Content Idea: The Power of Breaking News
The Tri-Cities is relatively small, so “breaking news” is a term that we sometimes use pretty loosely. Still, two recent episodes involving our local blogs showed me the power of breaking news content when it comes to driving traffic.
Episode #1: Pasco Winter Storms
In mid-December, we had a series of winter storms one after the other. One of those storms was particularly bad; our local airport suffered through cancelled flights, regional bus service was cancelled, mountain passes were closed, etc. This was right before Christmas, so you can imagine what a headache this was for locals and out-of-towners trying to travel in or out of the area.
The problems began on Sunday, December 20. When I realized things would continue to be bad the next day, I wrote a blog post:
Pasco Airport Weather Delays to Continue on Monday
I published that late Sunday night. Notice that I used a primary keyword (Pasco Airport Weather Delays) in the headline. If you read the post, you’ll see that I mention Pasco Airport a couple more times, and even use the 3-letter airport code (PSC), in case people searched with that instead of the full name.
How’d it work? Have a look:
Sure enough, lots of people were searching for information about the airport delays, and our Pasco blog saw that big spike in traffic. The traffic even stayed higher than normal for several days after the worst day of weather problems.
Episode #2: Local Fire
Early one morning last week, a fire destroyed the clubhouse at the West Richland Golf Course. Fortunately, no one was hurt; but the facility was a total loss. Cari heard about the news and blogged about it when she got to the office that morning.
Here’s what blog traffic looked like that day:
The traffic jump isn’t as dramatic as in the Pasco example, but it’s obvious. The search engines found the post quickly, and it showed up when locals were looking for news about the fire.
Conclusion
In that second example, I don’t mean to come across as though I’m happy that we benefited from someone else’s tragedy, but the point is clear: People get a lot of their news online these days, and when local news breaks, they’re likely to turn to Google, Yahoo, etc., to find out anything they can.
Hyperlocal bloggers should be prepared to take advantage of that, and give local neighbors the news they want whenever possible.
Content Idea: Local Flu Shot Information
This is one of those I totally didn’t expect this, but it’s cool! kind of discoveries, and I think it’s worth passing along at this time of year.
About a month ago, I wrote almost identical blog posts about flu shots on three of our four hyperlocal blogs. You can see them here:
- Richland flu shots, which currently ranks #1 on Google
- Kennewick flu shots, which also ranks #1 on Google
- Pasco flu shots, which currently ranks #3
I didn’t think much of those posts at the time, especially since there’s almost no substance there — just some date, cost, and location information. So you can imagine my surprise when I was looking at Google Analytics for those three blogs and saw all kinds of flu-related keywords bringing search engine traffic to the blogs. Have a look:
(click for larger version)
These posts didn’t bring in a ton of new traffic, but I’m not gonna complain about any unexpected new visitors we get. Are you? I guess the lesson here, which should’ve been obvious before I looked at our analytics, is that people are searching for local health information on the web. As a local blogger, you’re in position to give it to them.
What to do: Check your local County Health Department web site, or call them, to find out if there are any planned flu shots coming up in your area. Blog about it. And, if you get some new search engine traffic, leave me a note in the comments. 
Hyperlocal Content Idea: Political Interviews
Quick post to remind folks in the U.S. that right now offers a golden opportunity to get some great hyperlocal content on your blog(s) by interviewing the winning (and maybe even the losing) candidates from this week’s elections. Catch the winners soon while they’re still basking in the glow of winning the election, and anxious to please/reach out to their constituents.
- Ask your new city councilperson about fitting in, about local issues like traffic, crime, or whatever else matters.
- Ask your new school board member about educational funding, standardized testing, etc.
- Ask your returning county commissioner what s/he still hopes to accomplish after so many years in office.
The opportunities are endless. And now’s the time to jump on them. (Actually, local political interviews would have been a great idea pre-election, too, and I would’ve written this sooner, except I’ve been fighting the flu on and off for about two weeks and am just now getting back to full speed.)
Your Turn: Did you do any local election interviews on your hyperlocal blog? Or did you create any political content? How’d it turn out?
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?
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