Willow Media Group – By the Numbers

Full Disclosure and Transparency (Part 2)

This part of FDAT (full disclosure and transparency) will be posted and shared from my blog (yes, I have a blog, but I forgot the password and had to have it reset) which shows you how often I blog. I thought it would be useful to know the numbers and what they mean to us. Disclaimer: The reason why this is “the Plumas journals” is because when I started this blog, Discover Plumas County was our only website, since I’m too lazy to create a blog for every Discover site, this is it. Disclaimer 2: This may seem “self serving”, “bragging”, or some other nonsense, but if you read the whole thing, you’ll see it not and there is a point to it. Disclaimer 3: The numbers are skewed for the simple reason is that Reno-Tahoe, and Sacramento are so new that you always pull better numbers at the start than at the end (peak, valley, level off) So I will revisit this post next year for an update.

So here we go!

DiscoverPlumasCounty.com (started June 2010)

Average – 463 unique hits per month, best month December 2010 1068 unique hits. Total average 3174 hits per month. Percentage of traffic from outside the county 78.4

DiscoverSolanoCounty.com (Started September 20, 2011)

Average 753 unique hits per month, best month September 2011 1691 unique hits. Total average 5434 hits per month. Percentage of traffic from outside the county 27.68

DiscoverReno-Tahoe.com (Started July 16, 2012)

9103 Total Hits so far. (no other relevant data available)

DiscoverSacramentoCounty.com (Started July 25, 2012)

2259 Total hits so far. (no other relevant data available)

DiscoverSanJoaquinCounty.com (Due Date August 1, 2012)

So what does this mean? I think the most important stat is the percentage of traffic from outside the counties. I really wish I had more data on Reno-Tahoe and Sacramento so I can get a fuller picture. Needless to say, most of the traffic is generated from Social Media (Facebook/Twitter) But I think that will change over time.

So that’s it at this point in time. I hope you enjoyed FDAT (I made that up myself, so if you use it send a check to Willow Media Group)

Plumas County Visitors’ Website

As I’m listening to the selection of firm for website development services (Plumas County Visitor Website) discussion and possible action I’m confused to be honest. First, I think, (I’m bias I’ll admit, since we – Willow Media Group –  submitted a RFP –Request for Proposal) the website is a small part of the overall marketing campaign that needs to be addressed. I also heard that Plumas Corp http://plumascorporation.org, which owns the current visitors website decided to withdraw their RFP because they were going to continue with the visitor’s website on their own (without any funding from the County, my guess is through Quincy Chamber). Still with me? Here is where it gets interesting. So the Supervisors decide they are going to spend the money and do a visitors website also.  In one respect I can see that. You really can’t have too many websites. In another respect, I’m thinking HUH? You have a county of maybe if you’re lucky 20,000 (my guess is closer to 18,000) people.  Most counties in California have over 100,000 people and don’t even have 1 visitor’s website. I’m also thinking they have no idea on how they are going to market the website they are going to fund. They chose Big Fish Creations (http://www.bigfishcreations.com), which isn’t a bad choice at all, but what if the coalition of E. Plumas, Plumas Arts, and Lake Almador do what they said they were going to do? So now you have 3 sites all doing essentially the same thing. Not to mention our website http://discoverplumascounty.com (which we might just take down, considering). When we did our website we had a PLAN on how we are going to market it (create our own network). We just didn’t throw something up and decide later. The name was even chose for a reason, we didn’t just want people to visit Plumas County, we wanted people to “Discover” live there, raise a family and become part of the community. You can’t do that without jobs. You can’t have jobs without people; you can’t get the people or the jobs without marketing.  Now all this confusion can be easily solved (which means it will never happen) EVERYBODY WORK TOGETHER! If the goal is the same, promote tourism to Plumas County, then why not?

Plumas-Eureka State Park

The only state park in Plumas County will be spared the budget ax, thanks to a donation from its park association, the California Department of Parks and Recreation announced. Plumas-Eureka State Park, off Highway 89 near Graeagle, is on terrain … Continue reading →