So How You Doin?

Hi there Valpo friends, family, and fans of the site,

This has literally been the busiest week of my own life, and our young life as a site, this past week with loads of events, stacks of new content in article, event listings, photo, and video form, and an even bigger surge in traffic, members, Facebook or Twitter fans, and any other measure you could use than we have ever had. We wrap it up tomorrow at the Valpo Triathlon, where we will have a crew all over the course, and we’ll be meeting many of you at a table we’ll have set up where you can come by and say hello. Incredibly exciting times, and wherever I go, I almost always get asked two questions:

Are you the ValpoLife guy?

Yes, I am the ValpoLife guy. The heavy set short guy running around sweating with a camera that has ValpoLife.com plastered on my front, my back, and I would have it tattooed on my forehead if only my wife would say ok.  I’m the walking billboard because it is the best way to get the word out about the site, about all the great stories we are covering about Valpo, and to have a chance to meet so many new people every week that have a great story to tell about their family, their organization, their business, or the community group they are apart of.

How you Doin?

Sounding like Joey on Friends, who used to say How you Doin? when approaching a potential new cute girl, many folks I meet want to know how is ValpoLife.com doing, either because they are a big supporter and really want to see us do well, or they are sort of curious as to whether this whole positive thing can really catch on in a world that often seems to glorify what is wrong with anything, versus celebrating the abundance of what is good that is all around us. Being the talker that I am, I often jump right into one 15 minute sentence telling them how overwhelming the response has been from the community, whether that is the personal notes they send to someone on the team, the atta boy that they give us when they see us out in the community, or the laundry list of measurements that we keep about how fast the site is growing. To help everyone get a better picture of just how we are Doin….., the notes below will give you some metrics to watch our progress by.

The ultimate measure of our success is the support that so many of you have showed whether that be a handshake when we meet in town, getting your organization involved with communicating to the community through ValpoLife, or putting your company’s message out in front of the fastest growing web destination in northwest Indiana. Thanks to all for helping us to achieve what we have, and your support as we race towards all the milestones we have set for the future.

So far, this positive thing sure seems to be catching on with the folks in Valpo.

To date we have posted over 1,850 video or article stories about kids, adults, organizations, sports teams, churches, leaders, fund raising drives, events, facility maps, and anything else positive going on in town. We have done that with the help of 148 contributors.

We have posted 787 events that have been held in or around Valpo, or are coming up soon, ranging from fun activities going on downtown like the Colt’s Fan Fest or Downtown Movie night, to the 4th of July Blast, a beautiful concert at Immanuel Lutheran, new events coming up at the Memorial Opera House, Chicago Street Theatre, or Valpo University, to the Boys and Girls Club golf outing and countless community volunteer opportunities. Making sure everyone knows about upcoming business or city meetings, social gatherings, and sports activities going on at the 15 ball diamonds in the city, the many public and private golf courses, the Y, and a load of private sports businesses that give our kids the chance to compete in everything from gymnastics to karate and basketball.

We started last week to hit every house and business in town with a full page, 2 sided, 4 color ValpoLife.com postcard that demonstrates how to sign up, get engaged, contribute, spread the word, and put your company in front of this audience we have quickly built on the foundation of that positive focus, in a time where you really need to go out of your way to find truly good news.

This week alone, we produced three videos for or about the Mayor’s 4th of July Bash at TJ, one on the Downtown movie night, two for the Colt’s Fan Fest, three of concerts held at Old World Market or Emmanuel Lutheran, a really touching one about the dedication of Lori Woycik and a couple of her “kids” from the Special Olympics, an inspirational one about the Athletes in Action basketball camp at Liberty Bible Church, and three more updates to the ever popular “What I Love About Valpo” series. The video library is growing fast -- we now have 114 videos on the site, and we blew past the 3,000 and 4,000 videos played mark within just the last week since we started tracking the number of video views in early June, and will surely pass 5,000 sometime this weekend.

The reach of good news is spreading fast with so many fans on the good news train helping us spread the word. On Facebook, we topped first the 900, then the 1,000 mark this past week, all within just four weeks of passing 400, and we now have close to 600 followers on Twitter. We surpassed 100,000 page views earlier this week since we started just over 3 months ago, and are on pace to surpass 40,000 page views in just the month of July and climbing by a bunch every week.

I swear we are not bragging, because we still have many miles to go in order for this to be thriving on every measure. Our end-goal is to be a permanent and significant contributing member of the community, which is our staff’s only true measure of success.

I just know that many of you are the folks that have been rooting for us since the beginning, whose early support helped us get this site to where this is today, and who have wished for our success from the second you heard about the premise behind the site and our goals. I want you to know your work, hope, word of mouth, and outward support continues to build an incredibly positive momentum beyond even what we thought it would be.

As I keep telling folks, this positive thing sure seems to be catching on.