Menifee 24/7 Enters It's Eighth Year of Publication This Month

It's been seven full years since Menifee 24/7 launched as of this month, and now we're beginning our eighth.

This past year has thus far been the biggest for Menifee 24/7. We brought on a dedicated sales and marketing person in the beginning of the year, and thus far added a couple more sales and marketing people. We've also hired several more writers.

And it looks like we'll publish 600 articles this year. The next biggest output we had was 349 articles in 2008.

On top of all that, our sales staff has signed up several advertisers, making it possible to hire all those writers. We actually created jobs here in Menifee.

In some ways, we could argue that Menifee 24/7 has had a successful year. I know we've gained many more readers. More people and businesses know about us now than ever before. But it seems like we're still struggling.

In a town like Menifee, where there's a large population of seniors, people still turn to print for their news. A lot of them don't even have computers.

But where we've made great gains is with the mobile demographic. Right now, 20% of our readers access our content via some kind of mobile device, be it a smartphone or tablet computer. That figure grows by about 1-2% each month.

We also launched an app for Android devices, though we're still working out some kinks.

And I continue to meet more people throughout Menifee that rely on their smartphones and tablets for all of their news and information. All across the country there is a growing demographic that just doesn't read paper anymore.

So many people these days keep track of one another through Facebook. Earlier this year we launched our Facebook Page. And today with over 5,500 fans, we have the largest, and the most active Facebook community in all Southwest Riverside County.

Menifee 24/7 represents a readership who'd rather tap on their phones while sitting at the bar instead of opening up a newspaper. Sure, Menifee still has a demand for paper-based media, but if you're a business that wants to reach the younger, the more tech savvy demographic, we're the only game in town.

Albeit, Menifee is still a city that wants its paper, things are starting to turn around now. With home building starting back up again, young families from Orange and San Diego Counties will come to Menifee. As Supervisor Jeff Stone said in a recent meeting here in town, "Menifee will be the next future economic powerhouse in Riverside County, it has the potential the grow twice the size of Murrieta or Temecula".

We're going to spend the next year championing those people who make the shift from paper to digital.