Ask Rossendale - off to a flying start - thanks to YOU!

Date published: 31 December 2008

Thanks to all of you who have visited our site in 2008 - and have kept coming back, making a highly successful first 9 months!

This is just the beginning, and we want you to know what we plan for 2009. We aim to be the best all round community website for the Rossendale valley. And it will become that because of YOU!

There is (or will be ) something for everyone working or living in the Valley on this site. And for every organisation, however large or small, business or community, there is space on our site for you (either free or at very little cost). We genuinely want Ask Rossendale to be a picture of this beautiful area painted by YOU!

News

We don't plan to compete with newpapers for news - but we can offer immediate information, and update it regularly - the gas explosion over Christmas was a prime example. We provided updates every 3-4 hours to keepYOU in the picture( and many thousands of you used it).

 Events

Well over 30% of visitors look at our Events pages. It is our aim to have the most comprehensive events list in the valley - the place to go first if you want to know what is happening! YOU can help with that -please send us details of any events you are aware of, and you want  publicising -  and we will publish them FREE (and they are available 24/7 for as far ahead as you choose!!)

Business Listings & Web Sites

We already have over 1800 businesses listed, and we are slowly 'cleaning' the  list, to make it as accurate and up to date as possible. We aim to have the most comprehensive business listing in the valley - again YOU can help - if you spot any mistakes, or you know a business is missing from our list - please let us know!!

We can offer any business some pages on our site - we call them 'Multi-page adverts', to promote their products etc. We provide a password, and the space is totally user-controlled - so it can be updated by the business as often as they want - dead easy!! and for as little as £1 per day.  Have a look at "The Maden Community Centre" in Business Web Sites for an idea how this can look.We want to expand this facility in 2009.

Alternatively , if you already have a web site, we can provide links to it, and pass email enquiries to you for only £10 per month.That's a really low cost way to get customers!

Community Listings and Web Sites

 At present we  have around 400 community and voluntary organisations on our listings, but we are working with CVS to create a more comprehensive listing. For community organisations, not only is the Listing free, but we can offer our Multi-Page Adverts FREE also. This can be great to tell people what YOUdo, when your meetings are, reports on previous meetings etc. It's a great communications tool - all free of charge!

Houses and Jobs

One of the unique features of Ask Rossendale is that we are part of a very successful network of community sites - Rochdale Online, Ask Bury, and Oldham Chronicle - and any Houses or Jobs being advertised will appear on all these sites too.

So, we already have over 2000 houses for sale on our site, and dozens of  jobs . We can give YOU access to over 3 million page views a month, and it costs you  much, much less than newspaper advertising.

In 2009 we want to see more Rossendale houses and jobs being advertised on our site. Why not give us a try?

 Councillor Diaries

 We are passionate about using our community web site to improve communications across the valley at many different levels, to help promote greater community cohesion, and be a source of high quality and relevant information.

Part of this process is to provide a facility for all elected representatives in the valley- local councillors, county councillors , MPs, MEPs - to maintain their own 'diaries' or 'blogs', and to give YOU the choice to pass comments, ask questions of them.

This facility should be available during January 2009

Forums

We know that a lot of people like to use Forums, to express views, opinions etc on what is current in the valley. We plan to provide a Forum facility during the first quarter of  2009, and it may well include contributions from people in Rochdale and Bury also. Could be fun!!

Finally, we believe that the Internet is THE media to be on for the future, and that our site provides a single point of reference for everyone in Rossendale. We see a period of continual growth over the next few years, and encourage you to make active use of all that we provide - we believe this is a win win situation , where everyone, including YOU can benefit.

May 2009 bring you all you desire.

 Iain & Margaret Wight and the Ask Rossendale team