As we look back over the past 12 months at A Little Bit of Stone, I wanted to share some of the highs and lows of running the website and social media.
A Personal Reflection
Firstly, I want to make a point that seems often overlooked: A Little Bit of Stone is a news website with a social media presence – often, people just see us as “a Facebook page”. It’s a business that has overheads – none of which has involved paying me a salary or any other form of remuneration. ALBOS is done in whatever spare time I have, often at the sacrifice of my personal and family time – and fits around a full-time day job which pays my mortgage and bills!
This year, we celebrated 14 years of operation, with the site initially launching in 2010 to provide a dedicated news source for the town.
At the start of 2024, I decided to dedicate some time to rebuilding our website to make it easier for our readers to access our content and to create some options to make ALBOS financially sustainable. These included advertising options for businesses and options for our readers to support us financially with ad-hoc “virtual coffees“, recurring monthly memberships, or Facebook subscriptions.
Suffice to say the relaunched website, whilst well received, hasn’t performed as well as I’d hoped in terms of gaining financial support to make it sustainable. My dream is for ALBOS to be more than just a “best endeavours”, giving me the opportunity to dedicate some of my time to produce more content and add more value for our readers.
I want to take a moment to thank those who have supported us throughout 2024, whether in a business or personal capacity. It’s really helped towards the running costs of ALBOS.
Where 2025 leads, I honestly don’t know – it’s something I need to reflect on as we start the new year. In order to try and make ALBOS financially sustainable, It could potentially see advertising sourced from outside of the town – which is something I’ve always tried to resist.
Regards
Jon
Let’s talk about some of the things we’ve covered for Stone in 2024!
New businesses
We’ve loved sharing details of all the new businesses that have popped up across the town over the past 12 months.
To name a few: Mishka-truffles, Little Dots, Bubble Cup Boba, Cavalli, Luna Rose, Four Studio and Maru-Bento!
We’ve also shared many business news stories about awards, expansions and milestones.
Crown Wharf Theatre
Seven years of pure dedication saw the opening of Stone’s new Crown Wharf Theatre. We were delighted to be invited along to the opening night of the theatre’s first production, Shakespeare in Love, and it’s been fantastic to see a number of groups, including Rooftop Studios, also using the space. Cinema has also returned to the Stone, with festive films getting the ball rolling, and live comedy will take to the stage in 2025!
Community Events
There’s been so much going on across the town in 2024, and it’s been a privilege to cover events held in and around Stone. Here are just a few of the things that we’ve covered:
- Stone Festival
- Stone Food and Drink Festival
- Christmas Advent Windows
- Feast Street Food
- Santa Sleigh Tour
- Stone Traders Events / Sunday Series Events – Markets, Stone Street Food and Themed Events
- Stone Town Council Events – Summer Party, St George’s battle, markets, Christmas lights switch on and Staffordshire Puppet Tree Festival
- Remembrance Sunday
It’s great to see so many groups putting on events for the benefit of residents and visitors to the town.
Elections
2024 was the year of a General Election. We launched a dedicated website to centralise all key candidate information – stones.vote and from reader-submitted questions, we had the candidate’s complete profiles to allow people to compare like for like on various topics.
A highlight was the General Election hustings that we hosted in the town, giving 100 people the ability to be in the audience and which we live streamed out across our Facebook page for people who couldn’t attend in person.
What’s On Guide
Throughout 2024, we’ve provided a rolling 7-day What’s On Guide from the events submitted by businesses, groups and venues across the town. In December, for the first time, we did a bumper guide running all the way until New Year’s Day – I better start the next guide!
Our What’s On Guide is the second most read page on our website – after the home page – in 2024!
Celebrating Personal Achievements
We’ve also shared the personal achievements of many Stone residents, including:
- Jack Scott – for his unbelievable achievements in ultra-running
- Scott Oliver – Who picked up the Wisden Book of the Year
- Kay Benbow – won an international art competition
- Sue Nicholls – Picked up an MBE for
- Ruby Twigg – Who landed a place at a prestigious performing arts school
- Sanctuary Dance School owners who triumphed at the Open Worlds Rising Star Professional Ballroom Championship
And so much more
Planning developments, roadworks, job opportunities, lost and found posts and everything in between. Our social media content has supported our core news reports, connecting residents and proving to be the go-to resource for information about Stone.
I love doing A Little Bit of Stone; it’s lovely when someone stops me out and about to tell me how much they think of the website and social media pages.
Social media giants aren’t helping to get our messages out there. Algorithms have been a big issue for us in 2024, so any support with shares, comments and likes would be much appreciated and really do help. If you want to step it up a notch, our weekly “In Case You Missed It” newsletter or our Facebook channel or WhatsApp channel (linked below this post) can help you stay in the loop with what’s going on in Stone!
