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Westmoreland Community News
Briefs & Events
We've added news briefs
to the Inspiring Times InWestmoreland section of
the website. We have so much information
coming in that we need to have a way to pass
this information on to the consumers in
Westmoreland County. We decided that brief
news stories would be one way to do it.
Read the
Westmoreland News Briefs. Briefs are
updated on a regular basis and are automatically
added to the InWestmoreland Search Engine.
Inspiring Times In
Westmoreland also has a section for Westmoreland
Community Events. This
Westmoreland
County Calendar lists events occurring over
the next few months. The calendar is
updated on a regular basis and the events are
automatically added to the InWestmoreland Search
Engine.
Make your News Brief or
Event fit into our format and it's more likely
to be added to our pages more quickly.
Submit a News Brief
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Submit an Event
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Requirements
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Requirements
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For News Briefs:
Title
Description of 100 words or less
Contact information. |
For Westmoreland Community Events:
Date/s
Title
Description of 100 words or less
Contact information |
Send to:
Scot@InWestmoreland.com
Scot Noel
2615 Detroit Street
Grapeville PA, 15634 |
Submission is not a
guarantee of placement, however your submission
will be reviewed on a timely basis by the
editors at InWestmoreland.com.
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Subscribe to Our Newsletter
InWestmoreland.com is moving
the email newsletter to an "Opt-In" service to
assure that our newsletter is sent only to people who are
interested in receiving it. "Opt-in" to
receive our newsletter and you will receive a
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InWestmoreland.com
Our
Newsletter is sent every 3
months to keep you informed
of changes and promotional
offers from in
InWestmoreland.com.
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Multi-Media Exposure…
We take great
pride in announcing that we are the only
Website and Magazine package that brings
multi-media awareness of your business
to Westmoreland County. To be more
precise, Inspiring Times In Westmoreland
is Owned, Operated, Printed, Mailed and
Distributed all in Westmoreland County.
The InWestmoreland.com website is also
owned and operated in Westmoreland
County.
Inspiring Times
in Westmoreland is a collaboration of
two dynamic forces – Inspiring Times
Family Publications and
InWestmoreland.com – both local
businesses dedicated to promoting local
businesses by providing local
information, printing great news about
our home communities, and inspiring
articles that make a positive difference
in the family life of our readers. |
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Direct Mail &
Subscriptions…
In response to
our readers and advertisers desires, we
now offer direct mailing of Inspiring
Times in Westmoreland, presenting an
advantage to advertisers that aspire to
focus on their immediate target and
fringe market areas at affordable rates.
Each month 10,000 copies are mailed
directly into homes throughout
Westmoreland County.
Another 10,000 are free to pick up at
high-traffic areas throughout the
region. Our readers can still pick up
their complimentary copy at their local
supermarket, town shop, or doctor’s
office. The next issue will be available
at our booth at the Arts & Heritage
Festival.
Subscriptions are also available now.
For years, people have asked for
subscriptions so that they could assure
that they would always receive their
copy. Subscriptions are just $15/year
(to cover mailing costs). A coupon for a
$12 subscription is available on our
coupon page, in the newszine, and at the
Arts & Heritage Festival.
With a New Format...
We've changed our
format too. The handy magazine sized
format is better for mailing and
provides a higher quality publication.
We are a newszine - looking like a
magazine, but offering the same great
quality you have come to expect in an
Inspiring Times Family Publication.
And on the Web...
Starting with our
initial May/June 2004 issue, Magazine
articles and coupons will also be found
on the Inspiring Times In Westmoreland
page on InWestmoreland.com. You can
access the latest issue (and past
issues) by clicking on the Inspiring
Times button at the top of the
InWestmoreland.com pages or by going
directly to
www.InspiringTimes.com.
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More Content,
More Readers
We continually
work to increase the content on
InWestmoreland.com. We add new Great
Places articles and Inspiring Times
articles each month. We add new local
links and websites every month. This
continual growth and improvement means
that more people visit and revisit our
website – and more people learn about
the local businesses listed on
InWestmoreland.com. |
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One way we measure our progress is in
“page views.” This is the number of
pages viewed each day, week, month or
quarter. Our graph shows the number of
page views per quarter since
InWestmoreland began in November of
2002. The startling rise in users of
InWestmoreland.com is hard to ignore.
Visitors are up over 500% since last
year, and in 2004 expect to see a minimum
of 400,000 pages of information accessed
by users of InWestmoreland.com.

Many of our pages
do very well in the search engines. This
helps people to become aware of the
website. For example: |
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Type “Delmont
Apple Festival” into the searches,
our Great Places article is number
one in many searches.
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Type “Dr.
Cavalier” into Google and Dr. Maria
Conde-Cavalier’s Page is number one,
in Yahoo the page is the fourth in
the list.
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Type in
“Sharp Image Greensburg” in Google,
Yahoo, or MSN and each search
provides two InWestmoreland pages in
the top five results.
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New Features on InWestmoreland
Buy a
Domain Name for Your InWestmoreland Site
Buy a domain name at Giraffe
Digital Solutions for $9.95 and for $10 more, we
will point it to your InWestmoreland.com website
(total cost $19.95). This gives you the ability
to promote your own domain name on your business
card or in an ad. You must choose name unique to
all domain names in the world. While there are
advantages to a nice, short name - most short
names are taken. Choose a domain name that uses
your company name or describes your products or
services.
If you are interested in
buying a domain name for your InWestmoreland
site, for an email box or for a custom web site,
please call 724-523-3001 or
email
us and we will explain the process to you.
Dynamic Page
Editing
Imagine changing a message on your website at a
whim, totally under your control! Now, owners
of InWestmoreland.com web sites can do just
that. In November, Computers Made Easy
introduced this technology to its InWestmoreland
web pages, allowing restaurants to change their
daily specials, small car dealerships to
announce special offers, merchants to tout
sales, and event planners to list
up-to-the-minute changes.
To make such a change, the owner of an
InWestmoreland web site simply logs on to a
special web page using their name and password,
then they type! It’s not much harder than that,
and anyone familiar with a word processor can
easily master the steps. As with all
InWestmoreland services, the new Dynamic Page
Editing technology is priced economically,
allowing InWestmoreland web pages to be
established quickly at a cost below $500 for the
most expensive package. (The Dynamic Page
Editing feature ads $179 to the cost of any
standard InWestmoreland website.)
Port of Call Travel is one of the first businesses to take
advantage of the new offering. Their site can
be visited at
www.InWestmoreland.com/PortofCall. Each
dynamically edited site comes with two
standard, updateable areas, but you may not be
able to detect them all. Whether the
announcement stands out or blends into the web
page completely is up to the user making the
change.
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InWestmoreland Advertises
InWestmoreland.com is advertised locally, to
boost awareness of the InWestmoreland
directory and increase the value of each
listing.
Highlights of our advertising include:
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Our partnership with
Inspiring Times InWestmoreland assures
that 10,000 readers learn about us via
direct mail, and another 10,000 from
freely distributed copies of the
newszine.
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Sponsorship and a
booth at the
Arts & Heritage Festival provides
exposure to 100,000 local consumers.
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Our article and
advertisement appears in the Tribune
Review's Guide Post magazine.
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Full color ad in the
Tribune Review’s Discover Westmoreland
2003.
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Mailings to several
local Chamber of Commerce Members.
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Bus billboard
advertising on WCTA buses in the
Greensburg area.
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As a member of the Laurel
Highlands Visitors Bureau, we promote
our site and services beyond Westmoreland
County.
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National Google AdWords
campaign including America Online,
CompuServe, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, AT&T
Worldnet, EarthLink and Excite.
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Google Ad Campaign
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Have you heard of Google? It is the most powerful
Search Engine in the world –that is a place to go and find things online.
Their website address is
www.Google.com. These days, if you go to Google and type in
“Westmoreland County” you will see our ad near the top of the page on the
right hand side. |
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As you can see, the
Interest bar is solid green, meaning more and
more people are finding our site an exciting and
useful place to visit. And by investing in
Google’s AdWords campaign, we have assured that
InWestmoreland.com also shows up at the top of
searches in America Online, CompuServe,
Netscape, Ask Jeeves, AT&T Worldnet, EarthLink
and Excite. All this makes InWestmoreland.com
easy to find and a better investment for
businesses purchasing a listing in the
directory.
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Promote
Your Website
One inexpensive way to
promote your website is through your everyday
email correspondence. There are two ways to do
this.
1. Use your email
program to create a signature that reminds
viewers to visit your website. Insert this
signature into every email message that you
send out.
2. Use an email address that is associated
with your domain name rather than an email
address associated with your ISP (Internet
Service Provider).
Use: John@YourBusinessName.com instead of
john@aol.com, or john@comcast.net.
Each time a viewer sees
your business name, it reminds them of what you
do. It also encourages the viewer to visit your
website.
If you have a domain name, you may already have
an email address. If you do, use it! Why promote
your ISP instead of your own business?
If you don’t have a domain name, purchase one.
Names can cost as little as $9.95/year. You can
purchase an full email box system (with virus
protection and spam filtering) for just
$59.95/year. For more information call
724-523-3001, or email
Jane.
Visit Giraffe
Digital Solutions website to learn more.
Using Search Engines and Sponsored Ads
Using Print Materials to Promote your Site
Should you be interested in
effectively promoting your website, or
optimizing your website for better Internet
searches, a short consultation with
InWestmoreland can help get you on the right
track. Please feel free to call us at
724-523-3001, or email
Scot@InWestmoreland.com.
Customer Spotlights:
Twice as Nice Consignment Boutique
Twice as Nice offers
current fashions and designer clothes at very
reasonable prices. This is upscale, fashionable
apparel, selected through a demanding process
for quality and value. Some of the clothing is
new, while some is previously owned, but don’t
get the wrong idea. Twice As Nice is not a
thrift shop. You will find no two dollar dresses
with broken zippers and torn hems here. Our
inventory includes something for everyone,
including superior articles for the most
discriminating shopper. We cater to the fashion
conscious woman, carry clothing in all sizes,
and stock many favorite labels in children’s
clothing. At Twice As Nice, you will find the
best in business suits, sweaters, jeans, coats,
and more – all upscale apparel.
Dolores Bailey, owner of Twice As Nice, works
closely with her customers and is eager to learn
their tastes in clothing. Many of her customers
and consigners have been with Dolores for well
over a decade. To continue to provide the best
for her clientele, Dolores works hard to stock
clothing in all sizes – from petite to full
figure. Children’s clothing is also available at
Twice As Nice.
Learn more.
Port of Call Travel
At Port of Call Travel,
we work with individuals and small groups to
arrange a wide variety of vacations, cruises,
tours, and other memorable trips. Whether your
desire is to cruise the waters of Alaska,
Bermuda, enjoy an excursion to Australia or
Europe, or visit the fabulous worlds of Disney,
Port of Call takes pride in arranging the
vacation of your dreams!
Located in Greensburg, PA, Port of Call Travel
enjoys serving clients throughout Southwestern
Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and the surrounding
Tri-State area. Port of Call Travel makes it
easy for you to meet a wide variety of travel
needs.
Whether it is a family
vacation, an intimate honeymoon, or a small
group planning to have fun in the sun, Port of
Call Travel has the experience to plan your
travels throughout the US and across the world.
Owner Colleen Peterson and her staff at Port of
Call Travel are knowledgeable and skilled, with
qualifications certain to make your holiday a
success. Learn
More.
Updated Links Pages
More links have been
added to the Local
Links page. A new section, Culture and
Theater has been added, featuring theaters and
shows in our area. Significant additions
increased the Travel and Tourism section to
include Westmoreland County attractions, State
Parks, and places to visit in the surrounding
region.
A few new links were
added to the Useful
Links page, too.
We are constantly looking
for new sites to include in our Local Links.
We have browsed and searched the Internet to
find websites that are a resource to
Westmoreland County residents. If you know
of a town or organization has a (non-commercial)
link that belongs in our local listings,
please tell us about it.
Great Places
We are always looking for
new Great Places. We seek out businesses
and organizations that we know or are
recommended to us. We especially look for
places that offer something unique to their
customers.
Great Places are not
advertisements for purchase. They are at
the editorial discretion of the InWestmoreland
staff, and showcase businesses, organizations,
and events that we find newsworthy in our
travels around Westmoreland County.
Send us your comments and
suggestions
We'd love to hear your
comments and suggestions so that we can improve
the website. Send them to
info@inwestmoreland.com.
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