Today marks officially a decade of our community news website, A Little Bit of Stone, and what a ten years it has been!
From its birth in the summer of 2010 A Little Bit of Stone (ALBOS) has operated with one core goal, to give accurate and up to date information to the people of the Stone, a town we’ve called home for the past 15 years.
We had hoped to throw a party as we did for our 5th birthday, however, with the current lockdown we obviously won’t be doing that this year.
So what does a decade of ALBOS look like?
Website stories, this post will mark our 5,700th article posted to our website, which have been read more than 3,660,000 times!
Our core audience is in Stone but we can see from our logs that we have readers from all around the world, often checking in on how the place they once called home has changed.
Social media plays a massive part in what we do, with all of our stories being automatically shared to our followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Amazingly we have a combined social media following of almost 35,000 people…thanks to every one of you! On top of our stories, we make social media posts for lost and found property, missing persons, business recommendations (including our Sunday business post), and all sorts of random stuff in between! On Facebook, we also launched two dedicated Facebook Groups for Photos and Hobbies/Groups to allow people to talk and share with one another.
Business directory postings and job listings are automatically shared with our audiences and help put vacancies and businesses in front of the people of our town.
We also have a weekly mailing list that emails people at 8 am every Saturday with every story we’ve published.
2020 has been the most exceptional year, but we’ve been here to support the people of Stone. From working with Stone Town Council to set up the 200 volunteer Stone Helpline which we are running 7 days a week, to our ongoing factual coverage of the latest Covid-19 news in the town.
To keep people entertained we hosted a Sunday night online quiz for 18 weeks during lockdown and did our best to keep people informed on the latest business updates in terms of what was open and how you could contact them.
I’d like to thank all of our advertisers, past and present, who have helped fund what we do – any shortfall I continue to make up as I believe passionately in ALBOS and what it stands for. Thanks to those individuals who use the “Buy us a virtual coffee” link on our website to make a small or recurring donation.
Over the decade we’ve had many people involved with ALBOS but for the past few years we are a very streamlined affair with just myself and my amazing volunteer Lauren who has become part of my actual family, I would genuinely be unable to do this without her. Our families are now joined together and we wouldn’t be without any of them
So what would I like to ask for as a birthday gift from our readership in our 10th year? It’s simply this – bring your support back to our town. The shop keepers, business owners, workers and volunteers have had a torrid 2020 and are desperate for footfall. They need all of our support, in a safe and controlled way, to enable the town to be reborn and move forward again.
We have a wonderful mix of independent shops as well as some more commercial chains and they all employ local people and without them, we’d have an empty town. Pop into a shop, or two, and just have a chat – they’re a passionate bunch and would love to say hello!
As things settle down there will be more and more events hosted in the town, if you’re able to, try and pop along to show your support by simply being there.
Finally, I couldn’t mark a milestone like this without thanking my wife and family for accepting what ALBOS means to me and supporting me all the way – my wife is an integral part of the ALBOS team (even though she hides herself in the background). ALBOS for me is literally a second 24/7 job on top of my existing full-time consultancy business – no matter what day of the week or the fact that we may be on holiday (like now!).
