Quick Tip: Update Last Year’s Posts
We are now in our second year of blogging on all four hyperlocal blogs:
WestRichlandRealEstateBlog.com
RichlandRealEstateBlog.com
KennewickRealEstateBlog.com
PascoRealEstateBlog.net
Many of our most popular posts are about local events that happen every year. (I talk a bit more about the success of our event-based posts in part five of the hyperlocal blogging series from last year.) Of course, if these are annual events, we end up blogging about them again. But there’s a problem:
Last year’s blog post is probably the one that people find in Google, Yahoo, etc.
So this is just a reminder that, when you’re blogging about annual events, be sure to go back to the older posts (that probably rank well) and update them with a link to the current post so people can get the information they want. Like this:
It’s that easy. That’s a screenshot of last year’s post about Richland’s Live at 5 concert series, and it’s the one that ranks highly for several related search terms. So people are finding it via search engines, and can now click the link I added to visit this year’s post about the same event.
Local Bloggers Need More Exposure Like This
This is cool. Cory Bergman pointed out a couple days ago that Seattle TV station KIRO-TV is occasionally promoting local blogs right on its home page.
That section on the right called “Daily Double Shot” has a bunch of links that sometimes includes local bloggers. In fact, maybe hard to see on the screenshot, but the 4th story down links to the Vintage Seattle blog.
That’s the kind of exposure local bloggers need. Hope we start seeing more of it from major media sites, although I won’t be holding my breath. Well done, KIRO.
Hyperlocal News Roundup
I must have a half-dozen items saved up in my feed reader, all related to the latest hyperlocal goings on. So, rather than blabber on about things, let’s just get to it.
I’ve written before about local bloggers getting no respect, and now there’s several related bits to talk about. Cory Bergman writes about the disrespect that Washington state legislators are showing toward blogs lately, with one saying “Anybody who’s blogging, God love ‘em, they can say and do whatever they want, because they have no liability or responsibility for what they say, because they are not held to any standard, and they shouldn’t be — they’re just individuals editorializing, if you will.” Danny Sullivan talks about similar issues in his post, Dammit, I’m A Journalist, Not A Blogger: Time For Online Journalists To Unite?. And David Mihm tackles some of these same blogging vs. journalism themes with his post, The *Apparent* Death of Journalism. All good reads.
One of the potential problems of having local blogs replace larger, well-funded news rooms is the question, Who’ll do the heavy lifting when it comes to deep, investigative reporting? It’s a legitimate question. The Online Journalism Blog recently investigated some of the current efforts that hyperlocal blogs and web sites are making to do deeper reporting.
On the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, Richard Anderson writes about how he’s built a sustainable hyperlocal web site/blogging business model covering four communities in Maine:
Our products enhance each other. Professional journalists report news as it happens on the website. Weekly, this news is contextualized, analyzed and printed in the newspaper. Citizens and businesses post timely news and information online and many of their posts also appear in the paper. And two-thirds of our web sites’ front pages are filled with citizen and business posts. We call them, “Neighbors growing together.” Our community networks are the trusted source of news and views.
On the business side of things, Greg Sterling takes a look at what American Towns is up to — specifically the company’s latest growth and revenue numbers. American Towns recently sent out a news release saying it has the “Highest Traffic of Any Network of Hyper-Local Community Websites.”
On a similar note, Peter Krasilovsky checks in with Outside.In about their company’s growth. How about going from 800,000 unique users in September 2008 to 4.2 million today? That’s pretty good. Peter also reveals that Outside.In has future plans to help local bloggers monetize their work.
A Must-Have App for Local News Bloggers
If you’re a hyperlocal news blogger, I’m betting you already have a police scanner in your home/office that you use to keep an ear on what local emergency personnel are doing in your neighborhood. But what about when you’re not at home or in your office? How do you keep track of activity then?
If you have an iPhone, you must download and use an app called Emergency Radio. Here’s its WWW home page and here’s its iTunes download page. Emergency Radio has more than 900 frequencies listed right now, and the creators say more are added with each software update. (It even has my small-town Benton County, WA, frequency – but it doesn’t have our local city police.) You can see the full list of frequencies here.
Have a look at a couple screenshots:
After starting the app, I clicked the NEARBY tab at the bottom and the left-side screenshot is what I saw — my nearest frequency at the top. I clicked on the first listing, which led to the screenshot you see on the right. The audio begins to load right away, and streams within about 5 seconds. A nice touch — the app includes that scrollable list of police and emergency codes so you can understand better what you’re listening to. Another nice touch is the ability to save any frequency into a “favorites” list for quicker access.
How’s the Audio Quality?
Terrific. It sounds exactly like I remember scanners sounding back in my newsroom days. In other words, some of the audio is crystal-clear, and some of it is static-y and garbled. But that’s the nature of the beast. Here’s what matters: It’s plenty good enough to replace the need for a regular scanner, assuming of course that all of your local frequencies are included.
It’s All About Convenience
The biggest thing here is convenience. If you’re out and about and, for some reason, you need to have scanner capabilities with you, now you can. Maybe best of all, if you’re actually on the scene covering some fire or police situation, you may be able to listen in as things are happening and make your blog coverage even better. With that in mind, I think it’s a must-have app for all hyperlocal news bloggers/writers/reporters.
PostScript – Audio Sample
I had wanted to include an audio snippet in this post so you could hear the quality for yourself, but didn’t think of a way to do that until right after I hit the PUBLISH button. So, here I am an hour later with a short video that includes actual audio from the iPhone:
Pretty good, isn’t it? 
Your turn: Are there other iPhone or mobile apps that make life easier for local bloggers? Please share in the comments.
Review: MapPress Google Maps Plugin
I have a new favorite WordPress plugin for the four local blogs that Cari and I write. It’s called MapPress and I like it better than the 8 maps plugins I wrote about earlier here on HLB. Let me show why I like it with some screenshots, and maybe you’ll want to give it a try, too.
MapPress Options
Like many plugins, when you first install MapPress, you’ve got some choices to make. The options on MapPress hit the sweet spot for me — not too many, not too few, and not difficult to understand.
(1) The first thing you have to do is give it your Google Maps API key, which is free and simple to get. (Go here.) After that, (2) you can set the default sizes that your maps will appear in your blog posts. (You can override these on individual posts if needed.) There are some (3) advanced settings, including one I really like that lets you choose what type of map to display – Street, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain. Very cool feature. And you can even (4) choose what color icon you want to show on your blog.
MapPress Insertion
When writing a blog post, it’s super simple to insert the map — easier than the plugin I’ve been using for several months. The insertion options show up immediately below the text area where you write your post:
All you do here is (1) type in the full address you want to map and hit the “Save Address” button. That’ll (2) make the map appear in preview mode with the address marker (you can turn this preview off if you want). And when you’re done, you (3) hit the “Insert map in post” button and you’re done.
It’s brain-dead simple, and one thing I didn’t show above — you can put multiple addresses (with markers) on any map you create. So, this is perfect if you’re doing a post about a winery tour in your area, or a post showing the three new restaurants that just opened, etc.
MapPress in Action
You can see it in action on our Kennewick Real Estate Blog: Small Business Seminar Next Week in Kennewick. If you click through, you’ll see the one thing I don’t like about MapPress: It auto-inserts a link to the plugin’s home page right below every map. I’d gladly make a small donation in exchange for a way to remove the link. Still, I’ll learn to live with the link there if I must — the plugin is that much of an improvement over what we’ve been using. Big thumbs up.
If you try it out, let me know how it works for you!
Another Hyperlocal Blogging Blog Worth Reading
I’m glad that there are enough people interested in local blogging to keep me going here, and I’m sure there’s enough interest to support other blogs about hyperlocal blogging. In fact, I’d like to ask you to support Steve Sherron’s new project:
Blogger Lens is off to a great start, with posts like
- How To Dominate Google With Your Hyperlocal Blog
- Using Twitter On Your Hyperlocal Blog
- Is Hyperlocal Blogging Worth it?
You may recognize Steve’s name: In addition to commenting regularly on this blog, he also wrote the first guest post here, Hello, My Name Is Steve And I Have Hyperlocalbloggeritus.
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