Another Smallknot Campaign Seeks To Resurrect Radio Show Web Site

Eric Wood and Jason Rogers are hoping the same community involvement that helped to fund retail expansion will help their show reestablish its web presence after falling victim to a hacker. 

"Another Voice With Eric and Jason" airs on WOLT 103.3 on Mondays from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., and delves into current events and politics in what the show's hosts believe to be an evenhanded and objective manner. 

"Another Voice aired for the first time on Jan. 8, 2011. Our being on the radio actually began as a joke," Wood said. "Both Jason and I have been active in political and community efforts. I worked with Concerned Citizens for Equal Justice, a Greenville Civil Rights group in the late 90s , have been a poll manager for over 6 years and when my daughters reached voting age, I was determined that they would vote intelligently, not just the way dad voted, so I would research all the candidates, sit down with them and provide them with the facts and let them decide."  

"This progressed to where I was doing spread sheets and many friends and friends of friends sought them out. Jason studied political science at Clemson and ran for Greenville County School Board. While he didn't win, the experience gave him practical insight into the political system and the birth of his first child motivated him to want to do more to make our country, state and city better. We were always talking politics and one day, he joked, 'We should go on the radio.' We laughed and thought no more about it. A week or so later, a customer came into his restaurant that had a show on WOLT and after Jason talked to him, the idea of creating a political talk radio show went from a joke to a reality," Wood said. 

The show's web site, along with a growing social media presence, became an integral part of the program. Soon, however, the site began to falter. 

"In the beginning of the 2012, I began noticing that I was not completely in control of the site and then began to be blocked from getting into the administration areas," Wood said. "The site stayed up for a time, but it was not long until it crashed or was completely changed. It took me a little while to find an IT tech that could help us. Over the first few months of 2012, we had no website. With no website, finding sponsors became more difficult.   With each week that followers failed to find our website, fewer and fewer came back."

The site had been hacked, and the effect was devastating. After going without a crucial connection between the show and its fans for five months, getting the site back up and running proved difficult. After multiple restarts, the site got back online in May.

Now the show is hoping to raise $1,500 in order to finish the rebuild of the web site, increase its web traffic and expand the show's online presence through multiple platforms, from Facebook to Twitter to Youtube and beyond. 

That's where Smallknot comes in. 

Smallknot, a crowd funding platform geared at providing micro-financing for small businesses, was founded by Jay Lee and Ben Rossen and until this point has focused mainly on local campaigns in New York. The business model relies on everyday people, not banks or wealthy investors, to provide funding. 

The show has teamed up with several local businesses to try to attract investors like Cake Notice, Little Pigs at Hudson Corners and Dry-Fire Training Pistol Company for rewards like cupcakes, barbeque dinners and t-shirts to reward those who take part in the campaign.

In addition, personal investors can get time to come on the show and promote a cause or political position, with the length of time on the show depending upon the amount of investment. Also, businesses that invest will receive advertisement deals, with double or more ad spots for a traditional advertising rate during the campaign.

You can check out the show's Smallknot campaign at www.smallknot.com/anothervoice.