Archive for December, 2010

Community Classifieds will be closing offices over the Christmas period and, as a result, deadlines for adverts running the weeks of December 27, 2010, and January 3, 2011, have changed in all regions (except French Quebec*).

Please ensure that you contact us before 9am on December 20, 2010, to arrange advertisements for these dates. For pre-booked adverts, we will contact you the week of December 13 to confirm booking.

Our offices will be closed December 27, 2010, and January 3, 2011.

For further information contact nadine@bccommunitynews.com

(*The deadline for ads for French Quebec is 9am on December 16.)

Community Classifieds was invited by Kolby Solinsky to look at his class project’s study of media in the online world and, in particular, their research into how community newspapers are meeting the challenges of online and technological developments in publishing.

Their site, The Modern Paperboy, spoke with a wide variety of media professionals, including Black Press executive Josh O’Connor and Marco Morelli, Black Press web producer. Black Press owns and operates dozens of community newspapers throughout British Columbia.

“Why will community papers continue to outperform metro dailies in 2009 and beyond? They are lower cost operators of newspapers and websites, and they have a wider base of advertisers,” said Josh O’Connor. “Typically, a suburban group of newspapers will have more smaller advertisers than a competing metro, and those advertisers will be less affected by national trends.”

O’Connor continued to describe the positive advertising trends for community newspapers, explaining – as we often do on this blog – that community newspapers provides a vehicle for reaching thousands of interested readers. “Advertisers in 2009 will be looking to deliver their message to the widest possible audience at the lowest possible cost,” he said. “And, community newspapers are the best at providing that.”

Marco Morelli explored how community newspapers are using the online programs as a tool rather than a hindrance. For example, most articles are now developed online: as breaking news hits, details are updated on the website. The final version of a story is then published in the hard copy of the newspaper. Morelli describes it thus: “We publish our newspaper. We say we’re no longer just ‘re-publishing’ it online. We’re thinking of the online as a new entity.”

He also mentions a tool that is being widely used by journalists throughout the world: Twitter. Not only are newspapers tweeting their stories as they are posted – thus driving traffic to their site rather than waiting for it to organically occur – but individual journalists within organizations are increasing interest in upcoming stories by engaging with the online community before their work hits the press.

You can read more about the evolution of the newspaper – and the effect of technology on distribution and journalism – at The Modern Paperboy.

It’s been proven time and time again that advertising in the Classifieds section of a local newspaper is a great way to reach thousands of Canadians every week. At Community Classifieds, we’ve also provided our readers with some tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of their classified ad by following some simple, yet effective, rules of thumb. What happens when people don’t follow these suggestions? What happens when people don’t read over their adverts before submitting them? The following examples come from real, printed classified adverts throughout North America. As you will see, the result of poorly written adverts can sometimes be extremely funny!

But remember: one of the benefits of using communityclassifieds.ca is that our specialist team can help you to construct your classified ad and double check it via phone or email before publishing. This helps to ensure that your advert won’t end up on a list such as this!

Our favourite funny classified adverts:

“3-year old teacher needed for pre-school. Experience preferred.”

“Dinner Special — Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00.”

“For sale. Three canaries of undermined sex. Great Dames for sale.”

“And now, the Superstore-unequaled in size, unmatched in variety, unrivaled inconvenience.”

“Pony for sale. Looks like small horse. $900. Call 780…”

“Math Tudar needed for Intermediate Algebra, needed ASAP! Call 812…”

“Turkey for sale. Only partially eaten. Eight days old. $23.00 obo.”

“Is your grammer letting yous down? Private tuition available.”