I am also looking into different ways to speed everything up. So I’m definitely getting my geek on

As some of you may be aware, a few months ago, NorthumberlandView.ca won an entry in this year’s Web Marketing Awards WebAwards. Today I received a report from the WMA with the Judge’s assessment of NorthumberlandView.ca.

Most of the negative comments about the site were related to the design of NorthumberlandView.ca. There were positive comments for the site’s content. It’s constructive criticism and I take it for what it is, and who it comes from. The judges in this international competition are widely considered to be the best of the best in the industry. Three judges were assigned to look at NorthumberlandView.ca and their scores and comments are listed below.

Industry average based on all sites entered within category.  WebAwards average based on all sites entered in 2011 WebAwards.

Judges Comments

Below are the comments (if any) submitted by the judges reviewing your entry.  Please note that these comments are the unedited views of the individual judges and not those of the Web Marketing Association. Also please remember that your final score was determined by the average of the highest two scores provided by the judges and comments received my not be necessarily indicative of the final score you received.

“Although the site has loads of relevant content, is easy to navigate and find loacl news its really ugly and doesn’t have any aesthetic appeal. “

“This site should not have been submitted to an awards competition – it’s professional-looking but looks like hundreds – or thousands – of others just like it”

“Unfortunately this site looks very amateurish. The logo/header on the top is not very professional looking. It looks like the site developers simply made a few modifications to a free content management system template. The design is disjointed, full of ads and the main navigation is small and hard to read. I don’t feel like this site is very cohesive or easy to use. It does give users a lot of content, but the pages are a little overwhelming. Overall this site could be improved by working more on design consistency, a new logo and removing the social media bar at the bottom of the page. Social media links are great, but should be integrated into the site, not just tacked on at the bottom.”

I’m not sure about “amateurish” but I do take their comments as the impartial observations of web professionals. I did chuckle a bit at the comment that said that NorthumberlandView.ca should not have been submitted to an awards competition. The only reason that I had submitted the site was because I had won the entry. I knew that I wouldn’t win, especially when compared to previous winners in the News Category (NBC, Slate, NYTimes.com, BusinessWeek Online, etc) I figured that at the very least, I would get an impartial assessment of my site.

I’m always looking for feedback and ways to improve NorthumberlandView.ca so this is a good start. If you have any comments or suggestions for ways to improve NorthumberlandView.ca please feel free to let me know. You can email me at info@northumberlandview.ca. I’ll take any comments and feedback and use it to improve the site.