I had never blogged before starting this South End blog. I needed a way to communicate with folks, share stories, events and my experience while the South End website was being created so I gave it a shot. What started slow and awkward has grown into 474 subscribers, 250,000 plus page views and a great outlet for me over the past 434 posts. I don’t know that I’ve ever formally introduced myself to the blog audience but my name is Ted Boyd and I am (for a couple more weeks) the Director of South End. The time I finally say hello is also the time I say goodbye. I’ll be stepping down as the Director and leaving Charlotte to become the Downtown Development Manager for the Town of Cary, NC at the end of September. My departure does not necessarily mean an end to the South End Blog, just an end to the blog on this particular site (www.southendclt.com). We built a blog feature on the new South End Website at www.historicsouthend.com and we have many more features and information so I encourage you to follow that site for all your South End info. The South End voice may change a little but that’s just fine cause how can one person accurately capture South End.
It’s funny the things you learn about an audience when you have metrics to review. Here a few of my insights. 1. You all like Food Trucks. Any time I write about Food Truck Friday…the page views skyrocket and “Food Truck Friday Charlotte” is the highest search term. Congrats to Chef Brian Seeley and Gaines Brown for pioneering that event and thanks to all of you for spreading the word and coming out to a dirty old lot at Camden and Park. 2. Big fan of Lists. Three of the most popularly viewed posts were lists. Twitter Resources for #DNC2013, 71 Ideas to “Shop Small” in South End and Need Some Reasons to Vote for South End? Here 34. 3. You all love Gallery Crawl. The top post all time at 12,624 views is the Gallery Crawl page on the blog, which doesn’t even factor individual posts about gallery crawl. 4. You all love design and craft beer. Two posts that received greater attention than others are the posts High Cotton Home Company Opens on South Blvd and Triple C Brewing Co Opening in South End representing over 7000 clicks combined. I’m sure I probably just gave away some good free info to a marketing company out there…oops.
Thank you for reading and I hope you will continue to follow along at www.historicsouthend.com going forward. I loved my position as Director of South End and believe it’s the best job in Charlotte. South End is a great place and I look forward to watching it grow and develop.
One last event I’d like to invite you to attend is happening this Friday. We had our September South End Social Event scheduled for this Tuesday but we are going to push it to this Friday and open up to any others as well. I have so enjoyed the people and places of and in South End that as a final farewell, I couldn’t select just one place for a final event so I am hosting a Goodbye Bar Crawl this Friday through South End. You are welcome to join us for the whole crawl or just join us at one of the locations. We’ll start at 4pm at Good Bottle Company. You read that correctly…4pm…it’s South End..we don’t wait til 5pm. We’ll spend about 45 min to 1 hour at each location. From Good Bottle we’ll go to Triple C Brewing Co followed by Sullivan’s and then The Liberty and conclude at Common Market. We’ll plan to have some appetizers at Sullivan’s and Liberty but you just cover what you choose to consume in the beverage department. Love to have South End folks come join us as well as any others who are just looking for something fun to do on a Friday night. I’ve set up an Eventbrite site so check it out to RSVP just to help with numbers.
4pm – Good Bottle Co
5pm – Triple C Brewing Co
6pm – Sullivan’s
7pm – The Liberty
8pm – Common Market
– That was me dressed as South End Santa enjoying a beverage at Common Market.
