Disclaimer: I am not getting paid for any advertising I do on this site. I have contacted businesses myself because I like what they do and have to offer. These are strictly because I LOVE MY READERS and I love small businesses that represent the Eastern Panhandle. I HAVE NOT SOLD OUT!
I am pleased to present inthepandhandle.com. I’ve had the pleasure of following them on Facebook and on Twitter for the past few months and I must say that they are my inside source to all things happening in the Eastern Panhandle. I especially enjoy the polls they run every once in a while (particularly when it deals with Mountaineer football). They also created a second Twitter account dealing strictly with events in the Eastern Panhandle Please take a moment to read about them and then view the contest rules below.
1. Tell me a bit about yourself and your business.
I have a degree in elementary education from Salem International. Our primary business is Firebrand Media, we are a new media marketing company located in downtown Martinsburg, WV. We specialize in web development, web hosting, email marketing, graphic design and printing.
Currently, the business consists of myself and my mother. She manages the event calendar, covers events, sells advertising and is helping to promote the business through relationships with local organizations like Hospice of the Panhandle, The Martinsburg-Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce, etc. She’s also @itpevents on twitter.
2. Why did you start inthepanhandle.com? What’s the mission?
I lived in Morgantown for 8 years while my wife went to medical school and completed her residency. While in Morgantown, I developed and ran a site called eMorgantown.com which was a precursor to InThePanhandle.com. It was strictly a business directory which had some minor success (traffic-wise) but really paved the way for InThePanhandle.com.
When we moved back to the area – in a round about way I am from the area, I graduated from Berkeley Springs HS – we launched InThePanhandle.com as a pet project that has developed over the last four years. In that time, we have transitioned from strictly a business directory (ie. local online yellow pages) – which is still a significant part of our site – to complete community resource.
Our mission. We have three goals for InThePanhandle.com.
1 – Information: Simply put, we want to be the first stop for local information. Whether you are looking for something to do (event calendar), somewhere to eat (business directory and online restaurant menus), movie showtimes (local movie showtimes) or some other type of local business (business directory), we want to be the first place you look.
2 – Expression: To provide an outlet for individuals to express themselves on local issues or areas of interest to them. Users can create author accounts in which they can post articles, press releases, events, etc. and those items get the same promotion as articles that we author or post. At some point, every article or event is on our homepage. Items that we find particularly interesting or that we think would be of interest to others are also promoted via our Twitter and Facebook accounts.
3 – Business: We want to give businesses an affordable, local online advertising venue. In addition to banner advertising and our business directory, we are developing a local directory of products that we think can help people find unique local items and services. We are calling it ‘Shop Local‘ and it’s still in development but we see this as a great way for businesses to promote their goods and services to a local audience.
3. What is your favorite aspect about the business?
The interactions that we have with the folks who use our site are what makes it worthwhile. We often get requests for information via our twitter account or email and it’s great to be able to help someone find something locally.
4. What is the next step for your business?
We launched the new version of the website on Sept. 26, so we’re a little over a month into using the new site and system behind it. Over the next two months we are really concentrating on refining how folks use the site, the look of the site and adding new features like the ability to favorite items (events, businesses, products in the Shop Local catalog, articles) and local classifieds. Once the new year hits, we’ll focus more on promoting the website locally through partnerships with local organizations and by covering more local events.
InThePanhandle.com has offered one lucky reader of mine a very cool shirt!! The choice is yours in either black or red (it’s a standard size medium).
Now, onto the contest rules:
