Send us tips for AskAsheville.com please
August 9, 2008 6:12 PM   Subscribe

We have a website based in Asheville North Carolina called AskAsheville.com. Just wanted to know if anybody out there had any ideas or scripts that we would be able to use to get people in the area to keep coming to the site. In other words... if you lived in Asheville, or were heavily involved in WNC, and you woke up to our website first thing, what would you want to see?
posted by AskAsheville to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Don't use ask mefi to promote your sites -- mathowie

 
Actual *local* news and announcements, events listings, etc.

Perhaps listings of ways, or actual gateways, to interact with local organizations or government (ex: suggestion form for local council meeting topics)
posted by mr.anthony337 at 6:22 PM on August 9, 2008


I've wanted to do a similar site for the town I live in. I think a forum would be a good place to start. Maybe each post on the front page would go to a forum where people could discuss the local news issues.

I also think a page for each local politician would be cool. People could post comments or questions. Of course you'd have to regulate that heavily.
posted by allthewhile at 6:28 PM on August 9, 2008


Frequent updating is by far the most important aspect for me. My city does not adequately use their webspace, updating it so infrequently that it is useless. I used to look there first for info on activities and events, but I don't even bother anymore.
posted by arcticwoman at 6:39 PM on August 9, 2008


Do everything as blog entries until you have to make separate sections. K.I.S.S. Use tags.
posted by rhizome at 6:45 PM on August 9, 2008


I think I'd want to see this question posted on BlogAsheville before it got to AskMe. There are a lot of people right here in town you could have asked this question. You could even meet us in person; we have a lot of meetups. I'd also like to point out that the competition for what you're doing is extremely stiff and your mission is more than a little vague. Email is in my profile if you're interested in talking to actual Asheville residents.
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:45 PM on August 9, 2008


Try a wiki format . . . lots of room to just do informationals and let your audience work for you thus insuring a certain degree of ownership amongst them.
answer inspired by this local site
posted by geekyguy at 7:03 PM on August 9, 2008


Don't forget about the college kids. We do stuff too, and we don't always know what's going on. The schools usually do a good job of advertising their own stuff, but not always so good about the town's events. And it won't hurt to have UNA-Asheville events on there so the people not at the university know about it (assuming UNC-A is like Winthrop and lets the general public come to stuff).

But don't focus too much on the college kids. There's other people too, and you don't want to annoy them by filling up your site with event listings for beer pong and campus events.
posted by theichibun at 7:15 PM on August 9, 2008


Couldn't this be asked without naming the site?
posted by barnone at 7:26 PM on August 9, 2008


Didn't you post this very same question not that long ago? And didn't it get deleted as a thinly veiled attempt at shameless self-promotion to drive traffic to your crappy site?
posted by mds35 at 7:59 PM on August 9, 2008 [1 favorite]


How about a new ad for Pepsi Blue every morning?
posted by cinemafiend at 7:59 PM on August 9, 2008


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