Right… Yes… I have a blog. I keep meaning to write more but something always comes along to distract me.

It’s been a busy Spring so far. The number of events in Northumberland County on any given day is mind-boggling. I always have to chuckle when someone says “there’s nothing to do around here”. That just means that you’re not looking hard enough.

I know that I’ve certainly been busy, not only with my site but with other things as well.

Port Hope and District Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards: NorthumberlandView.ca was presented with the award for Excellence in Micro-Business at the awards ceremony on Saturday, April 28th. Needless to say I was surprised. I had a clue that I would win but until they actually announced the winner, I wasn’t sure. It was a great evening and I was able to talk about what I loved about living in this area.

Bears’ Lair Entrepreneurial Competition: NorthumberlandView.ca is also a finalist in the 2nd Annual Bear’s Lair competition. I’ll be going up against 3 other businesses at the Grand Finale on Saturday, May 12th at Peterborough’s Showplace. Tickets are on sale now. http://bearslair.ca

Additions and Subtractions: I decided to take down the “Listen Live” box on the left side of the page and replace it with a “What’s On @” box with links to local arts and performance venues. I’m confident that it will be well used.

Oldies But Goodies: Just to remind you that NorthumberlandView.ca does have a full Classifieds section available for FREE at http://classifieds.northumberlandview.ca. There is also the Watercooler (Discussion Forum) at http://discussion.northumberlandview.ca and Online Cookbook at http://recipes.northumberlandview.ca.

As always, advertising opportunities are available. Check out http://sales.northumberlandview.ca for more information.

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