Lately, I have made some personal reflections concerning my hyperlocal blogs that have resulted in changes to the way I’m doing business. I have faced some cold hard facts. The first icy cold fact that basically bitch slapped me in the face, is I have finally realized I am not Superman. We all like to think we are, but running a hyperlocal blog or several, is very hard work if you want to do it correctly.
For almost a year now I have been running 4 hyperlocal news blogs. Until recently I have had some help running the sites and producing content. Times and people do change and for the past little while, I have found the day-to-day responsibilities mainly falling into my lap.
If you have any experience in hyperlocal journalism, you know that we are all experimenting in this new frontier sometimes refered to as citizen journalism. Each day brings on new ideas and thoughts. What worked last week may not be working this week. A fantastic, can’t lose idea of a new revenue stream can sometimes, more often than not, fall flat on it’s face. One day you can experience amazing highs followed by amazing lows in just 24 hours. All of this, and you just keep on plodding because after a while, hyperlocal blogging becomes a part of you. The benefits far outweigh the negatives.
I have decided to consolidate 3 of my hyperlocal websites into 1 main site and create community tabs that will cover the different geographical areas that I want to cover. Running multiple sites can be hard to keep fresh content on the main page of every site. By creating community tabs, it is much easier to always have fresh content on the front page of my “flagship” site.
Create Community Tabs for different geographical areas in your community.
Create Community Tabs for your Hyperlocal Blog website.
You can visit my hyperlocal blog in Monroe, NC to see how I’m doing this on my site.
The community tabs are actually “Pages” I created in WordPress. I created a page and named it one of my communities. I am able to write articles (posts) and have them show up directly on a specific page. I have the ability to let the new article show up on the main page, community page or both. I was able to do this with 2 WordPress plugins I added to my site.
How To Create A WordPress Post and include it in a WordPress Page
Here are the links to the 2 plugins that allowed me to exclude articles from the main page and publish them to a WordPress “page” I created. Another words, how to include a WordPress post in a page and exclude it from appearing on the main page of your site. I’m sure there are many more ways or more plugins that will do the same job, but I found these and so far they are working just fine for me. If you know of more, pleast list in the comments below.
Matt McGee at Hyperlocal Blogger has recently written a similar article about how he is creating hyperlocal topic pages. Matt is using SEO on his topic pages to drive additional traffic. Check it out if you would like to see how he is creating “authority pages.”
Everyday I am seeking ways to make my life easier and more simple through technology. I may never totally make it but I want to eventually make as much passive income with my hyperlocal blogs as possible. Consolidating 3 sites into one will certainly help me as I move forward.
2010 Hyperlocal Blogging
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