Tag: Advertising

Here’s the deal… and we hope you agree it’s a good one!

Witheridge Online is first and foremost a community resource intended to connect local people with information, services, organisations, clubs, charities and businesses which are genuinely relevant, helpful, interesting or just fun.

To that end, while the site finds its feet we’re delighted to offer completely FREE exposure to local organisations and businesses in the form of:

• A free listing in our Directory. Create your own profile page with contact details and a short blurb telling our visitors what you do. Profiles all come with a nice map integration and you can embed or link to media such as product or event photos, audio, video and more.
• A free listing in our Local Contacts pages. “People buy people”, so why not put a face to your company brand or official sounding organisation title and make a personal connection that proves your local credentials?
• Ability to post free Events as long as you don’t abuse the privilege and spam people with thinly disguised adverts. Use this sparingly and appropriately and visitors will appreciate you as being an organisation worth getting to know.
• Ability to submit free photos (and potentially other media like videos and audio) to one of our Galleries as long as you don’t abuse the privilege and spam people with thinly disguised adverts. Use this sparingly and appropriately and again visitors will appreciate it; abuse the privilege and the community will soon freeze you out… or we will.
• Post free Announcements as long as you don’t abuse the privilege and spam people with thinly disguised adverts. Use this sparingly for things like sharing when you’ll be closed for renovations, change of address or opening times etc. not to directly promote products and services.

In return for using the site, we just ask all businesses and sole traders to make an exclusive offer or discount for Witheridge Online readers. All Special Offers are grouped together in one place for our visitors to find easily, along with an attractive promotional image which you can update periodically e.g. as your menu changes or new products are launched. As well as earning goodwill and attracting trade like any attractive offer, this gives our readers a further reason to keep coming back to the site and browsing our pages, which is a virtuous circle for you, the site and its users. It also gives businesses a way of tracking how many new customers are coming from the site, and a conversation you can develop further at some point: “Oh you found us on Witheridge Online? Did you see we have a really nice photo gallery there?”.

In future we do plan to offer paid advertising slots and sponsorship packages on the site but don’t want it to degenerate into looking “spammy” or littered with too many obvious adverts. If and when things really take off we might ask business to start paying a modest subscription but that’s a long way off in the distance right now!

Please do use this site to make a genuine connection with local people and we hope you find it easy and fun to use. If you have any questions about advertising generally or the site in particular, please contact Pete or Jane using the email icon at the bottom of this page.