Hyperlocal blogging at BarCamp Chattanooga tomorrow
Just a quick note to pass along for any readers in the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area. According to this post on the Chattarati blog (love the name), Saturday’s BarCamp Chattanooga will include a panel discussion on hyperlocal blogging.
The panel will include the folks behind blogs like Chattarati, Knoxify, and Nashvillest.
Sounds like fun. Maybe someone will write-up a report after the fact? That would be nice. (hint, hint)
Add Your Local Blog to WikiCity
WikiCity is inviting local bloggers to add your blog(s) to their city pages. The process is simple — you provide the URL of your blog, your blog’s RSS feed, and choose a category (News, Lifestyle, Sports, etc.) and hit the submit button. There’s a section for local blogs on each WikiCity page, right below the map and above the local Twitter feed section. Here’s what it looks like on the Wahoo, Nebraska page:
Here’s WikiCity’s news release about the new local blogrolls. Co-founder Pat Lazure tells me that submissions are added into the system immediately, but are later reviewed for relevance and appropriateness.
Why bother adding your blog? Two obvious reasons:
1. Exposure WikiCity may be fairly new, but if people take a liking to building out city pages they way they build out pages on Wikipedia, it could grow into a valuable local resource. And it could be a site that gets a lot of traffic from search engines, just like Wikipedia does. It’s not unreasonable to think you’ll gain some exposure from people clicking through to read your blog posts.
2. SEO Beyond the eyeball exposure, there’s the SEO benefit of having an extra link (or a couple) to your blog. I’ve mentioned before that linkbuilding can be tough for local blogs, so why would you pass up the chance to promote your blog this way?
Not familiar with WikiCity? It’s a local version of Wikipedia, with city guides instead of articles. That’s how I’d describe it. Here’s how WikiCity describes itself:
Much like Wikipedia, WikiCity is a free wiki, and anyone can contribute. However, WikiCity further differentiates itself because it is designed to promote local community, commerce, tourism, and everyday life within the towns it serves – thus welcoming content that is typically not suited for Wikipedia. Founded in late 2008 by Pat Lazure and Rohit Keshwani, WikiCity provides unique local content on places, events, and people who would be of interest to those associated with any of its 22,000 U.S. towns (for example: Wahoo, NE, Machias, ME, or Red Wing, MN). It serves these communities much like a local newspaper and business directory, yet using the same open source MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, any of its readers are allowed to contribute content.
Local blogrolls aside, it looks like an interesting concept that’s worth watching.
Hartford Bloggers List
Quick note for any Hartford-area bloggers out there: The Hartford Public Library has a small (but hopefully growing) list of Hartford blogs. I don’t see an obvious way to submit your link for inclusion, but there is a Contact link at the bottom of the page.
I’ve added this to the list of (Now) 39 Local Blog Directories — a collection of opportunities to get exposure and links for your hyperlocal blog.
Seattle PI Calls for Volunteer Hyperlocal Bloggers, Gets Angry Reaction
This has been interesting to watch: About 10 days ago, SeattlePI.com (the former print newspaper that shut down in March) put out a call looking for neighborhood news bloggers and offering a deal: You blog for free, we’ll train you for free.
Okay, not the best deal imaginable — we all like to get paid for our time and work — but it could be a great deal for someone who’s thinking about starting a neighborhood blog, but not sure they want to do all the startup work on their own. And it’s definitely a good deal for someone who’s not an experienced blogger, interviewer, photographer, reporter, etc. (I, for one, would love free photography training from a pro.)
But the reaction in the comments has been about 4-1 on the negative side. Here’s a sample:
“Volunteers, huh? Why not ask us to pay for the privilege?”
“Forget the goofy incentive plan and provide easy-to-use links to the neighborhood bloggers. If you can’t bring yourself to pay them, put ads on their sidebars. It takes time and costs money to do good blogging.”
“It does seem like, recognizing that there are already neighborhood blogs in most of the Seattle neighborhoods, trying to create a new, parallel system that allows the P-I to monetize the content while not paying the authors is…not what I would want.”
“You get free content, while you teach people what they could easily learn from free information sources on the web, in order to compete with already existing blogs? Stay classy, P-I.”
Some of the comments on the original post, including at least one I reproduced above (the third one down), are from some of the many existing neighborhood bloggers in Seattle. One commenter wonders if this is “sour grapes” from Seattle neighborhood bloggers, and as a completely ignorant outsider, I wondered the same thing. Then again, I live in an area that I think is starved for local blogging and I’d love to see more local blogs spring up.
What are your thoughts on the SeattlePI.com offer? If it was a well-known entity in your hometown doing something similar, would you welcome it or not? Comments are open.
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