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Well 2017 was a strange year for me, I went from being the local fat bloke on the Salford Online facebook group to the local fat bloke on the group who was pumping out local news and drivel. Truth of the matter was Soapbox for me started mainly as an experiment just help me better understand how SOL failed, reality is it never actually did.

The reporting from Tom and Tony was second to none, the views on the site were pretty phenomenal for what is essentially a tiny geographic area of the UK, something they both should be immensely proud of.

The issue I found was more a failure to be able to convert those views into any tangible regular income, no fault of their own as they never stopped trying. Sadly when you took out the cost of the office SOL was in, the broadband connection, server costs, electrical costs, phone lines etc... etc.. then in the end it was costing more money than it was actually bringing in. In short they had kinda become victims of their own popularity and success, as more and more people headed to the site it meant they had to invest more and more money into the infrastructure that kept it online, unfortunately income from ad revenues never really grew to match the spurt in growth the site had undertaken and so inevitably a decision was made to call it a day. Tom and Tony had to eat and it was just not paying the bills.

I never actually intended Soapbox to be a real website, for me it was initially an experiment in how local media up and down the UK worked, survived and thrived. I found myself spending night after night looking at local news sites, pulling apart what they were doing both right and wrong and looking closely at those which failed and those who succeeded, more importantly the reasons why.

I saw emerging patterns and trends starting to form, it also did not escape my notice that there are thousands of local news media outlets that have been swallowed up by much larger groups, something I found extremely sad and depressing.

My conclusion was more or less as follows....

Local Media is still wanted and still much needed, it has a place in peoples hearts and still performs a function, even if in this day and age times have changed. Those who are succeeding are the ones that found ways to innovate and expand into different areas. Bring in much needed ad revenues and build on what they have.

When I put up Soapbox I had one rule, it has to cost me as little as possible, both in time, effort and more importantly money. I automated many things, built what I needed and stripped away that which no long served a purpose, so much in fact that to run what has become my version of SOL, it costs me a grand total of ... £ Nothing.

I run it from home so it costs me nothing in electricity other than what I already use, my phone lines (3 of them and expandable) are all VOIP (Internet) based and I have a full voice menu system which I will soon be using, I have built myself a small office which has more or less anything and everything I could ever need, I more or less had 90% of what I needed already, so in short I managed to take those costs down to a bare minimum.

At the moment there is only me doing this, I aim to eventually expand on that and get more people involved. I have had help though, thanks to Alison Short who has been a fantastic help with articles and Tony Flynn who has allowed me to go through the old SOL archives and republish many of his fantastic tomes from yesteryear. I would also like to thank all those who get in touch with me to tip me off on things that are going on that I may have missed. It has helped immensely. The more people feeding back to me the easier it is.

So where do we go from here then?

Well the answer to that was something I mulled over for a fair few months. The views the site gets are fairly decent for what it is at the moment. I have most of what I need in place already and I am slowly building the rest as I go along. 

Stephen Kingston from the Salford Star said something a while back which resonated in my mind, he called Salford a Media City with an ever dwindling media. Words which to be honest are as about as real and true as it gets. Salford has played second fiddle to Manchester for a long long time and yet we have a huge section of the entire countries media based here. 

Yes we kind of still have a weekly paper but its a far cry from the days of the Reporter and even the Advertiser.

So Salford Media Group ?

We now have a nice new and much cleaner looking site, easier to navigate and the content is presented on a much better platform in my opinion. It isn't perfect but then it probably never will be as far as I am concerned, it is what it is.

We can never compete with the larger media networks surrounding me, but then I don't have to compete with them, all I have to do is rewrite the rules on how things work, and that is something I am good at.

The key to generating ad revenue, expanding and becoming a viable content provider is not to just concentrate on one sole aspect, media is more than just news articles and although we are based in a small City it doesn't mean our media reach and content has to remain small and focused just here.

So over the coming months SalfordVoice will be joined online with its sister site ManchesterVoice, just because we live in Salford doesn't mean that the news stops at our borders.

Yes we can still pump out quality local news covering what is happening in Salford as well as report on the big stories and issues going on around the UK and the rest of the World that people also have an interest in.

And so Salford Media Group is the name I am using as the main group for what will eventually become a small network.

All old links from Soapbox will still work on this site and clicking one will send you to the correct page.

Salford.TV

As I expand this site I also intend to venture more into video content over the coming year (News Bulletins, and local features), I have already built salford.tv which will be used not only to post my own content video for this site but hopefully also use it as a platform to allow others to produce their own content and help them be seen by a wider audience.

The aim is to explore the possibilities of pumping out a local politics show once in a while (Should be fun in this City), also a local sports show covering all our local teams as well as some of our smaller Sunday league teams etc... A morning and evening news bulletin so people can just click on it and watch it instead of having to read through the news posts and maybe throw in a bit of weather too.

I know of many people out there in Salford who run Youtube sites covering everything from Gardening to Vaping, so why not give them a platform to reach people in their local area? It will take time and effort on my behalf but other than a few things I need it won't cost me anything other, so why not? Salford could have the next big Youtube star hiding within our City. (Not you Tony Flynn).

VoiceMag

And finally another area that I am going to experiment in this year is the possibility of putting together a monthly (to start) local magazine available for digital download. Most of us have tablets, ebook readers, computers or smart phones so it is something I am looking into doing. 

I want to build something special in Salford, something I can be proud of, it will take time, lots of effort and hard work but so far its cost me very little and I intend to keep it that way.

So if you have a story, want to get involved by writing an article, are interested in producing some local content, either written of visual then get in touch with us (me) at newsdesk@salfordmediagroup.uk.

If it all works, it all works... so great. If anything fails or doesn't work then the important thing is it has cost me nothing other than a little effort.

So folks without further ado Soapbox is now SalfordVoice which tbh is a much better name in my opinion. Please like, share and subscribe to our content, suggest us to your Salford friends etc.... Help us grow and serve the City and its people the best we can.

Thanks and lets hope 2018 is the best year ever.