An interview with Wayne Howe, Web Content Manager at WhichBingo UK
Social Media Portal (SMP): What is the FreeBingo Blog?Wayne Howe (WH): The FreeBingo Blog is a mixture of personal, community and site news from the manager of the UK based free online bingo website;
http://www.freebingo.co.uk.
SMP: What made you start the FreeBingo Blog?WH: I started the blog as alternative site content to our
freebingo news page. The informal nature of the blog allows me to chat freely and talk about different things, i.e. not just bingo.
SMP: Tell us about the FreeBingo, why did you start it?WH: Online bingo is growing enormously in the UK, as you will know if you?ve seen some of the adverts on TV at the moment. When we launched FreeBingo in 2005 online bingo was just starting to get big in the UK, and we were the first site to offer completely free bingo. So it allowed players to get a taste of online bingo without spending any money.
SMP: Who are your target audience and why?WH: Anyone over the age of 18 who is interested in online bingo. Our demographic is mainly female as you may expect from a bingo game, but you may be surprised by the number of male online bingo players out there. The last I heard the ratio was 1 in 5 online bingo players were male.
SMP: How did you initially attract users to the blog and how do you do it now?WH: We didn?t promote the blog heavily in the early days, as it was a bit of an experiment at first. We kept adding posts and mentioning it to our freebingo players in our live chat rooms. Eventually we added a link on our homepage and now we also list the latest blog posts in our
Monthly Newsletter.
SMP: What are your low moments of what you have been doing so far?WH: The low moment has to be each time I look at the blog and see daft photos of me staring back on the masthead! That was our webmaster?s idea of a joke, and somehow convinced me it would be fun for our players. Hopefully we?ll have a redesign soon and make me look a little bit more professional. Lol.
SMP: What are your high moments of what you have been doing so far?
WH: High moments are any blog posts that get lots of comments. Without doubt it is always the more personal posts and community stories that get the most comments. FreeBingo is a big community, so they always like to hear what?s going on in each other?s personal lives.
SMP: Now that you are established, what do you see as your biggest challenges and opportunities?WH: The biggest challenge has to be coming up with new things to write about. There is only so much you can say about bingo, but when you open it up to include player news, personal stories, funnies and random things, it makes content writing much easier.
SMP: What are the next moves for FreeBingo Blog?WH: Well the first thing I want to do is change the masthead to make it more professional looking. I want to comment on bingo industry news occasionally, and therefore I would prefer it if my online bingo colleagues don?t see me with a red nose or a plant on my head. Lol.
SMP: What?s the next big step for social media and networks?WH: I?m very much into the whole social networking / web 2.0 scene at the moment. FreeBingo has a Facebook page and
Twitter, but it does get difficult to justify maintaining these networks as you never see a bottom line contribution directly from them. However, I do feel it is important to be involved in these networks to remind players of your brand, gain feedback on what you are doing and to identify what people are discussing about FreeBingo out there in cyberspace.
SMP: What?s going to be hot throughout 2009?WH: Twitter is the big thing at the moment, and I think it will continue to grow in 2009. Twitter is good for those who are less tech savvy, mainly because they are able to read someone?s twitter page without having to sign up to twitter themselves. So you don?t just have to have 100,000 followers to have a well read twitter page.
SMP: What impact is the global recession having and what do you think the best way is to manage it for businesses such as yours?WH: The recession isn?t having a too drastic effect on FreeBingo, mainly because people are being more careful with their money and looking for free online content.
SMP: How does this fit into plans at FreeBingo Blog?WH: Perhaps it could be an avenue to include more freebie content that I?ve found elsewhere, such as money off vouchers at restaurants, etc. We get no benefit from publishing such information, but our players would feel more value from reading the blog and therefore may come back again.
SMP: Best way to contact you?WH: Email me at manager at freebingo.co.uk or log-in to FreeBingo and find me in the bingo rooms. :)
Now some questions for fun
SMP: What did you have for breakfast / lunch?WH: I had a banana for breakfast instead of my usual bran flakes because our milk has turned sour. Yuck.
SMP: What?s the last good thing that you did for someone?WH: I surprised my Nan with a huge framed photo collage that I made her featuring photographs of everyone in the family throughout the years all together. She cried when she saw it. It was all her memories together in one place she said. J
SMP: How many hours to you work a week?WH: Too many! Lol. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about FreeBingo stuff.
SMP: If you weren?t running FreeBingo Blog what would you be doing?WH: My ideal job would be working for Liverpool FC on their website. I?m a big fan and football mad, so that is my ideal alternative job.
SMP: When and where did you go on your last holiday?WH: Old Deniz in Turkey. Fantastic.
SMP: What?s the first thing you do when you get into the office of a morning?WH: Clear spam from my inbox, read the latest threads on the FreeBingo Forum and drink a cup of tea.
SMP: If you had a superpower what would it be and why?WH: If I could fly I would save a fortune on petrol, plus I could sit on the Anfield stadium roof every Saturday and watch the match for free.
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