A Numbers Game: Entrepreneurs Tap Into The Public Appetite For Positive Change
On a Saturday night in late August, I was standing on the back step of Port City Royal in uptown Saint John, looking out on thousands of people jammed into the back alleyway and parking lot.
They were all gathered for the Moonlight Bazaar, a night market inspired by a similar one the organizers had attended in Brooklyn, New York. There were food and craft vendors and DJs playing music, all under a giant moon illuminated by lights and hung high above the parking lot. The massive street party, with people also packed into neighbouring bars and restaurants, was still going strong when I went home around 1 am.
At Huddle, we had known the night market would be a hit because of a story we had published a few weeks before that had attracted enormous interest on our site.
RELATED: Saint John Market Will Feature Vendors, People in Costume and a Giant Moon
I’ve worked for daily newspapers, weekly newspapers and radio shows for more than 25 years, and journalists do get the feel for the stories that touch people through conversations, feedback lines and letters to the editor. But the availability of in-the-moment, advanced analytics gives digital media outlets a far more sophisticated and immediate sense of the events and issues that people truly care about.
It’s one of my many lessons I’ve learned in just a few months at Huddle, but certainly not the most important one to note as we celebrate Huddle’s second birthday. What’s more valuable than the analytical tools themselves is what they tell us about the things you care most about.
And the story those numbers tell is encouraging for the owners and employees who launched Huddle with the tagline, “Business is Good.” In the past year, many of the most popular stories, like the one about the Moonlight Bazaar, celebrated the successful people, businesses, movements, and events that generate economic activity and vitality in communities across the province. Here’s some of what we’ve learned:
Readers loved stories about the people who are entrepreneurs and innovators
- 7 New Brunswickers Who Get It Done: an eclectic listicle of innovators in fields like education, finance and design.
- 12 New Brunswick Business Titans Not Named Irving Or McCain: we generally think of these two families as the business titans in the province, but there are many others generating wealth and creating jobs in the province.
- Let’s Celebrate The Irving Family, Not Criticize Them: of course that doesn’t mean we ignore the Irvings and McCains. The Irvings, in particular, continue to create jobs and wealth on both the oil and forestry sides of the family, and as their activities still generate controversies that invite criticism and praise.
Readers loved stories about new restaurants, bars, and retail developments
- Fredericton Maker of ‘World’s Most Dangerous Dress Shirts’ Going into the Dragons’ Den: Jeff Alpaugh, founder of Jeff Alpaugh Custom and self-proclaimed maker of the “world’s most dangerous dress shirt,” appeared on CBC’s Dragons’ Den in the spring and then opened a retail shop in Fredericton in June.
- The ‘Coolest Alley’ in Uptown Saint John is Getting a Rogue Coffee Shop: Mike and Vanessa Duncan opened a highly anticipated coffee shop in the alleyway off Grannan Lane in uptown Saint John. Serial entrepreneurs and community volunteers, they also run Duncan’s Electrical and are heavily involved in community events like the Moonlight Bazaar and Area 506.
- Downtown Centre Helps Bring Back Main Street in Moncton: much of the press coverage of the downtown sports and entertainment centre under construction has focused on potential parking issues and cost overruns. But local businesses and developers and business owners say the mega-project has sparked the revitalization of Main Street retail and the downtown core in general.
Readers do love good-news stories, but ‘bad-news’ ones do resonate too
So what does a media publication with a tagline like “Business Is Good” do about bad-news stories? I worry less about this question now than when I first took the job, but there’s definitely a place for stories that reflect critically on the actions of government and businesses as it concerns the economy – the ongoing debate over proposed tax reforms is one example, and the debate over greenhouse gas considerations with Energy East is another.
There are bad-news or controversial stories that do well on the site. The heated debate over the proposed changes to the way incorporated businesses are taxed is a prime example. But the business community’s obsession with this story is solutions-oriented, not one of idle complaints. It’s like a nationwide huddle on how to convince the federal government its proposed changes will hurt small business and slow down a growing economy.
By and large, though, readers genuinely look to Huddle to highlight success stories, and be solutions-oriented and optimistic about how innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship help build strong and vibrant economies and communities. This is the feedback I get when I bump into readers at coffee shops and community events like the Moonlight Bazaar. It’s the story told in our analytics.
Business is good indeed.
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle.