Benefits for groups and businesses

Tip: 'item' refers to things added to the site - events, news, groups, businesses and locations are all items.

Tip: 'active' refers to whether a group or business is actively managing items on the website which refer to them

Using hartwellvillage.com has a number of benefits for groups and businesses:

• Better awareness: even if you have your own website, by having a presence on hartwellvillage.com you will increase the number of people who are aware of your group or business.
• Better attendance: by advertising your event on this website, that event will be viewed by residents in the village who may not have been aware of it otherwise. All events have quick to use "add to calendar" buttons, to allow users to add your event to their own diary without fuss. When an event is added, it is also shared with Facebook, Twitter and anyone who uses our events feed or iCal.
• Better publicity: by adding a news items to the site, you will increase the reach of your news. As well as appearing on this site, your news article will be shared on Twitter, Facebook and anyone who uses our news feed. In additional all items on the site can easily be shared on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
• Better interaction: by automatically posting an item to the village forum, you allow residents to interact with you. This helps improve communication and allows people to ask questions and provide useful feedback.
• Better sharing:  If you don't have your own website, you can have your own mini website on hartwellvillage.com*. By adding pages to your group or business, you can publish extra information, such as meeting minutes, the history of your group, how to join etc.
• Better sales: Businesses on the site will benefit from additional sales that will come from being part of the site's local business search. In additional, a content rich site such as this will receive a significant amount of targeted search engine traffic direct to your business' page.

All these benefits are provided free of charge by hartwellvillage.com (* not currently available for businesses, although this may be a chargeable feature for businesses in the future)

Make the most of hartwellvillage.com by becoming an active group or business, in addition to the benefits above:

• you have full control over all content (not on the forum) which directly relates to your group or business
• items you add do not require moderation
• items relating to your group or business are clearly marked as being 'Official' and managed by you (see Official and unofficial items for more information)
• you gain access to additional moderation features
• you can have a free* training session in how the site works, and how best to use it
• you can have your own domain name which directs people to your section of hartwellvillage.com*

* A fee applies for businesses 

There is no charge for groups to become active, and currently no charge for businesses (this may be reviewed in the future based on traffic to your business' page)

To become an active group or business, please contact support@hartwellvillage.com.