What Hyperlocal Content Works for You?
by Matt on Nov 11, 2009 in Content
I’m curious: On your local blog/web site, what type(s) of content work the best for you? What draws the most traffic or comments or whatever you use to measure success?
Not too long ago I was reading this Peter Krasilovsky blog post that talks about AOL and, more specifically, the hyperlocal Patch.com project that AOL is doing. In particular, these comments from Patch.com President Warren Webster caught my eye — he’s talking about the hyperlocal content they find to be most interesting to readers.
“Police and fire information is very popular,” and “government news inspires a lot of debate,” he said. Webster was surprised, however, that weddings and obituaries aren’t more popular at this point — perhaps because users aren’t yet conditioned to get that information from a local online site. School sports have been more promising.
I’m surprised to see him mention police and fire information, but that’s probably because Cari and I very rarely post content like that on our hyperlocal blogs. So, I have no evidence in our analytics to tell me whether or not it’s popular. In my experience, our most popular blog posts have mostly been about upcoming local events.
What about you? What kind of content has worked best on your local blogs?
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The order of the most popular content for my site has been….
1. Local Politics (lots of controversy lately though) —also most comments
2. High School Sporting Events
3. Other High School events
4. Community Special Interest (cooking, obits, weddings)
Here in Boston, crime is right up there with posts about our local public-transit system (you may have heard about it – it’s the one where trains stop for drunks lying on the tracks).
But I wonder if there’s some sort of feedback loop going on. I post a fair amount of crime and subway bus news, which people read, which makes me post more. It’s not that Boston’s particularly violent for a big city, but I do a fair number of “why were all those cruisers on my street?” type of posts (which means I now actually get e-mail basically asking that).
Our local police blotter and high school sports are very popular on Winthropite.com.
I get my best spikes in traffic over local events and any kind of breaking news story. I just recently came off the best week of traffic I’ve ever had due to a local event. If you run a local blog, you should treat your local events much the same way as an internet marketer. Prepare for it ahead of time and take advantage when the event arrives.
I’ve been lucky also in he fact that when local news breaks, the search engines have been kind to me and many times I outrank the larger news sites.
This election and our local football team going deep in the playoffs for the first time ever was HUGE statistically for my CarlisleDaily.com site. I have had a record month for November and with the newly elected officials beating out the incumbents that had been on council for 12-20 years they all are looking to me to reach out to the community. This has been a great move for our city and will create even more traffic to my site!!
Here is what is driving our sites currently:
1. Local Politics primarily fire department and current council members as of right now.
2. High School Sporting Events: Football team has defied all odds this year beating cross town rival for first time, winning first ever playoff game in five tries.
3. School News: Honor Roll, Newsletters, etc.
One of my main types of posts are events, but not only to tell people about what is going to happen but also how it turned out. I try and go to most public events(or get someone to go for me) and then afterward I will post picture and do a “recap” post, but lately I have been getting more into live. The iPhone & LiveScribble makes this all so much easier. Posting tweats, videos and photo right onto a post that has already been set up.
Another big thing I do is create discussion. If I hear about a hot topic going through town I will write something up about it, and encourage readers to comment their opinions. I rarely give my own opinion, I will just be the conversation starter.
When it come to Breaking News and News in general I don’t do so well. I find it hard to find the news when it happens all the time. *Would love to hear about how people find their News, any tips or tricks*
As for Politics, I do dabble in it. We recently had a City Election and I has a huge resource online but as for Council Briefing type things, I almost don’t bother as the local Newspaper and Radio station can cover them better.
Like someone else said, Google is very good to me. I almost get every Google search with the city name in it. Google Juice, Baby!
One of the finally things I just started doing is Local Reviews – reviews of Cafe, Bars, Restaurants, etc. To my surprise they are being received very well!
Want traffic? Just get Hollywood to film a movie in your small town, and you’ll get plenty of traffic — online and off! Adam Sandler and crew were in our New England town for 2 weeks last spring, and movie-related posts now occupy 7 spots on my list of top 10 popular posts.
As for more mundane topics, I get traffic boosts from fire/police incidents, specific local government issues, and town events. We’ve also (sadly) had several notable deaths that have generated quite a bit of traffic.
Because I don’t host a forum, I post bi-weekly(ish) open discussion threads where commenters can ask questions or voice opinions, whatever’s on their mind. They’re popular traffic-wise, and also good for suggesting future posts.