Happy New Year!
Reflections on 2014 and Best Wishes for 2015 from sharemorestories.com!
Well, friends, another year is almost in the books! Every year represents another chapter in our own stories, another milestone in the journey, and the journey presents both challenge and triumph. That has certainly been our experience launching sharemorestories.com this year, and more than anything, we thank you for being part of it.
So far, we’ve made good progress. We’ve grown to over 1,000 users and a significant portion of our registered users have shared their stories and other writings on the site. Some of those stories have really captivated people’s attention in a very short amount of time. For example, “Children of the Wave,” about a seven-year old girl’s friendship with an Indonesian boy impacted by the Tsunami really captured people’s attention on social media. “Reflections from a Mother’s Heart” generated tremendous readership on the site, becoming our #1 story within days of being published! And two holiday stories, “Finding Christmas Anyway” and “Fixing Christmas” were also among our top stories on the site.
We received a lot of great feedback which we will use to enhance the site experience and plan for the future. That feedback also helped us figure out where we needed to better explain what we’re doing, what sharemorestories.com is all about, and why we’re so passionate about sharing stories. So we developed a series of short FAQ videos which we featured on social media and our alpha site.
And we launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for development of our beta site. While the campaign hasn’t gone exactly as we planned :-), we have learned a lot in the process, significantly increased the exposure of sharemorestories.com, and, of course, raised some money along the way!
So what’s next?
Well, short-term, we still have nine days left in our campaign. We need your help to finish strong and raise as much as we can in order to enhance the alpha site and develop the beta site. How can you help? Spread the word and consider supporting our campaign if you haven’t done so. Any amount helps. And if you really want to make an impact, participate in our referral contest! The details are in our latest update on the campaign page, and also on the alpha site. We’re giving away prizes to the people who help us increase the number of contributions through referrals. Again, any amount (of $1 or more) counts!
Beyond the campaign, please continue to spread the word about sharemorestories.com. Our main goals are growing users and stories. As our teammate Ryan Gilbreath says, let’s make 2015 the year of no more untold stories!
Finally, consider sharing your story.
Everybody has one, you know – a story, that is. When you share your story, you connect with people who have similar experiences, and you empower others to share their stories as well. You can share a personal narrative, a recent experience that impacted you, a short story, an essay or thought piece. It’s really up to you.
And it’s not too late to share your holiday story. If you have a lasting memory or an impactful experience centered on the holidays, we’d love to hear about it. You can turn it into a short personal story and share it on the site.
If you’ve already shared a story, take the next step and share it with your family and friends, using the social media buttons directly below your published piece. This will help give your story greater reach and help you connect with more people.
That’s all for now. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your continued support for sharemorestories.com. The journey continues, and our future is exciting and full of promise!
On behalf of the team at sharemorestories.com, I wish you a safe, happy and healthy New Year!
James
