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e-KNOW three today
Three years ago today I uploaded the first story onto East Kootenay News Online Weekly (e-KNOW), an introductory column detailing the W5 of our online-only newspaper.
When I hit ‘publish,’ e-KNOW came live for a readership of a few dozen people, such as friends and family we begged to pay us a visit.
We had absolutely zilch money to advertise our fledgling product and simply had to go about grinding away on a daily basis, step-by-step, story-to-story, photo-to-photo, interview-to-interview.
It was fascinating watching how rapidly news hounds caught onto e-KNOW’s free access but the realization of how far we had to go in order to capture the interests of all-important advertisers was daunting and at times freezing.
Luckily, this old ink stained wretch has the most necessary of all business partners, a workaholic wife who never strays from the paths of positivity who has a mind-boggling grasp of how to utilize social media to great benefit.
Through Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and our weekly e-mail newsletter, we have grown from a couple of a dozen subscribers to more than 12,000 as of this writing.
Our monthly readership figures are now larger than what we proudly touted following our first year of operation! Depending on the news of the month, we receive between 400,000 and 440,000 page views per month and 79,000 to 80,000 unique individuals visiting our website/newspaper a month.
Pretty mind blowing.
And we can’t begin to express how grateful we are to our readers and advertisers for their support and participation.
A main focus in the construction of e-KNOW was to create a forum for regional writers and photographers to share their talents – our Writers’ Village.
We’ve been fortunate enough to squirrel up more than 25 talented people who submit their work weekly or whenever the muse strikes them, giving e-KNOW greater breadth and flavour. Thank you, to everyone who has taken part or continues to participate in our Writers’ Village and welcome to all who wish to join! (Write to me at [email protected] and make contact and we can go from there if you wish to submit work to e-KNOW.)
Finally, I must shout a huge THANK YOU to Chris Botterill and Genex Marketing.
I am the editor of the paper. I fly it on a daily basis, striving to keep it fresh and packed with regional news and information; Carrie is the publisher/advertising sales manager and Chief Bottle Washer; Andra Louie is our advertising sales agent. If e-KNOW was the Starship Enterprise, the three of us would be on the bridge. Chris is Scotty down in engineering, swearing at things my puny technologically challenged mind refuses to even try to understand, and solving all problems in the nick of time, jettisoning us forward away from danger! Thanks a centillion times over for your great service!
These past three years have indeed rocketed past. It hasn’t been easy, at all. Covering a region as active and large as the East Kootenay has some extreme time challenges but it’s also the greatest job in the world because this region is the best place on the planet.
So join us in a cheers and a woof, woof, woof – here’s to e-KNOW at the age of three!
By the way, this story will be the 7,111th story to be published on e-KNOW!
Ian Cobb and Carrie Schafer
