Talking Local Blogs with Justin Smith
One of the more enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done happened on Friday when Justin Smith of Searching Solutions rang me up to talk about hyperlocal blogging. What made it fun for me is that Justin is a good interviewer — very conversational and relaxed. It was like we were two guys sitting at a table shooting the breeze. The fact that he and I have similar backgrounds in working with small businesses, helping people setup and launch blogs, even working with real estate clients — that made it all the better.
Here’s the link: Podcast: Matt McGee From Small Business Search Marketing
It runs about 20 minutes (I’m Irish, what can I say? We like to talk.) and you can either listen right from the web page or look for the DOWNLOAD link and grab it that way.
If you’ve been reading HyperlocalBlogger.com all along, I’m not sure you’ll gain much from it, but I’m hopeful that Justin’s readers and listeners — who might be new to the idea of local blogging — will come away with something to think about.
Great thanks to Justin for the enjoyable conversation!
Why It’s Been So Quiet Around Here
One: Because I’ve spent most of this week at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Columbus, where I gave three presentations over two days. One of my goals for 2009 is to successfully pitch one of the marketing conferences on the idea of doing a presentation about local blogging. Cross your fingers for me. 
Two: Because I’m going through some career changes. As of the beginning of this week, I’m open for business as an independent SEO and marketing consultant. (I can also provide training to folks who want to learn to do it themselves.) And next week I’ll be starting to help Search Engine Land as its new Assignment Editor.
Three: Because much of my free time has been focused on developing ideas to promote my soon-to-be-published book, U2 - A Diary.
Four: Because, with all this going on simultaneously, I just haven’t had much time to blog, either here or on our hyperlocal blogs. 
On the bright side, I began a post on the flight home from Columbus that should make an appearance in this space in the next couple days. Look for things to slowly get back to normal, and thanks for sticking around in my recent absence!
outside.in Launches Blogger Map Widget
Let’s continue the “adding maps to your hyperlocal blog” theme on HyperlocalBlogger.com, which is almost all I’ve been writing about lately, it seems.
The latest entry into this arena is outside.in, which today launched StoryMaps, a widget that maps the locations you’ve been writing about recently on your local blog.
To use StoryMaps, you’ll obviously need an outside.in account and to connect your blog into their system. After that, you can choose from one of the three pre-set widget sizes, or make a custom-sized widget that fits your local blog perfectly.
In their announcement, outside.in points out one unique feature of this widget: blog posts will no longer only be accessible in chronological order when someone visits your blog:
It’s about letting users view content in a way that makes sense to them - organized around the places each post is written about. So they not only see a current post about that place, but links to all previous posts about that location as well. That translates to a better, more full reading experience for them — and to more pageviews for the blogger.
Here, again, is the full announcement on outside.in’s blog: New Navigation & Promotion Tool for Local Sites.
MapMyPage: Great Idea, Poor Execution
Adding a map to your hyperlocal blog posts can be a great way to add extra information and context for readers. A few weeks ago, I wrote about 8 WordPress plugins that add mapping capabilities for those of us who use WordPress.
There’s a new service that brings mapping to a hyperlocal blog regardless of the platform; it’s called MapMyPage. It’s a beta product, so we know it’s still in development. I recently tested it out on our Richland Real Estate Blog. Here’s how it works, in the form of a Pros/Cons review.
MapMyPage: Pros
Installation: Installing MapMyPage is brain-dead simple, especially compared to some of the plug-ins I wrote about earlier. It’s as easy as placing a 3-4 line code snippet in the HEAD section of your blog template. If you can cut-and-paste, you can install MapMyPage.
Generally unintrusive: You’ll see some screenshots below, and I’m not sure you’ll agree with me on this. I think the implementation is mostly unintrusive. MapMyPage places a small globe into your post anywhere it recognizes a location. As the web site explains, it doesn’t underline the location or even add a globe to a location that’s linked, because it doesn’t want to interfere with the styling of your blog.
Here’s the original blog post about the upcoming Richland City Fair (link opens in a new window so you can get back easily), and here’s a screenshot of how it looked with MapMyPage installed:
Unfortunately, from the testing I did, that’s about where the Pros end. Let’s look at the problems I found.
MapMyPage: Cons
In the screenshot above, you see that the phrase “Richland City Hall” has a globe next to it — the tool recognized that as a specific location that can be mapped. But have a look at what happens when you click on the globe and the map pops-up above the blog post:
It points toward the city of Richland, Mississippi; I’m blogging about Richland, Washington. The two other Richland references in the blog post were also mapped to Mississippi. That alone is a deal-breaker for any hyperlocal blogger; you obviously can’t use a mapping tool that maps to the wrong location.
I gave it another try on a blog post (opens in new window) where specific addresses are mentioned. Here’s how it looked:
I marked three problems in the screenshot above:
- “Riverton” may be a city name somewhere, but in this case, it’s the name of a facility. There’s nothing I can do to remove that globe.
- It didn’t recognize the street addresses in the last bullet item about a new pizza restaurant.
- It did add a globe inside the reference to 1800 Bellerive Drive, which I thought was a step in the right direction … until I clicked the link and saw that, instead of recognizing the street address, it recognized Bellerive as a city in France. See below…
The MapMyPage web site shows a couple examples of exact addresses being correctly mapped, but in both cases the addresses include the full city, state, and zip code. That may be what’s needed for MapMyPage to get the geo-targeting right; but, there’s no way I’m going to start adding “Richland, WA, 99352″ to every street address I mention; it’s too awkward and redundant on a Richland blog.
Final Thoughts
I’m glad to see new tools and services that can make hyperlocal blogging an easier and more enjoyable thing for bloggers and readers. MapMyPage is a great idea, but comes up far short on execution. In my brief install, there were too many mapping mistakes to accept.
MapMyPage is still in “beta”, and hopefully will continue to develop and improve its geo-targeting before its actual launch. Some extra control for “power users” would be helpful, too — perhaps a way to preview and edit/remove the globes it places in my post before I publish.
Content Source: School ‘Key Communicator’ Networks
As a hyperlocal blogger, you know that one of your primary jobs is keeping up with (and sharing) local news and information that interests your readers. But how do you know what interests your readers? If your hometown is like mine, you may have a combination of scientists, stay-at-home moms, engineers, business people, farmers, and so forth reading your blogs — a real hodge-podge slice of local life.
Well, no matter how diverse your readership is, there’s a good chance many of them have some connection to your local school system. They may have children going to school, or nephews/nieces, or live near a teacher, or even live near a school. There’s a good chance a lot of your readership is interested in local school news.
That’s where a new trend in education comes into play:
School District “Key Communicator” Networks
Many school districts across the country are forming what they call “Key Communicator” networks. Their goal is to do a better job informing the public what’s going on with schools, the district, education programs, and so forth. The Oregon School Boards Association has a very detailed explanation of these networks and why school districts should create them. Look how they describe who “key communicators” are:
Key communicators are adults and students who talk to and are believed by many people in the community. They may or may not be in positions of authority or officially recognized leaders.
They may be barbers, beauticians and bartenders. They are frequently dentists, gas station owners, firefighters, post office clerks and news agency owners.
They may as well say “They are hyperlocal bloggers,” right? That’s almost a perfect description of local bloggers.
What This Means to Hyperlocal Bloggers
This is a new concept in the education system. From a Google search for ["key communicator" school district], I see a lot of districts that are starting these networks — but obviously there are many not doing it, too.
I recently signed up for the Key Communicator network at the school district where we live. So far I’ve received two emails, both of which seemed more like a newsletter telling me the latest district news, recapping the school board meeting, etc. There’s been no one-to-one communication and no efforts to “get the pulse” of the community (as suggested by the Oregon School Boards Assn. page linked above). But it’s new, and maybe those things will come later.
For now, being part of the network has
- helped me follow school district news, and
- given me some ideas for blog content.
As a hyperlocal blogger, I consider both of those to be Good Things. So …
Your “To Do” Item
Visit the web site(s) of your local school district(s) and poke around for information about a Key Communicator Network. It might be in the NEWS section, or maybe in the ABOUT section of their site. If you can’t find anything, look for contact information (many districts have a Communications Director) and send an email (or make a call) asking if they have such a network. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, give them that Oregon School Boards link above!
Do that for each district in the area that your local blog covers. If you can find and join these networks, you should find that you’ve discovered a good, new source of hyperlocal content.
Your Turn: Let me know if your local district(s) has one of these networks, and have you found them beneficial to your local blogging?
MapQuest Wants Your Local Content
Local bloggers, MapQuest is looking for local content — I highly suggest you give it to them.
Here’s the scoop: MapQuest has just launched MapQuest Local, which is essentially a local start page filled with news, events, gas prices, business listings and recommendations, weather (and more) about your hometown. You can customize your own local page to show the content you want in the layout you want.
One of the big problems with efforts like this is that they work well in big cities, but fall apart when you get to smaller towns where there’s not as much data, activity, content, and so forth. But I can report that the page for Richland, Washington — not exactly a booming metropolis — looks pretty good:
That’s a pretty full page of content; only the “City’s Best” widget comes up empty. I’m impressed. This is probably the most compelling general local content experience on the web right now.
I’m curious: How does the start page for your hometown look?
Meanwhile, we’re local bloggers and we want our content to get exposure on sites like this. Right now, MapQuest is pulling data from sources like its AOL partners, Topix (news), Flickr (photos), and so forth. But, as they explained today on the MapQuest blog, they also want to bring in additional local content:
“…we’ll be opening up MapQuest to enable you to expose your content and drive traffic directly back to your site.
If you want access to the 12th largest web site audience in the US - an audience who comes to with an interest in one or more explicit locations - bring us your feeds! Bring us your location relevant content. Bring us useful information both general and niche.”
There’s a simple sign-up form here. All they require is a name, email address, and the URL you’re submitting. You can also provide your RSS feed URL and some additional information. They also start talking about APIs, which, when I submitted our Richland blog, prompted me to include a message like this:
Guys, PLEASE, PLEASE, don’t require APIs to submit content to MapQuest Local. There are thousands of great local blogs out there written by people who know their hometowns, but have no clue what an API is.
If you’re inclined to include that message when you submit, feel free — copy and paste it exactly as is, or write something similar in your own words. Either way, just get over there and tell them about your local blog today!
More coverage:
- Mike Boland: New Local Portal on the Scene: A Conversation with MapQuest
- Greg Sterling: MapQuest Builds New ‘Local Platform’
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