The Importance of News and Feedback

By Margaret Sheard

We write many articles on cyprusscene.com which are by Chris Elliott, myself and other writers from the UK and North Cyprus, who contribute their views on many different subjects. Sometimes we ask ourselves – what do people want to read? and this is where you, the readers, can help by making comments on something you have enjoyed reading or even something you have not!

A great number of the articles we have published, not only on cyprusscene but also our community sharing partners’ sites and a forum, have had a fantastic readership. Strangely, the article we published about New Post Codes for North Cyprus has had the top readership with 1,400 reads. Other human interest stories have been extremely well read such as Cyprus Crisis – North Sees its Moment with 738 reads, A Visit to Akincilar with 703 reads and British Army Memories in Cyprus 1958/59 (written in conjunction with material supplied by Derek Chilvers) which has to date had 660 reads. These statistics are for the cyprusscene site alone.

Unlike conventional newspapers any article can be re-read, no matter how old it is and this is one of the benefits of an internet website. Not only that, readers of these articles can print, email and share them with their friends and contacts through social media groups etc. Cyprusscene, when it publishes, shares the article link into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Tumblr, so in this way an article gets shared many times. In addition to the written word we also include slideshows plus public domain videos and those we produce ourselves about the subject of the article. An example of an article with a very thought-provoking video interview is Erenkoy, The Truth is Told which has had 453 reads. Also a powerful article and video is Cyprus, the Human Cost of the Tragedy by Ismail Veli, which has had 401 reads in just the first 7 days.

Many people recently attended Remembrance Services throughout many countries of the world to remember those who had lost their lives in 2 World Wars and many other conflicts over the years and here in North Cyprus we had a Remembrance Service in Kyrenia at which there were some ex-servicemen who had come over from the UK to pay their respects to those young men and women who lost their lives at the time of the Cyprus Emergency.

This is where comments from readers are so useful and I am giving one example below, which speaks for itself.

Jan Mellon commented on Lest We Forget – Old British Cemetery, Kyrenia

Wes and I are very honoured that our music has been played on such a moving occasion and over the films posted on your wonderful and interesting site. We have had the real pleasure of knowing Derek Chilvers and his late wife Shirley for many years and we are very touched that of all the appropriate music he could have chosen, he should have put forward ours. We very much hope to visit Cyprus one day and the Old British Cemetery in Kyrenia to pay our respects to the many servicemen who fell during the conflict. With best regards, Jan.

I asked Jan if she had any objections to using her comment and this was her reply.

Hi Margaret and Chris, I’m more than happy for you to use my comment in your article. I appreciate that feedback from people is important – if only to convince you people are actually reading what you have spent hours putting together! I have every intention of working my way through more articles on the website as it is such an informative one and If we do plan to visit we will definitely let you know. Take care, Jan.

This is the type of comment which makes the hours we spend writing worthwhile, so if you can spare a few minutes to make a comment we would be pleased to read what you have to say and if it warrants a reply for publishing we will certainly do so.