One sentence pitch based more on content:

Rocky Hill 411 is an aggregate of businesses and town offerings that fills a void for businesses looking to promote, residents in the town, area and perspective residents to gain awareness of the offerings available to them.

One sentence pitch based more on financials/investments/advertising:

Rocky Hill 411 creates a relevant resource for over 17,000 town residents to gain awareness of what businesses the town has to offer, allowing for business interactions with a captive audience to direct a significant amount of target advertising.

Elevator Pitch 1:

Rocky Hill 411 is an interactive online destination offering both basic information and editorial on town services, local businesses, real estate and news. The site will be interactive in nature engaging the audience to participate both online and within the community. This is a one of a kind site will be the only location to find comprehensive information on the town and will become an indisputable master resource for everyone in the community. The captive audience offers a lucrative option for targeted advertising by local town businesses and national advertisers which will optimize the financial return.

Elevator Pitch 2:

Rocky Hill 411 offers the 17,000 residents of Rocky Hill, as well as other local towns and perspective residents the information that can’t be found in any one place right now primarily made up of town services, town businesses listings and, local real estate and news. With a lack of this information aggregated in a single spot this site will be the first of its kind which in turn will cause a significant splash upon launch. The interactive nature of the site, allowing visitors to also express opinions, suggestions and discussion will create a bond to the visitors while sparking the interest of businesses to also get involved.

This site is in no means a ready to populate and run version, but it is in fact a prepped Wordpress Blog at www.rockyhill411.com to prepare for what is to come. Ideas described out help in developing the base of creation of a site, but it isn’t until something is put together in early stages where you can understand exactly how the format can be refined, what content works and how to design around the content to make it functional for the user.

An example page for a restaurant, Wood N Tap, illustrates the basic business listing model. Again, there are still refinements to be made, uploading a PDF of the menu so people can see that, adding review (which will require going there), detailing more features of the restaurant (do they have a patio, is there televisions in the bar, is there lounge style seating as well as restaurant seating, etc).

Being able to look at a product allows the ability to see what carries the most importance and what editorial aspects should be addressed sooner than later.

The success of Rocky Hill 411 as an online interactive project will depend heavily on the community involvement to create the bulk of the traffic. This isn’t solely dependent on residents who would like to air grievances on a bad restaurant experience, there is an aspect of involving local establishments which will help with not only visibility but a well rounded editorial view.

An idea that will include both the community and businesses is a restaurant “war.” This idea is not by any means new, however working it into an interactive blog based contest, driving traffic to the blog and allowing people to not only vote in a poll but also incorporating comments and discussion to determine a winner will be a very new concept for those in Rocky Hill as this hasn’t been something done in this format.

In my opinion this will get both parties to really see the benefit of a site like this, driving more business and awareness on the end of the business, as well as the website.

The publications that were the closest were the three newspapers that relayed local news. The Rocky Hill Post, Rocky Hill Life and The Hartford Courant. All three are part of syndicated groups which also handle customized coverage in many towns.  None of them are are located or printed in town. The Rocky Hill Post has its headquarters in New Britain, CT under the New Britain Herald. Rocky Hill Life is published by Life Publications in Connecticut which is located in West Hartford, and The Hartford Courant is based out of Hartford Connecticut.

Rocky Hill Post (www.rockyhillpost.com) has its newspaper online, minus the content. The story sections remain empty and the job postings and other search based content bring you to external websites.

Rocky Hill Life doesn’t have a web presence other than a landing page with links to Hartford Magazine and West Hartford Life.

The Hartford Courant (www.courant.com) has the most relevant material to the town in their CT Towns/iTowns section. This is updated with local news stories when they may be covered by the Courant. This is however few and far between.

Turning to town online resources, the Rocky Hill Chamber of Commerce (http://www.rhchamber.org/) and the official website for the Town of Rocky Hill (www.ci.rocky-hill.ct.us), there are absolutely no resources on what is available in the community. The town website is useful to gather phone numbers for the local town offices, but that is where it’s usefulness ends. The Chamber’s website misses the mark, listing business’ that are members, but leaving off any detail on them, including contact information and a business description, leaving anyone looking for a business to head back to the search engine of their choice to find what they need.

Jason Kintzler, founder of Social Media Today posted an entry titled Newspapers Missing the Benefits of Social Media, detailing how Newspapers are just not hitting the mark in their absence of social media. Kintzler hit the nail on the head when he stated “By allowing users (or readers) to contribute to a “social news source” readers will be more apt to share their content with other readers- more of a viral loop.”

This is exactly the purpose of Rocky Hill 411. The idea is not only to offer content that’s relevant to the community so people can actually find out the information that can be available but to also encourage an online community, conversation, debate and interaction. As visible by what is (or really isn’t) out there, this is a niche that hasn’t been truly addressed yet.

Step 1: Identify the Business

To write about a business the first step is to decide what business you are writing about. Who are they, what is their name, what function do they perform? Is it Patty Cakes Bakery on New Britain Ave. in Rocky Hill or are you doing a comparison on all of the bakeries in Rocky Hill. That difference would highly change your approaches on the topic.

Step 2: Define the Business

Once you have decided what you are going to write about, you need to get a true and detailed definition about what the business does, what the offer consumers or businesses and how one could interact with the business. Using the example of the bakery, giving an idea what the bakery offers, do they do wedding cakes, what style of baked goods do they have, is it Italian? Greek? English? Will someone get baklava or scones there? If you can’t represent the business for what they offer, you aren’t really offering your readers a service.

Step 3: Create an opinion separate from the facts

It is important to make sure that the facts of the business are accurate and stated in a concise yet fully informational way. To truly get this interactive, it is also your job to incite discussion and participation. Listing hours of operation won’t really get much response. Giving a little review of the business will. If you go to Patty Cakes, take a few photos of what you bought, tell readers what you thought of the service, the building, the quality of the food, the price, you are giving them a large base to not only inform themselves, while clearly knowing it is of opinion, as well as oppose or agree on your own opinion within the comments section. This gives people the chance to praise the business or air out their issues, giving consumers more information to help with their decision.

Step 4: Presenting the Information

Blogs have become an essential tool for the online community. Blogs are used by individuals just ranting on their own thoughts to top nationwide news channels. The blog has broken the mold from to allow the use of facts supplemented by opinions and conversation in one spot, for all to see. As the Blog has taken over the style of how people absorb information from the web, it is essential that when you blog your information it’s done right. Photos to supplement your content is key to readers. Being able to read gives them the information, but being able to see what they are reading about, the products, the business itself, the location. This will help the readers get a better idea of what it’s about.

Putting the content in a format which is easily readable and consistent will help keep readers on the article and through the site. When they know what and why they are reading something it helps create an ease of use for them. They know what to expect and where to expect it.

Step 5: Creating Involvement Beyond Comments

It is important once a blog post is up, to also check back in on it. Make sure the information is still correct, but also to get a good perspective on what the users are commenting. There are many opportunities that you can tap by just reading through the comments. If a constant conversation keeps coming up, maybe thats a new post you can create to show you are listening to the readers, as well as making sure you are creating the content they want.

If you find someone who has a large passion for or against a business or differs from your perspective, contacting that person and letting them write their own devil’s advocate piece will really show that your site is a place where people’s opinions matter.

Step 6: Getting the word out

Having great content is the first part of the success of the story, but getting people to know about the story is another up hill battle. Creating featured spots on the homepage of your blog that lends to the importance you are putting on a story which tells users that the story is one they should read. The more visible you make a specific story, the more you have a chance that it will be read.

You want to make sure you don’t over push all at one time. Make sure that you saturate the story properly on your site. When it is first launched, list it on the home page for a few  days, then swap it out with other content. After a while, sprinkle it back in from time to time to grab those who may never have seen it. If you keep the story featured for weeks people will start to think the site is stale or there’s only old information that is relevant, creating a negative view on the current nature of the site. A large part of the spreading of the story will be from word of mouth so you must get the people in!

The success of the website will most likely come from word of mouth, but you need an initial base. Interactions with local businesses will also be a key factor in the success of the site. Running contests between restaurants, possibly adding sponsorship, or discount programs with them will encourage people to both give business to the restaurant as well as the site. These perks to both businesses and consumers will help with awareness.

Take the contest example… best pizza in town. If all of the pizza restaurants were to put signs up for people to vote for their pizza as the best pizza in town in the RockyHill411.com contest. You will drive a nice amount of traffic if the restaurants get into the contest. There are press opportunities that come with this, announcing the winner, getting the name out on larger scales in publications. The more visible the site can become, the more people who own business will see the value in it, as well consumers will end up with more content and more information which helps to build the database and credibility of the website which is the best result in creating a site that people will talk about.

Rocky Hill 411 is not only to find good food or see what people have to say about parking issues. There needs to be a large focus on the workings of the town itself. To do this, there needs to be several resources directly from the town that are learned, utilized and presented in the format of Rocky Hill 411 that can help visitors either understand things to make Rocky Hill 411 the ONLY site that someone would go to for information, instead of searching around for other information.

Learning a lot about the laws of the town, the way the town is run, including town meetings, parking regulations, to getting a dog permit and information on the school system are all very important. To present this in a blog fashion takes a great deal of really going deep into the information so no large details are left out, and it becomes easier as a quick read for those who need it.

Mining the town’s websites and publications will be the key source of information, as well as published documents including town profiles and outside press and communications. A more active approach may be necessary to find out information. This could require meetings or phone calls to different offices of the town to get this information so it can be represented properly and does not hurt the credibility of the information on the website.

When I moved to a small town in New Jersey after I graduated college and began working in Manhattan, I knew absolutely nothing. I had no idea where to shop for groceries, what restaurants were around, never mind if they were good or bad and if there hadn’t been a bank across from my apartment complex I wouldn’t even know where to go to the bank. While I only lived there for a year, it took quite a long time to figure out many of the questions I had.

I didn’t know anyone in close proximity so making friends took a good 8 months by itself. I started learning about places in the area based on recommendation, but only after 8 months of being completely clueless.

When I moved and found websites that really detailed what was around my new area, reviews of restaurants, even menus online, I was really able to plant myself in my new town and get out much more. It was a completely different experience and I was in a huge urban setting. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in a small town similar to the one I had lived in.

When I moved back to Connecticut, I thought about people who may have been transplanted to the area for work and could only assume that they had the same issues as I did.

A website made a world of difference for me, but does that mean in a more rural area that would hold true? Chances are in small towns, many businesses such as general type stores in the Target/Wal-Mart group, Grocery stores will be close together in small strip malls, or on main roads. In the “standard America” type towns, chain restaurants tend to dominate leaving little question as to expectations or reviews on those restaurants.

Politics are usually a big part of small towns; however in many they tend to have people who are involved as a life career. There are rarely issues that “rock the boat” to create a significant amount of controversy. If there happens to be an issue, chances are people will automatically go to a town council meeting. If you are new to a town, you probably don’t have to deal with those issues so they aren’t of much concern.

The idea of creating a website that would be a definitive guide for residents of a town (or surrounding towns) with information pertaining to businesses, restaurants, town issues and other topics seem to be a duplication of work done by a towns chamber of commerce, local newspapers and word of mouth. Why would someone feel the need to visit this website? What type of truly relevant information could they get that they couldn’t find just as easy elsewhere? While there is good intention, is this just an unnecessary duplication that will just clog up a piece of cyberspace?

Having a website that gathers together not only the logistics of the address, business details but also comments from other visitors, reviews and comparisons, with one click, you have a one up and can really start to acclimate yourself to your new surroundings with out a constant confused look on your face!

Food isn’t the only thing to talk about. If there is a proposed referendum on the school systems that results in job losses and higher taxes, other than putting a sign on your lawn urging drivers by to vote yes or no to the proposition come voting day, there’s not much ability on the local level to share your perspective to those involved in the topic or those who really need to figure out what is even going on. The availability of a resource for people to speak out, share their thoughts and experiences for others to learn is invaluable and lacking in this small community.

The interactive nature of a site like Rocky Hill 411 really gives the residents of the town a voice