A column by Brian Bergstrom, My Buckhannon’s owner and publisher
A few weeks ago, I listened to some discussions about the online reach of local festivals and other tourism campaigns in our area. That made me curious about what our own numbers at My Buckhannon looked like.
So I went and pulled them. In one month, March, content from My Buckhannon was viewed more than 3.5 million times. That is about 116,000 times a day. But what I found more interesting than the number itself is how we got there: those 3.5 million views didn’t come from a single digital source, but from many.
One of our earliest decisions as a business was to reach people wherever their online lives took them: email, social media or search; mobile or desktop; near or far.
Everyone is different. Some people sit down at a computer in the morning and read the news from top to bottom, never touching it again all day. Some people check Facebook on their phones every hour, careful not to miss a thing.
Our goal was to be everywhere. Instead of waiting for readers to come to us, we went to them.
What we learned is that most people do not think in terms of platforms. They see what their feed or inbox puts in front of them and don’t care if they’re on Facebook, in their email or on a separate website.
We pay particularly close attention to Google search. When somebody types “Buckhannon” or “Upshur County news” into a search bar, we want them to find us. While social media is ‘scroll-based,’ search is ‘intent-based’ and by far the best way to reach people from outside our area.
We maintain a social media presence, and we try to be deliberate about how we use it. Social media is a double-edged sword. The algorithms there are tuned for ‘engagement,’ which too often translates to ‘outrage,’ so we think hard about our wording, our headlines and how we respond to readers to keep negativity to a minimum.
For our paying members, we send a Daily Digest email every morning. Subscribers tell us constantly how much they appreciate it — every story from the day before, one click away, no login required.
At the heart of everything is our website itself. The site has to work well, no matter how someone gets there, whether that is typing the address in directly, clicking a bookmark or following a link from a friend.
Part of why we focus on breadth is defensive. If your entire strategy depends on social media, a single change to Facebook’s algorithm can take your whole business down with it. The same is true of search or any platform you do not own. We have worked hard to ensure My Buckhannon doesn’t depend on the mercurial whims of some California tech bro.
There are two channels I want to single out, one very human, one very not.
The first is word of mouth. When something big happens in the school system, at City Hall or in the county commission, I hope people think of My Buckhannon. That kind of recall is not something you can buy with an ad budget or chase with a clever algorithm. It is built over years of showing up, doing the work and earning people’s trust.
The second is artificial intelligence. People are increasingly turning to AI to get answers to questions, and that information has to come from somewhere. It’s not coming from social media — those companies fiercely protect their walled gardens. And it’s not coming from emails or newsletters.
No, AI gets its information from regular websites, like ours. At My Buckhannon, we are always thinking about how we can provide AI with accurate, reliable information about Upshur County in a form it understands.
All of this adds up to something I think matters more than that raw number of 3.5 million views. Reaching people is easier than it ever has been — anyone with a phone and a Facebook account can reach a thousand people in an afternoon. The harder job, especially for a small local business, is building a brand that people trust enough to come back to.
That is the work we have been focused on since starting My Buckhannon in 2018, and work we will continue long into our ever-changing technological future.
