A My Mountain Town 5 Year Anniversary Celebration!

It was 5 years ago today that I bought my business (we announced it the following day), then called 285Bound, now called My Mountain Town. It's been a crazy fun ride that I'm blessed to have had with many of you here and beyond, and deeply grateful for all of the friends I've made over the years! My humble thanks to everyone who has joined, posted, shared photos, lurked on the site, and/or interacted with us on our social media pages (especially our Facebook page & Twitter account) - that makes my day, and helps others, when you do! My Mountain Town is now on Instagram too and we would love for you to engage with us there! We are only as good as our members, and I think we have the best damn members around! Our first post was on April 22, 2010 in The Fun House and since then, we've grown to 3,150 members who have created 34,742 Topics and submitted 333,206 posts. Our Facebook page has grown from 400 Likes in 2011 to 3,867; our Twitter account is now approaching 2,000.

Almost 3 years ago we changed our name and our software in order to better reflect the multiple communities we served along the 285 Corridor - Morrison, Conifer, Pine, Bailey, Shawnee, Grant, and Fairplay - and to keep ahead of the times with the changing world of online marketing, SEO, and increasing mobile device use. At the beginning of 2015, we expanded to start covering Evergreen, Genesee, and a little of the lower foothills. In the spring of last year, to improve our services, we hired a certified meteorologist, Mr. Steve Hamilton, to begin providing daily custom forecasts (oftentimes updated twice a day!) for the communities we cover. His forecasts have been a hit and we love having his expertise available. He loves to chat and answer questions too, so please feel free to ask him anything weather-related. He also runs an online radio station (in his spare time) so if you get a chance, please tune into KHIGH Smooth Jazz and show him your support!

I myself have been super busy volunteering a lot of time for various nonprofit organizations in the area, having been Co-Chair of the Conifer & Platte Canyon Chambers' 285 Tourism Committee for 3.5 years, on the Board of Directors for the Conifer Area Chamber of Commerce and involved in planning all of their events, the Friends of Staunton State Park, and just recently, Leadership Evergreen. In addition, I'm currently assisting the Elk Creek Fire Dept with their revision of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, as it has been 5 years and is due for an update. Be on the lookout for more info about that soon! In January I stepped down from chairing the Tourism Committee as it was time for some new blood to take the helm, which Bill Bruner of Cruise Planners-Heart & Soul Excursions has stepped up and done magnificently so far in joining Marcel Flukiger of Aspen Peak Cellars. This month my term ends with the Conifer Chamber Board so I'm looking forward to putting extra energy and time into My Mountain Town! At the beginning of this year, we joined the South Park Chamber of Commerce so we could begin better covering the remainder of Park County - Como, Jefferson, Alma, Guffey, Hartsel, and Lake George. Looking ahead to the future, we hope to grow further into Salida and Breckenridge!

We recently completed a full upgrade making the site mobile responsive so it's now easier to view and use on mobile devices. In the process, we totally revamped our Emergency Page as we've mentioned before in order to make it so that you can find all the info you need about a situation, or links to additional info, on one page. In an emergency, you don't have time to be hunting through multiple news sites for what's happening so our goal is to bring it all together and simplify your search so you can make the most informed decision for your family as to what to do!

But there's more! We also installed brand new Mountain Classifieds software !


You'll find our Classifieds page has 10 different categories making it easier for you to narrow down your search for what you want, and more effective for you to list what you want to sell. You also have the option of boosting your ad for $1 so that it rotates in the scroller at the bottom highlighting it even further to guests and members on the page! We share those Classified posts to our Twitter account as well with over 1,960 followers for additional visibility to help you sell your item(s) more quickly. Since it's brand new, we don't have many items posted - anything you put up won't be buried, it's a great time to list your items for sale! It's pretty self-explanatory to Add an Advertisement , but we'll get a tutorial up as soon as we can.

Our new Classifieds are also a good place to put Lost & Found Pets - upload their photo and we'll bump it to a top ad so it shows on the scroller at the bottom. If you prefer, you can still put them in our Pet Park forum as well for those who prefer to peruse the forums!

Something else fun are the new features on everyone's Profile Pages! We'll start highlighting some of those in tutorials, but if you click on your name, you'll see that in addition to your Profile Picture, you can now also upload a Cover Photo! You can select from one of the stock photos, or upload your own (the sizing is a little tricky, email us if you need help). You can also upload photos and your favorite videos right onto your page! Every time I need some inspiration, I head to my page and play a song on there. Did you know you can also see all the topics on which you've ever commented, and you have a list of topics to which you've subscribed or Favorited right there too (Click the 'Forum' tab to see them all)! Handy for when you want to quickly pull up a favorite thread or one in which there was some info you wanted access to later. On top of all that, you can make Connections with other members (kind of like connecting with other friends on Facebook)! This feature will come more into play as we turn on some additional features in our software down the road a bit (it's a lot to learn as is)!

We still have our exclusive highway and scenic webcams, and have added more over the past couple of years - namely to show Downtown Evergreen, and Windy Point where many accidents occur - plus all of CDOTs, making our pages the most comprehensive you'll find for this area! We've got more in the works so stay tuned! If you have any suggestions or contacts for where to place more, we're open to ideas and leads!

• Hwy 285 Morrison to Grant
• Hwy 285 Jefferson to South Park
• I-70/Hwy73/Hwy74 Golden to Evergreen
• I-70 Evergreen to the Tunnel

I would be remiss in not also saying thank you to all of the businesses and nonprofits who have advertised with us over the years (currently over 40 with some having been with us for over 5 years now and still going strong!) for it is solely due to them that we are able to continue serving the community. We hope that you will patronize them as a way to say thank you as well, and keep coming to My Mountain Town so you can find out what they have to offer for sales, events, and news! You can find them all in our Business & Nonprofit Directory which is in alphabetical order with paid advertisers listed first, then our free listings in alphabetical order behind them. We also have our directory split into 10 Categories to help you narrow your search:

• Dining & Entertainment
• Stores
• Services
• Kids & Family
• Recreation
• Groups
• Arts
• Education
• Nonprofits
• Government

In case anyone here who runs a business or nonprofit is interested, I'm teaching a series of Social Media Workshops from this week through May in Conifer, Bailey, and Evergreen. The schedule is here , just give me a shout if you would like to attend so I have a head count for handouts and can collect payment. The classes are $25/person except for the Google Analytics class for the Evergreen Chamber - that one is only $10 for Chamber members, $15 for not yet members.

If you'd like to learn more about our affordable advertising on My Mountain Town, please give me a call anytime - 720-608-0285. Our ads get from 1,000-300,000 views per month depending upon which page they are on and their placement on that page, and we don't do the annoying pop-up ads, automatically playing videos, Google AdSense, or anything else that is intrusive for you, our visitors, and doesn't promote our local businesses. If we can't make it helping our fellow businesses, we don't deserve to make it!

Thank you all for being a part of My Mountain Town. It truly does mean the world to me, and my staff and volunteers. They work hard to keep this place up to date with the latest info and running seamlessly. You are appreciated so incredibly much - thank you!

Your grateful community servant,
Sharon

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