Tell Us About Your Hyperlocal Blog
by Matt on Oct 26, 2009 in General
We seem to be growing a nice little community of hyperlocal bloggers/web site owners here, so I thought it might be good to have a wide-open post where you get to introduce yourself and tell us as much as you want about your local blog/web site.
So how about doing that in the comments. Include links if you want (I’ll have to manually approve those comments, though) and just let us know who you are, where you are, tell us about your local blog, why you started it, ask each other questions if you see something interesting, etc. Think of it as an online mixer kind of thing. 
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Hi, everyone!
I recently started an online business called Whisper and Friends. It is a community based site designed to serve locals, local artists, and local businesses.
Although we currently list jewelry designers, we will be adding more products. We will also add local artists like musicians and artists, as well as local businesses.
In addition, we will advertise local events at http://www.whisperandfriends.wordpress.com.
I started this site and blog, because I wanted to do something for the community. I want to unite us, especially during these tough times. With businesses closing left and right, it is my hope that as a community we will pull together.
This is a fluid and growing project. I look forward to feedback, comments, tips, and suggestions. Again, we are in this together.
Matt- thanks for the opportunity. I run a little real estate blog for the community of Leavenworth and Lake Wenatchee WA. I don’t discuss global or statewide trends, I focus in on what’s happening in Leavenworth and what decisions are being made in specific neighborhoods that effect property values and buyer demand. Since I mostly sell vacation homes to buyers from the Seattle / Bellevue area it has been a great tool for me to reach out and educate and inform folks about the market. I’ve been running it almost 6 years now and recently moved over to WP from Blogger within the last year.
Thanks for letting us mingle.
http://iciclecreekrealestate.com for those inclined to come visit.
Over at Knoxify.com we’re about to close out our second year of existence. We started our hyperlocal blog to build a positive media model around our scruffy little town, Knoxville, TN. Besides covering what makes our town great, we dive further into our geographic location with our Neighborhood Guides that also contain applicable news. We’re currently in the midst of a much-needed redesign to give the site more of a magazine feel.
We really enjoy reading this site and look forward to other sites that people are managing. If anyone is interested, we did a round table discussion with other TN and AL hyperlocal bloggers and the video is here: http://vimeo.com/5777152
http://www.heyfairfield.com is all about what’s on the minds of the the people in Fairfield CT. My goal is to develop an interactive community where people can come discuss the issues and events taking place in our town. I also like to add some fun, like online contests and social events.
Thank you!
Kidburst.com is a growing site that helps parents find and review activities for their kids. We started in DC/Northern Virginia and are expanding to local areas like Virginia’s Northern Neck, Boston, and others. Through our partner program, we enable local editors to supply the content and build out their community’s site, as well as share in the ad revenue generated there.
Check us out at http://kidburst.com
I am Mike Ramsey and have recently started
http://goburley.com
It is a news site for my small town Burley, idaho. I am starting 2 other sites for small towns that make up our community. The main reason in doing so is that our community is currently lacking an unbiased approach to local news coverage and there is no online news for our community.
I write a blog about my hometown of Florence, SC. It is “Reviews, to do’s, and the not-quite news in Florence, SC.”
I have started a three city community sites for the area I live and work. I started CarlisleDaily.com, my hometown on May 1, 2009 and really have seen some exciting results. The papers, tv, and radio do not do an adequate job covering our area with up to date local news and things so I decided to create a way for residents to get everything local. I started my second site on July 1, 2009, TheFranklinVoice.com. I hope to launch my third site by the first of the year. Struggling though with how to cover the additional cities. I have found it easy to cover my hometown but trying to figure out revenue methods to tackle the other two. Layed off journalists are filling my email box with hopes that I have a paying gig for them but even at the measly $20/per article and without support staff it has been very overwhelming. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the hyperlocal site I come here regularly for fresh ideas!!
My name is Becca and my hyperlocal blog is part of an online community I created for folks living in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park called Live Here Oak Park. I created the site on Ning.com so it’s part forum, part events calendar and mostly blog. I write the majority of the blog posts (1-3 per day) and they typically cover local restaurants (openings and closings), village politics, strange sightings around town and Chicago news that has local implications. Members are also able to contribute their own content, including local news, to the web site. The blog has become great way to meet people in the community (I actually get approached in public) and it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve started having Meetups at a local coffee shop and many of the regular commenters attend. In terms of tips, I’m still figuring things out, but Twitter has been an invaluable tool for me to drive traffic to the site and connect with people. It’s a lot of work, and I have a ways to go, but I love every minute of it!
It’s great to hear about everyone else’s local blogs. I think the http://kidburst.com idea is great! I have my niece a lot, and it’d be great to have a place to go to find things to do with her!
Anyway, I’m blogging at a San Francisco Bay Area law firm: Gillin Jacobson, Ellis, & Larsen at:
http://www.gjel.com/blog
Our goal is to highlight activities in the Bay Area (with a weekly event highlights post), as well as to stay on top of local news. In addition, I write about things that would affect our clients and other attorneys in the area–like California auto & motorcycle safety news, legal news, legal humor, law student issues, and interviews with interesting people.
Basically, if you’re living in the Bay Area (particularly the East Bay), we’ve got something interesting for you to read. And I have to say, I agree with Becca–Twitter has been a great addition to blogging. I tweet there as @GJELBlogger.
Man, you folks run some fine local blogs & web sites. Thanks for all the replies.
@Audrey — looks like you’re just starting out. What’s been the biggest challenge in getting started?
@Geordie — I’m guessing yours is somewhat of an SEO powerhouse, yes? Great content there. A lot of real estate agents could learn from what you’re doing.
@CP – interested in your word choice there — “positive media model” and “what makes our town great.” Do you also stay away from blogging the hard news-type stuff, like my wife and I do on our local blogs?
@Ed – you’ve got some interesting stuff going on there. Curious to learn how the forum is working for you, and advertising — how difficult has that been with local businesses? Care to tell more?
@Dave – interesting idea there. How have you promoted it to local parents to get them involved in adding/rating activities?
@Mike – we’ve talked a bit about your story on Twitter and email. Interested in telling folks more about the lack of unbiased news in your area and what the reaction has been to what you’re doing?
@Flossip – can I ask why you’ve decided to remain anonymous on your blog? And do you think that’s helped or hurt?
@Dominic – wow, your blog says “We launched CarlisleDaily.com on May 1st and have seen close to 1500 visitors a week for a community of 5900.” How on earth did you manage to get all that growth in such a short period of time? Any tips you can share? That’s terrific.
@Becca – curious to learn your reasons for using Ning. Can you tell us more about that? Pros and cons?
@Kaitlin – sounds like your situation is kinda similar to what my wife and I are doing, in that it’s business-related blogging. Do you find it hard sometimes to find things to blog about? And you also have to deal with some legal issues, right? Things you can and can’t say/do on the blog.
By the way, I’m always on the lookout for guest posts here. If any of you have stories/tips/etc. that you think might be beneficial to the larger hyperlocal blogging community, let me know. I think some of the things you’ve mentioned above, and some of the questions I asked about, might make good topics.
Well, for a very short run down of the environment currently in my town… A local politician is the owner of a weekly mailer that is sent to all 16,000 houses in our area through the mail, and he also runs the only local newspaper in town. The mailer has a “sound off” section which takes anonymous letters to the editor and is used to slam people in the community with no holds bar. This is sent to every home. Also, interestingly enough…those who vote or stand against this politician have been the focus of the negativity in his publications.
Elections are next week and this man used his personal editorial to blast our current mayor and stated there is no way he will ever win the election and sent it to every home in the valley. Our community has been in hot debate over the publication for probably a two year period with no change taking place.
I set up the site with the goal of non-bias political coverage…every week since then, I along with members of my family, have been attacked in his paper. There wasn’t any news coverage online when I started, but the site has received major support by members of the community. And this man has set up a horribly bad news site to compete.
My content is generated by people for free (simply based on their love of writing) and I was asked to be on a popular area radio show to discuss the site and the issues facing our town. The only advertising I have done is put fliers on vehicles at our football rivalry game, and our homecoming game, and from those fliers word of mouth has really spread quickly in my town. The negative paper publicity has helped as well. People (for the most part) have been very supportive.
I gained instant trust with the majority of the city council, major, city administrator, fire and police departments by offering them a chance to represent themselves on the site through letters or live broadcasting. Same for the Local High School principle and other community leaders. It helped the news spread fast to ask for content from a lot of these people, and also allowed me to live broadcast candidate events and future hopes to cover city council meetings.
I also am working on the ability to live broadcast sporting events and turn over part of the advertising funds to the school. The hardest thing so far is moving forward without a dedicated adspot salesman. I have businesses interested, but to really generate enough revenue to move to the next level of content and support, you have to go out and sell the spots to the businesses. Especially where NONE of them have every done online advertising. If any of you have pointers I am very interested in your feedback!
@Mike – Good to hear your site is becoming a success for you. The one thing I did before approaching businesses about advertising was make a media kit. 2 page PDF of stats, description of the site and who it is directed towards. That way I can just direct people to it for all the information they might want to know.
@kyle
That is a great idea!
I think I will put a PDF together, but due to the nature of the competition in my area will probably not give stats out openly on the site for a few more months. Only upon a business requesting the info.
My main concern is getting businesses that don’t inquire about advertising. Many in the area are not proactive, and need a nudge in the right direction. Did you wait until being approached or just walk into the businesses with your media kit?
I am also wondering if there is a good place that compares print advertising with online advertising effectiveness?
Guess I should introduce myself as well.
I’m Kyle and I created http://YkOnline.ca. It is a blog about Yellowknife(Yk), my hometown. Which is a city of 20,000 just above the 60th parallel in northern Canada.
I started it because I found I was blogging a lot of Yellowknife on my personal blog and soon after I realized there was a need for a site like it in town. We recently went through a city election which brought me a lot of publicity. Many of the councilors are now subscribed to it and my Google ranking is rising like nuts as a resourceful site for news, issues, events and info about YK.
We have a local newspaper and radio station that I don’t try to compete with, if anything I would love to work with them. If they have covered something I may not depending on the situation. What I try to do is create more discussion about a recent issue among other things.
I’m constantly looking for new features and trying new thing.
@Mike
I created the Media Kit just for the reason, mind you I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. For the business’ who don’t approach me, which is most, I plan to go to them with Media Kit in hand that way they actually have something to look over and may not forget it right away.
@Matt I decided to go with Ning because I wanted to create more of a community instead of just a blog. Since I can’t be everywhere at the same time, it allows my members to contribute their own content (including blog posts) as well. I originally didn’t expect to be doing much local blogging because I thought the discussions and other areas would be where most of the activity would take place, but the blog seems to be a great place to get discussions started. By creating the site using Ning, I think it has also allowed people to get to know each other better because there are so many different ways you can contribute and interact. The downside is that I don’t think Ning is very well optimized for search and the blogging platform on the site isn’t as flexible as it would be if you were using Wordpress. Nevertheless, I’m happy with with it.
@Matt
Believe it or not and despite the tediousness of the task I used Facebook. I created a Facebook account for each of the communities I started a local blog for. I then went into the search friend function and searched by graduating class of the school. I found graduates from all the way back in the 50’s that have facebook accounts. I requested they add me as a friend and I grew my readership from there. I have had people across the country that has contacted me telling me that they are so thankful for a site that keeps them up with their hometown.
I also on the second day after launch had the mayor advocating on my behalf. I spent 15 minutes at a City Council meeting discussing my vision. The County, State, City, and School administrators send me Press Releases every week. So with the support of all these administrators it has spread like wild fire.
Also to note, my little hometown of Carlisle does not have a paper. So rarely are we ever in the news for anything. So just covering the smallest bit of info, like a foul smell in the air yesterday in our town, to the bigger things like City Council issues are not covered in even our area papers.
Franklin and Springboro are basically the same way. They have little weeklies that everyone hates because they do not have enough staff to adequately cover the area so coming in with a local blog and using facebook and generating solid relationships has been truly beneficial.
My struggles right now are very much like Mike Ramsey and many others and that is trying to drive revenue to support the vision. Layed off journalists are willing to write articles for as cheap as $15/article. So trying to cast the vision to advertisers and get them to sign on has been tough to add into the daily maintenance, generating stories, etc. I had hired a Sales Rep who was going to earn 20% commission on all sales but she has since bowed out because she did not have enough time to commit.
It just takes patience, which I have little of, but I believe that this will thrive.
@dominic I find that facebook is a gem as well. I started a page for GoBurley and hooked it up to my twitter account, and have been able to generate a lot of fans on facebook. I have found that updating hot topics on the page gets a lot of traffic coming through to my site. Twitter will really push a hyperlocal blog, but there are currently very few people in my community on twitter. As that changes, I see it being much more effective than facebook.
Your 20% commission idea for a part time sales person is a good option. I have found it difficult to get someone willing to call on businesses part time, and actually follow through. You find the right person and it is perfect. But, there is just not that many “right persons”. It almost needs to be someone with a vested interest in the site. A partner or profit share holder. I can see problems if it is a new p-t salesman all the time. If you have someone who people start to know…”no soliciting” signs on businesses don’t matter much, and repeat advertisers would probably flourish.
@Matt
I do sometimes have a hard time thinking of things to blog about. It’s hard to really have a blog that drives business and is interesting. There are certain things that can and can’t be said on a legal blog, and there’s also an interest in remaining somewhat neutral on political or other divisive issues. It’s definitely harder than keeping a personal blog.
I also try to keep the blog relevant to our practice as accident attorneys. Of course I could report Bay Area news, but that’s done so well in other places, that it’s hard to stand out. Coming up with good stories that tie local news and events with our areas of practice is challenging, to say the least.
There’s lots of good tips and ideas in the comments here, so I’m going to stay tuned and see what else I can learn!
@Mike
Giving the salesperson a vested interest in the site is exactly the approach I’m trying with Kidburst. We have a “Partner” program (http://kidburst.com/partner/) where anyone can use our platform to launch a Kidburst site in their community. They are responsible for entering all the content for their site, and they sell their own local ads, too. We split the ad revenue 70/30 with the partner keeping the majority. It’s kind of like a franchise. There is also a community site (http://kidburstpartners.ning.com/) where partners get guidance and connect with other partners.
So many nice-looking blogs listed here! I run http://winthropite.com, a website for my hometown of Winthrop, Massachusetts. I’m trying to do it as in-depth as possible.
The small local paper covers big things, but the “little things” have no coverage. Plus, the paper is weekly, and readers can see it instantly instead of waiting a week.
Promoting it on Twitter, and Facebook, especially, has helped.
CP, Mike Ramsey, & Dominic – what did you use to build your sites?
@Mike Jewett – I believe the answer to your last would be Wordpress, although Dominic uses BlogSpot. Wordpress is a Blogging Platform/Content Management System. You can either use the free, easy to set up version at Wordpress.com. Or you can use the self-hosted, more customizable version at Wordpress.org and both are free.
Wordpress is the most popular platform for blogging these days because of it huge community, it has thousands of themes to choose from and most are customizable.
I Love it, if you hadn’t of guessed.
I belong to a hyperlocal blog in Los Angeles that the administrator calls Griffith Park Wayist. We engage civic issues but are centered around the heart and lungs of the city, Griffith Park.
In LA, the blogging community is very evolved, and that has been compounded by the fact that so many layoffs have occurred over the past five years in journalism.
The LA Press Club recently hosted a bloggers panel in which all the panelists agreed that hyperlocal blogging was the best future for media. However, the irony was that there wasn’t a single hyperlocal blogger on the panel. Many came away feeling that hyperlocal was more trend than true future. I think it’s more elementary than that: hyperlocal blogs are simply local dependable voices to which other citizens look to for ideas.
@Matt The forum hasn’t had the activity I’d like, but it’s growing. According to Google Analytics, most of my organic search results for non-site terms are coming from the forums.
Re: Advertising. Several points. First, like some others have said, no one sells the site as well as I do. I’ve tried having people sell the spots, but I am the only one who can close the deal. Second, I haven’t formalized a rate card, but that is going to happen this week. If anyone has suggestions that would be helpful. Third, the template I am using allows for different types of advertising, and I will have a few other opportunities as well (email, event sponsorship, etc.)
I just launched a local blog that focuses on remodeling and design in the Kansas City area: http://www.kcremodeler.com. I am still trying to find my voice and direction but the will come in time. I think it will be interesting to see how the content, readership and monetization develops over time.
Thank you for creating your blog that focuses on this unique segment of blogging!
Hey everyone….I don’t know if you are all on twitter but if you are….leave a response with your @ name and I will add you to a hyper local list I am starting. Could be a great way to keep in touch.
http://twitter.com/niftymarketing/hyper-locals
Great idea Matt,
My personal account is @KyleWith
My hyperlocal blog’s is @YkOnline
My site’s Twitter is @Kidburst. Thanks!
I’m @geordieromer
aka http://www.twitter.com/geordieromer
For our firm’s website I’m @GJELblogger but my personal twitter is @kaitlinjanusz
Great idea to put together a list, Matt!
@ Mike Ramsey
Definitely add me Mike! http://www.twitter.com/carlisledaily
Cool idea, Mike – thx for including me in the Twitter list there.
I am @heyfairfield
Ditto, me. @winthropite
I’ll add you back.
Everyone above has been added to the tweet list. Thanks for getting back to me and I look forward to seeing how you are using twitter for your sites!
Hey gang – when we were first having this conversation in the comments, I remember thinking that some of your stories and experiences would make for interesting guest blog posts on Hyperlocal Blogger. I’m looking for guests posts, and hope you’ll take a moment to read this and give it some thought:
http://www.hyperlocalblogger.com/seeking-guest-blog-posts/
Thanks!
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