Calling all Champions of Local: Become a HereCast Ambassador!

What is a HereCast Ambassador?

They are champions of local, committed to connecting fellow locals in their community and empowering others to share what’s happening around them in order to create a thriving local here and now network. 

Does that sound like you? Read on! 

HereCast Ambassadors…

• Provide the team at HereCast with regular feedback and ideas about updates and features

• Sport their HereCast swag

• Spread the word about HereCast through word of mouth, online, in their communities etc…

And they get…

• One-of-a-kind t-shirts, notepads and stickers for themselves and to share with friends.

• Intel on upcoming features and events

• Invites to paid user testing sessions

If you’d like to become a HereCast Ambassador, shoot me (Jennifer) an email to jennifer@herecast.us and I’ll dub thee HereCast Ambassador for life.

New on HereCast: Like Counts

Starting today, you will see an update to the like button. Likes will now be counted! Months ago we changed what was the bookmark, which allowed users to save a post for later, to a heart. Since then we’ve decided to enhance the feature. The like count will appear next to the heart on all posts. By doing so, we want to give readers the power to show their support for posts they love and keep track of everything they’ve liked. 

You may have heard that Instagram and Facebook might be doing away with like counts all together. Why go against the trends of Instagram and Facebook? Well first of all, we aren’t trying to be them. 

We are building HereCast to be a place for locals to post and discover what’s happening around them, as well as show their love for local. We see like counts as a way for readers to be able to show their support for those who post beyond just a pageview, and give fellow readers a sense of what others in their area find important. In order to like a post you must be a registered user, so you can trust that engaged locals are the ones providing the feedback. 

We hope you will see this feature as a way to thank your neighbors and community members for taking their time to share local information with you. Whether it’s an upcoming event, a story about a new restaurant, town information… whatever it might be, if you like it, click the heart! 

Got feedback for us? Let us know what you think by emailing us at help@herecast.us. 

Best, 

The HereCast team 

HereCast & local news

As we continue to grow HereCast into an information resource for local communities, we’d like to offer some of our thoughts about how HereCast fits into the overall online content ecosystem.

First of all, we’re not a news organization. We have no editorial staff or reporters and we don’t assign or approve stories before they are published. 

Second, we designed our platform to allow existing local news organizations, freelancers and and any other locals who care about their community to share their updates and perspectives. We are complementary to other sources of information, and ownership of the content remains with the contributors. If local news organizations want to distribute any or all of their stories on our platform, they can get paid for their content and build awareness and readership.

Finally, the HereCast experience will be defined by you and the people around you. We rely on the individuals and organizations in each community to help define what is interesting and important to them based on how they use the site. Much like walking up to a public bulletin board in the middle of town, we hope to see a diverse collection of content made readily available to browse for any location. Some posts are going to be professionally written, highly relevant and extremely interesting, while others may seem incomplete or unnecessary. Your participation will influence how it is used.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to continue our expansion, and we hope that you will join us and give us your feedback so we can best serve the needs of locals.

Using HereCast for your local community

Our mission at HereCast is to help keep people informed and aware of the things that are important to their local community. We encourage people working to strengthen their communities to add HereCast to their toolset for reaching their fellow locals. 

Here are a couple of ways community builders can use HereCast:

Drive awareness and get people involved

HereCast is an open, easy to use and free platform. Municipal officials and nonprofit leaders can quickly create a page on HereCast and start posting to your local community. It’s like a free digital bulletin board to post your announcements, updates, news and more. 

By posting on HereCast, organizations can reach their people to share information about upcoming efforts and decisions, and to drive awareness of all that they do with the broader community. 

Share the hidden stories that make your town special

So much about a local community is locked in the memories and conversations of the people who experience the place. Much of it fades away, not documented for the others who love the town to experience and cherish for years to come.

By finding and sharing these stories online, you can help give new power to these hidden tales, helping others discover the richness of interesting people and places that surround you. Increase pride in your community by making your town’s stories accessible and discoverable.

How could HereCast help strengthen your community? We’re just getting started and would love to know how we can help you achieve your goals. Please join us and give us your feedback to help us be the best place to share and discover local information.