I have a friend I’ve been exchanging some really detailed and long email messages with in the past couple of days. Some of what we’ve been writing about deals with hyperlocal blogging and it inspired me to write this article.
“How To Start A Hyperlocal Blog And Keep Your Full Time Job”
My disclaimer here is the fact that I consider myself a full time hyperlocal blogger. The fact that you may hold a full time job shouldn’t hold you back from starting a hyperlocal blog in your community and delving a little into citizen journalism. My situation is different than most. I started my community web site in the hopes that I can eventually earn a living from it. I wrote about my situation in an earlier article. Build a great hyperlocal blog and get paid for it.
You have the rest of your life ahead of you so why not get started now? You don’t have to create an award winning site that rivals anyone. All you have to do is get started slowly and lay the foundation for what can happen in the future. What if in 5 years your local newspaper shuts down? You would have a jump start on everyone in your community to move in and provide. It’s a supply and demand issue.
Here are some very easy steps that I would do to start a hyperlocal blog and keep your full time job This is so easy and will be so meaningful to you in the future that you will actually feel the urge to send me an Amazon Gift Card or name your next son Steven.
- Take out a domain name now and a hosting package. I would use your town’s name in the url if possible. For example, Bakersfieldscoop.com or Indianheightsgazette.com. You get the idea. I recommend bluehost.com to everyone for domain names and hosting. It’s what I use on all of my sites.
- Use Wordpress for your blog. There are more free wordpress themes out there for you than government bailouts. You may want to consider some sort of magazine/news style theme. Free blogging platforms are ok but not necesarily for the long term. You never actually own your own content when using someone else’s free software. Don’t even go there for your main site. Don’t argue with me on this one, trust me.
- Once you have your blog set up, go to Google Alerts. I want you to set up a Google email alert for a ton of related searches that pertain to your county and city that will be sent to your in-box once a day. Here are some ideas:
Bakersfield Kansas
Bakersfield KS
Bakersfield County
Bakersfield Kansas Government
Bakersfield Kansas Police Dept.
Bakersfield, Kansas Mayor John Kingston
Bakersfield Kansas School System
Bakersfield Kansas Blogs
Bakersfield Kansas VideosYou should understand where I’m going here. Think up as many terms that relate to your community as you desire.
- I want you to take selected articles from your Google Alerts and re-post the article to your new hyperlocal blog.
- I want you to give credit and links back to the original article at the bottom of your post. Never re-print anything without without giving credit and a link back.
- If an article says that you cannot publish and it’s copyright protected, try to contact the author by phone or e-mail and ask permission. Most likely they will allow it and actually link to your article from their site. That would be good Google Juice
- Scour all of the video sites such as YouTube, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Blip, Google Videos & Yahoo Videos to find any videos that were taken in and around your community. If the video allows embedding, put the video on your site and give credit and a link back. If at all possible, contact the owner of the video and alert them that you have posted their video. 99.9% will love you for it and probably link to your blog. Good Google Juice again.
- Re-publish photos of your community that you find on Flickr under the Creative Commons. Once again give credit and links back.
- Add one page on your blog that encourages readers to submit their own news story or community event. Make sure you have a contact form on that page. Here is an example of the page I use on my hyperlocal site that encourages readers to submit stories to me. Submit your news to the Monroe Scoop.
- Contact all of your local non-profits and asked to be placed on their e-mail press release lists.
- Never leave your house without your camera. Take a photo of the crowded parking lot at the mall and post it. If you think that’s silly, you don’t understand hyperlocal. SEO your article with the name of your town and the name of the Mall. Very important! Place alt tags on your photos so they will show up on Google image search.
- This is very important and you must do this on every article you post. It’s also very easy. I do not want you to get carried away with SEO. As a matter of fact, I only want you to SEO four things in your articles. If you are going hyperlocal in Bakersfield, Kansas I want you to put a variation of these 4 terms in every article. Not all 4 in every article. Pick one per article and vary them each time. Each time, I want you to put the term at the start of your article in H1 tags. I want you to repeat it again at the bottom of your article in bold letters.
Bakersfield, Kansas
Bakersfield, KS
Bakersfield County, Kansas
Bakersfield County, KSThat’s it. That’s all I want you to SEO in your articles with the exception of alt tags on your photos
Now here’s the kicker. I want you to do this once a week, that’s all. I want you to spend time with your family and take care of your full time job first and foremost. Full time jobs are hard to come by and you must take care of those who butter your bread.
Once a week gives you 52 articles per year. In 5 years you will have published 260 articles and you will be ranking #1 for so many search terms in your town that you will send me my second Amazon Gift Card. You will have no doubt picked up a little extra money from your site with Google Adsense or Amazon links or even a local merchant may want to buy a little advertising. When you approach retirement, your hyperlocal website will be waiting on you to go full time and dominate community news in your hometown. Your site will probably be at least a Google PR5 or PR6 by then. Everyone will know about your site who lives in your community. You will own a valuable piece on internet real estate.
All of this and you only have to spend an hour and a half per week to lay the foundation for your future in Citizen Journalism. This is my simple recommendation of how each of you can start a hyperlocal blog and keep your full time job.
Copyright 2009 bloggerlens.com Hyperlocal Blogging & Citizen Journalism
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I think you are quite the internet marketer there big gunner!
You have actually inspired me to start a hyper local. Just bought the domain yesterday and have rounded up a friend (a defunct, discouraged political blogger…he voted for McCain) who lives in my town, and we are going to “go to hyper local heaven” and kick some butt.
We both HATE our local newspapers because, well, they just suck.
I found that I can grab news feeds from these local papers and place them on my site. (they at least are good for facts and such) and then we are going to each post one “people related” article per week. Some vid too, of course. I like ducks, vids of ducks…that will be cool.
I think the best part of your post deals with domain aging. you can never underestimate the power in a domain that has been on the net for over a year or more. This goes well with what you say about getting it started slowly and it will be there waiting for you!
Aged domains will take over local terms very quickly once you do put in the full time and “stick it to the man!”
good stuff, and a great complement to the niche sites I have focused on for so long.
AL
I’m glad you are going hyperlocal Allyn, and no doubt you will succeed. I expect you will take it to the next level. What I have found is that people love to see themselves in photos, videos and in print. They call and e-mail their friends and family. They are your blogs greatest ambassadors. The cool thing about hyperlocal is that nothing is generally too stupid to post. There is an audience for everything. Take a picture of a grocery cart at the bottom of the parking lot at the grocery store. Title it “Lonely Cart” and people will comment and tell you what a nice photo or how they hate that people don’t put the carts back in the rack.
Keep me up on your progress.
Steve,
On your submit articles page, did you just use a contact plug-in? If so which one?
Also do you edit or approve every article?
@Denise On my “Submit Articles” page, I use cforms II plugin. http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin
Oh yes, I edit each and every article to a degree. I mostly add pertinent keywords. For example, I get a submission that says “Union County School Board elects new Superintendent”. I will change it to say “Union County North Carolina School Board selects Bill Mitchell as new Superintendent”.
I just want to give the search engines a little help.
Thanks Steve for the plugin link!
I will be giving you a link back to your Monroe Scoop blog on my local blog “Local News Around the World” page.
@Denise You are welcome and thanks for the link.