It’s almost here, the day we celebrate love of the heart. For me that’s reserved for my wife. Happy Valentine’s Day, Jean. The cards we trade will include the love we have for our four sons. But I must admit, this publisher’s heart also holds a special place for our hometown Reader Leaders.
It all started when we launched Marple Friends & Neighbors over six years ago. Among our many thousands of readers emerged Reader Leader who began letting us know they’d begun to really look forward to receiving each new issue of their hometown magazine in the mail back in 2018. They also recognized early that our advertising Sponsors made it all possible. But after a few years, Reader Leaders got to another level when they joined in our magazine’s social-media-in-print (and online) mission to be Bringing People Together in Marple.
With reader loyalty, Reader Leaders happily voted with their wallets, showing outright favoritism towards our advertising Sponsors. They recognize how our advertising Sponsors are showing us how Marple residents are to the success of their business and so Reader Leaders return that loyalty by choosing, whenever possible, to do business with our advertising Sponsors first as their contribution to the magazine’s mission to be Bringing People Together on our pages the hometown magazine.
Now in our seventh year, Reader Leaders are too many to count. And so this February issue is dedicated to our Reader Leaders – our magazine’s Valentines who Buy Local as their ongoing contribution to keep their free hometown magazine arriving in the mail and online at MarpleMag.com in business possible, just like our advertising Sponsors. We truly appreciate you. We value your support every month and your contribution to every new issue of your hometown magazine.
People often ask me how we choose our Marple resident cover feature, or who will be our Student of the Month, or how we came by that feel-good story that cannot be easily forgotten after reading it in the hometown magazine. I tell those who ask that it all comes from Readers Leaders, through their emails. That’s the start of it, often resulting with a feature article you read in print or online at MarpleMag.com.
Reader Leaders: you have lasting impact. Take your reader leadership further, nominate residents, organizations and events to be featured in your hometown magazine.
Be a Reader Leader. Never be shy about asking local businesses you frequent regularly to Sponsor your hometown magazine so with more pages we can publish even more monthly feature articles about people, places, organizations and events in our local community that favors local businesses that Sponsor our community. And if a business you introduce me to moves forward with sponsoring Marple residents through our magazine, I’ll ask you to recommend a Marple resident to be featured in our hometown magazine on the cover in an upcoming issue.