6 Things I’m Struggling With as a Hyperlocal Blogger
by Matt on Feb 9, 2010 in Blogging, Guest Posts
(This is a guest post by Mike Ramsey who is the owner of Nifty Marketing, a local SEO company operating out of Burley, Idaho. He writes a monthly column for Search Engine Journal, and in his free time runs GoBurley, a hyperlocal news site for his hometown.)
My name is Mike Ramsey and I started GoBurley.com, a hyperlocal news site for the small town of Burley, Idaho. The site was started back in October 2009, and has actually seen a fair amount of success considering that my hometown has more cows than computers. I started the site because our county only has one local news source (name not mentioned to protect the not-so-innocent) that has caused a lot of issues and contention within our community. So, my goals are to directly compete against this once-a-week print newspaper, give our town an alternate news source, and save it from utter destruction (mellow-drama emphasis added).
Since starting the site, and competing directly against a staffed news company. I have come across six areas that I am having a hard time being consistent in. GoBurley.com is not my full-time job (my guess is most other hyperlocal sites are in the same boat), so I am looking for creative ideas from the hyperlocal community on how to best handle these six issues:
1. Topics, Ideas, and Series to Write On…
Breaking, Sports, City Government are the basics, but what are people doing that is fun, and tends to draw comments and crowds. Has anyone ran a successful series, has a weekly post that people look forward to?
2. How to Get Contributors?
Outside of asking on your blog for people to send in original content, how have you been able to gain contributors who are bringing quality content on a regular basis?
3. Planning Your Content
I have a feeling that many hyperlocal bloggers are not professional editors, journalists, or any other title that deals with news. Is there a “best practice” for when to publish at certain times, and how to plan out a week of content?
4. Advertising Your Site
I am interested to know if anyone has run an advertising campaign that has proved successful at bringing awareness and subscribers to their site?
5. Basic “best practices” for reporting
Considering my non-journalistic background, I am wondering if there are certain key things that you need to do when reporting.
6. How to Monetize your Hyperlocal Site
Are there creative ways that people are able to bring in revenue? Anything from taking donations to charging for subscription?
I know that there are a lot of questions listed here to think about, but I am sure that I am not the only person running into these issues, and hope that we can all benefit by sharing with each other.
[Note from Matt: If you have some thoughts, no matter how big or small, that might help Mike and other readers with the same questions, let me suggest the following ways to reply:
1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Write a blog post about one or more of these questions, publish it on your own blog, and then drop the link in the comments below.
3. Write a blog post about one or more of these questions and have me publish it here on HyperlocalBlogger.com as a Guest Post.
Any of the above will work, so if you have something helpful to say, we're looking forward to it.]
No related posts.
Comments
19 Responses to “6 Things I’m Struggling With as a Hyperlocal Blogger”
Leave a Reply (please use your real name; company names & other keyword-based names will be deleted)
-
-
Featured Video
matt – i always encourage peopel to write abotu what they see around them. Don’t think that you have to produce ‘news’ in the way the the trad. media does. There doesn’t have to be a story for people to find things interesting about the area
See this wonderful site in gritty Birmingham uk – Nicky writes with joy and passion about all things in her Digbeth neighbourhood.
http://digbeth.org
or this highly rural site in the remote hills of Derbyshire where Mike and his team have a constant stream of posts in a village of only 500 souls.
http://parwich.org
on more fun regular stuff i know the readers of
Ray’s site in Hedon, Yorkshire enjoy him taking local photos and putting them through the jigzone site
http://hedonblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/another-halloween-jigzone-puzzle-from-the-hedon-blog/
more later
Look
I actually recently wrote a guest post on PaidContent about ways to generate interesting new local content. You can read it at:
http://bit.ly/dm8qoS
Monetization wise, I, of course, have a lot of thoughts around that as I started a local ad technology company which has had a lot of success with big established media partners and also new hyperlocal partners.
I think the best monetization strategy for your site depends on what your revenue expectation/desired level of effort is. Sponsorships and donations can produce good incremental revenue. Subscription hasn’t been proven for small sites but if you had niche content that was valuable maybe. Paid advertising is where the real money is made but it also requires more thought and effort to do well.
There’s a ton of information on basic reporting. This is a pretty good resource: http://www.newsu.org/
Mike – Nice post. Here are the two I have thoughts on:
1. Story Ideas: How about hobbies? Seems like everyone I know has some type of hobby. A short interview on their hobby and a photo or two if possible would be a cool feature. Many people’s hobbies are often pretty interesting, even when obscure. Plus, what a great way to create a faithful reader when they see themselves being featured.
6. $: An easy route would be to offer a business profile for all local businesses. I would guess many biz’s and orgs in your area have few other sites to put info out on. Give them a mini LBC or a a few photos and text to tell their story. $100 for the year or another easy fee, easy product structure is a win for all sides.
Good Luck
@william First off, Amazing examples…Spent two years in birm and Derby area actually, very nice. I am shocked at the content that is coming from parwich.org. That is a very similar type approach that I need to take.
@victor I really enjoyed your write up and thought the ideas were spot on. In our area, jobs could be a major focus. Some people tell me that nobody’s hiring, others are saying they don’t get applications for openings.
@david That site looks promising!
@aaron Hobby Idea = awesome. I can see at first that you would have to just ask a bunch of people, but if it was consistant you could just ask to submit yours, or your friends hobby for publishing.
I have thought about a business directory with featured listings eventually…..I could even take a tip from goog and put competitor listings on their page! The only thing that is holding me back is that the chamber is rolling out a new design with that feature for members (and my friend designed the website) but a really low one time cost for yearly inclusion would be great.
I thought about doing reviews of restaurants and asking for money for better rankings, but that just came across slightly shady
EVERYONE: Thanks for your comments so far. I am really hoping that this turns into more of a conversation than anything else. Matt has really done a fantastic job bringing people together here and I think that we could really help each other with what works and what doesn’t.
Keep the ideas and thoughts coming!
I just want to echo what Mike said here — really terrific comments, folks. Thanks so much for helping out. Love this community we’re developing.
Mike:
Not a comment to add anything new, other than to say that it was a pleasure to read your post and to recognize a kindred soul. I am blazing the hyperlocal trail here in Ohio in a community of 11,000 with a fledgling daily, and the issues you raise are the ones I face every day.
I do think that there may be some merit to Jeff Jarvis’ contention that part of the answer to monetizing smaller hyperlocal sites is to provide consulting services to local merchants/restaurants/service providers in the areas of social media.
Hi Mike,
While I don’t have a direct suggestion for getting people to contribute to the blog, I have one small usability suggestion for your About page on GoBurley. You do a great job building up the enthusiastic pitch of this page, inviting folks to become contributors to the GoBurley site, but you don’t follow this with an email address, phone number or form to seal the deal. You’ve asked them to contact you. Now just give them the means to do it, and you might see a nice increased conversion rate for that page!
Just something I noticed as I was enjoying myself on your site. I love that you’re doing this!
And, Matt, great choice of a guest blogger here!
Miriam
Monetisation : firstly disclosure that I work for Oodle.co.uk, we are a classifieds advertising business.
One of the ways we work with hyperlocal sites is to allow them to pull our classifieds listings onto their sites using our API (http://developer.oodle.com). Benefit of classifieds content is that its both news worthy (finding out about houses coming onto the market, upcoming events etc) as well as commercial. If anyone is interested in finding out more feel free to email me at duncan@corp.oodle.com
@Thomas I will have to make sure to keep up on your site and see what you are doing. The idea to help businesses in a consulting roll for social media/local search is definitely something I am pushing for. The area is really slow on it but i speak at a lot of local places on it and there is a small amount of roll over from my GoBurley site to the Nifty Marketing one. I give away a lot of free advice and I don’t mind because it is my home town and people I grew up with, but at the same time, but with free advice you get what you pay for. I should probably come up with a set package price for it.
I also have thought that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to set up a donate button in a sidebar widget and let people know if they like what they see, they can donate. Has anyone had any luck with this? A good way to make small about from subscribers w/o relying on businesses.
@Miriam Great advice! Thanks for commenting and your kind words. I actually need to revamp the about us page completely and FOR SURE add a call to action.
@Duncan Thanks for commenting…I am testing out a classifieds system and even ran some flyers to let people know about it, online classifieds is still a very new idea to most in my town. The paper still makes bank off of them. Could be a very solid addition as subscription continues to rise.
The one thing I noticed that people like is near live results.
This has happened several times to me but one example is when I covered a car accident just outside of town. As soon as I finished at the site I quickly put the article together and published it and sure enough only an hour after the accident people were Googling it and found my post.
So the one thing you can have over traditional media/newspaper is the speed at which news is reported.
Thanks Kyle…always a pleasure to hear feedback from you. I completely agree but find it the hardest area due to other responsibilities. This is where you really need a part time person that is living by the radio and seeing what is going on at all times. In other to get there, I think you have to be monetizing fairly well.
any toughts?
Seem like monetizing is always an issue, sigh.
It can be tricky, yes. I’m lucky to have a flexible job. You could always start with events you cover.
For example, I maybe crazy for doing this, I recorded and photographed our local New Years fireworks. Before I crashed that night edited it all up and published it. The outcome was worth in when I heard all the feedback (Not financially, unfortunately).
I guess it depends on the angle you are taking with your site. I’m not necessarily focusing on actually News, more events, local issues, and featuring the town.
On another note, I’d love to know others thoughts about how to attract contributors?
Update: I have really been pounding to get contributers and here is where I am currently at. I wrote a post today with specific positions that need filled…
http://goburley.com/i-am-looking-for-some-people-to-make-a-big-difference
Today I have two people who contacted me to fill it. I think the key is having a more specific focus on the type of contributor you are looking for. They might read a description and thing “hey, I’m perfect for that”.
I was telling Kyle a bit about this on twitter a while back but I also worked a deal with our high school’s student council so they know are part of my staff. We are still working out the kinks, but they will cover all school related things which is a lot of what happens in our community.
Student council idea sounds interesting, keep us posted on how they do, Mike.
I’ve been thinking about asking for guest posts via Twitter for our blogs, but haven’t tried it yet.
[...] read a post, recently, on Hyperlocalblogger.com about GoBurley.com in Burley, Idaho. The owner of the Blog had several questions about how to [...]
If you cant make the news,comment on it. Every week I pick up the local paper and invariably find items that taken on their own are ridiculous and amusing. Go through the Police Reports and find who garden gnomes were stolen or what fool left her purse on the front seat of the car only to find it missing.Review events,local games,performances etc.Feel free to review a movie.EVERYONE loves real estate. Write abou the local market.
Guest writers- how about local merchants.politicians,police,fire,librarian etc.
[...] to write there as I’d like. I’m hoping for more guest blog posts in the future — like your recent article, which was very well [...]
Thanks for a great post and interesting discussion.
Some ideas for getting new readers:
- facebook fan page
- twitter account – just use Twitterfeed to have your blog rss feed create tweets
- contests/give aways – if local businesses ask you to write a blog post ask if you can do a give away of their item or gift certificate
- link to other local blogs, neighborhood organizations or businesses. I am thinking of using this wordpress plugin to create a links page/directory for IheartPGH (http://yannickcorner.nayanna.biz/wordpress-plugins/link-library/)