It’s always interesting trying to figure out what people are reading and talking about. After all, the goal of our community newspaper is to mirror what’s going on in the Sylvan Lake area.
So over the past couple of weeks we monitored the information we’ve put on our Facebook page to see what’s ranking highest in people’s views.
This week, for instance, we experimented by posting some of the ‘current’ news as it happened, instead of waiting for our printed product.
Our initial announcement of a new school, posted last Wednesday, had been viewed by 3,064 people as of yesterday. Considering our Facebook page has 1,294 ‘likes’, that’s respectable. And it shows there was interest in that information.
We chose to post the announcement ahead of our paper, because, due to deadlines, it would have been almost a full week before we could get the details to our readers.
Our local Olympians, Mellisa Hollingsworth and Lyndon Rush competed over the past week. Four posts with screen shots from the television coverage of their events, have been viewed by 457, 570, 716 and 794 respectively. Perhaps an indication that the information was already well known through the extensive Olympics coverage on Canadian television.
A post on the avalanche death of Chris McCoy, which contained the Edmonton Journal article, had been seen by 763 people just two days after it was added to our page.
But the real winner this week was the picture of Chrystal Belanger at the Polar Bear Dip and brief information about dippers raising over $20,000 for local charities. It was seen by over 5,000 people.
Still holding the record for number of people who have seen something on our Facebook page is our initial report of the collapse of the arena roof. That made national news, with our picture circulating far and wide. And over 25,700 people have turned to Sylvan Lake News to read about this event.
Complementing our printed edition and Facebook page is our website which contains stories that are included in each week’s editions for people far and near to read and enjoy.
And for those travelling, we have eeditions, that’s the complete edition of the newspaper so you can flip from page to page and see all the advertising messages and community information exactly the same as our printed pages. Just click on eeditions in the top right corner of our website to find those papers, both current and past.
It’s amazing how our community newspaper has evolved over the years and heartening how many people continue to rely on us for factual, current, hyper-local information about their community. If you haven’t ‘liked’ us, give us a look.