Happy birthday Hello Lincoln
By Editor Amanda McSorley
It’s hard to believe, but Hello Lincoln is a year-old today.
The community website was first launched on September 13, 2024, just weeks after the city’s main digital news outlet folded.
We’re proud, delighted, relieved and still a little shell-shocked that Hello Lincoln has become such an important part of the media landscape in the city.
My business partner and I, Rachel Bishop, are known in some quarters as The Ladies of Print, as we produce the Lincoln Independent, so to say we were naïve about running a website is an understatement – we had no idea.
What we did have was the determination to ensure Lincoln was not without a valuable community and communication resource for any length of time and the support of some fabulous people.
Chief among these is Dan Ellmore of Ellmore Digital who pulled out all the stops to get Hello Lincoln up running within a few weeks and is integral to the daily production of the website.
It’s Dan’s figures I am about to amaze you with here:
- More than 191,000 views since launch – these are updated weekly on the site
- First 10,000 plus views in a week came at the end of August
- This article is number 1,100 to be put up on the website
- We have 24,000 active users
- Our international reach includes over 2,000 users in the United States with a similar number collectively in Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Spain and Australia
- Zero spend on generating that readership – Hello Lincoln’s growth has been organic with no artificial boost to figures.
- Our page views increased from zero in the first week of launch in September 2024 to 22,854 in August 2025.
- Huge growth in interest in our social media platforms including 32,754 views of our coverage of the recent fire at the Horse and Groom pub and a total of more than 70,000 views of our video of the demolition of the cooling towers at Cottam Power Station.
There are other people and organisations we would like to thank for their support including City of Lincoln Council, LocalMotion Lincoln, Investors in Lincoln, Lincoln City, Football Club, University of Lincoln, Lincoln College and Sills & Betteridge.
Most of all we’d like to thank the people of Lincoln – our readers and contributors – for helping to make the website a success.
It is your website and we’re only the curators/caretakers, so keep reading and sending in your news from the many communities that make up our beautiful city.