Albany Have a Chat

Thank you for visiting Albany Have a Chat July 2013

4 years later, who would have thought?

Albany Have a Chat was created in July 2013, originally as somewhere to share local events etc, and was named after my husband, in a way.
We live in Albany, and he likes to have a chat
After a week, I decided to close the page down. I am a shy person at the best of times, and Albany Have a Chat was taking me out of my comfort zone.
A lady came onto the page and asked where all the photos and information had gone. I explained that I was closing the page down. She asked me not too, and to keep going with it, as she enjoyed the information that was being shared, and the little happy posts that I was making.
A week later, a businessman who made chairs etc from wine barrels, asked me if I could promote his business on AHaC, which by then had 70 readers.
Out the promotion, he gained 3 new customers, and by then another business person contacted me, asking something similar.
From then on, Albany Have a Chat stayed. Except for an initial paid Facebook promotion that gained AHaC 100 new likes, all the rest have come via word of mouth.
It was at a time when the social media gurus were saying to only post once a day, I was posting many times a day. Albany Have a Chat then added other little bits of information, some useful, some not so useful, but all entertaining.

It kept the page fresh.

While I was working in the outside world, I would buy little treasures, put them in a bag, and called them Secret Surprises. There could be chocolates in there, a sample of something a small business was selling, a little card. Just never knew what was in there, and I would put it in peoples letterboxes, love from AHaC.
This was my way of promoting small businesses, and showing potential customers what goodies the small business sold, and also gave them a buzz too. When I lost my job, I couldn’t afford to do them anymore, and the secret surprises stopped.
It wasn’t long after, that I came up with a game that not only promoted local businesses and services, it also gave the players some laughs and finding pages and groups they didn’t know existed. It was called Albany Have a Chat’s Treasure Hunt. The players had to solve the clues given to find the business or community service page, where I would be waiting with a “WHO’S HERE?” catch cry, and they had to answer me, like the page or group that we had landed on, so they get updates from them.
The game ended due to a lack of prizes. Players weren’t a problem, I still had a few of them. Even today, I am asked if I can bring back the Treasure Hunt.
At one stage there was an undercover market on Albany Have a Chat, that again promoted local businesses, and some Perth businesses, many small businesses, but changes to the way Facebook did things made it very hard, and that’s when Albany Have a Chat’s Business Centre was created, to take the place of the undercover markets.

I was already an admin on Support Local Businesses, but because that was someone else’s creation, I made the business centre. Two weeks later, the creator of Support Local Businesses handed me the group, as he didn’t have the time anymore.
Now I am about to take these same businesses onto the internet, thanks to the support of some very special business people in Albany and surrounding areas.
Social Media changes day to day. One moment Facebook is popular, then Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter etc are. But one thing has remained the same.
The internet web.
That’s the next step for Albany Have a Chat.