Where Personal Potential & Reality Meet » Hyperlocal Blogging

Creating Multiple Community Pages On Your Hyperlocal Blog

Steve — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:14:13 +0000

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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Hyperlocal Blogging Tips: How To Manage Your Facebook Fan Page

Steve — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:52:47 +0000

If you are a hyperlocal blogger you absolutely should have a Facebook Fan page. The benefits to having one are many as you can imagine. Today, however, I want to discuss with you one aspect that I think is important in managing your Facebook Fan Page associated with your hyperlocal blog. There are a lot of things you should do, but let’s focus on one small aspect today.

I want you to consider the Fan Page as your personal internet piece of real estate and treat it such. Yes, it’s called a Fan Page but it is an extension of you. What happens on the page and what you allow is a direct reflection of you. Protecting your fan page is like protecting your reputation in your community. If it’s full of negative, you will be perceived as being negative. If your page is lively and fun, you also will be considered in the same way. Get that into your mindset and you will be well on your way to creating a successful Facebook Fan Page.

Facebook Fan Page Tip

I’m going to share what I do on my page. You may disagree and that’s ok, but this works for me. Do not allow anyone or any business to promote themselves or their business in such a way that it doesn’t benefit your community as a whole.

If you allow your page to become a community billboard for self promotion, you can kiss it goodbye. It will become a place for spammers and you will be taken advantage of.

Businesses will be on it everyday promoting their own special interests without regard to you or the other members. Who wants to see the “Buy 3 Tires, Get One Free” ad every other day? What is the benefit of the community by allowing these type posts on your Fan Page? Zero.

I have my guidelines clearly posted but every now and then someone breaks my rule. I immediately delete the post and then I send a nice direct message explaining why I did what I did and I always offer alternatives.

Here is the note I have placed in the sidebar.
Please, read this! We support community events and local business. If you would like to post an event or promote a business, we ask that you first contact us and inquire about a promotion using the Fan Page. Please read “notes” tab at top of page.

Now, when they read my guidelines, here is what I have written.
Due to the large amount of Facebook members on the Monroe Scoop Fan Page, we feel it is necessary to post some guidelines on appropriate use of the Fan pages.

We ask that if you would like to post an event that your event benefits the community as a whole, and not an individual or an individual business. If your posting does not follow this rule, it will be deleted.

To ask for an exception, please email me at steve@monroescoop.com and give me the details.

Please refrain from religious postings.

We are actually happy to promote your business and we have some great ideas. Just contact me and I’ll tell you how we can do it without appearing “spammy’ to our members. There is a cost associated but you will be excited at the possibilities and affordability.

If you are not already a Fan, please become one. This is a great Fan Page because of our members.

I rarely have anyone break the guidelines I have set. Our Facebook page is a vibrant page with a lot of interaction and no spam. As a result we are growing in numbers every week. I personally believe this policy I have put in place is one of the main reasons for the growth of our Fan Pages. I run 4 hyperlocal websites and each has it’s own individual Fan Page. When you total the Fans from each site, it is believed that my network has the largest Fan following in my county.

I wish you success on your community Fan Page. This is the absolute first thing I would do when starting a hyperlocal Facebook Fan Page.

Please visit the Monroe Scoop Facebook Fan Page.

I’ll be bringing you more practical tips in the weeks ahead. I’ll soon be focusing on how video can make a real difference. Make sure you subscribe, you do not want to miss any of these tips.

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How To Add Telephone Interviews To Your Hyperlocal Blog

Steve — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:23:09 +0000

It’s been one heck of a week. I became a Grandfather on Monday morning. His name is Carter and as hard as I try to be a badass tough guy sometimes, this little booger melted my heart the moment I laid my eyes on him and I instantly fell in love with this little guy. He’s why I haven’t been too busy on Blogger Lens lately.

Back to business now. I implemented something new on my hyperlocal site this week, MonroeScoop.com, that I think is pretty cool and should add a lot as far as multi-media goes. It is something that I think you should consider doing on your hyperlocal blog also. Through the use of Google Voice, I added 2 telephone interviews in the body of my articles. You can check out my earlier Google Voice Review. Google Voice gives you a very easy option to record your telephone conversations by simply hitting the number 4 on your keypad. To stop the recording, press the number 4 again. The recording will be stored on your Google Voice page and you can simply hit the play button to listen. Very, very cool in my opinion.

At this point your work is not over. When you record with Google Voice, you will hear a prompt that your recording is started and ended. You do not want your listeners to hear this if you place in one of your articles. You have to do a little editing at this point. As of now, Google does not give you a way to embed the recording through the use of a widget, you have to get it there yourself. Here is what I do.

I play the recording on my computer (Mac) and I record the internal audio as it’s playing. I record as a QuickTime movie. Those files are .mov
I then go in and trim the ends of the recording and take out what I do not want to be there. If you have QuickTime Pro, you will have the ability to do this. If not, you can purchase QuickTime Pro from the Apple website for around $30. You can also do this with Garage Band.
Next, I covert the recording into an “aif” file from my QuickTime menu.
Next, I import the recording into iTunes.
Next step. Convert the “aif” file into an .mp3. (easy to do).
Upload the .mp3 file to your web host
Embed the recording into your article using the PodPress WordPress Widget.

If that seems a little hard and a lot of trouble, it isn’t. Those steps only take a few moments. If you are using a Mac (you should be) it’s a breeze. Do it once and you can do it with your eyes closed from then on. If you are using a Windows PC, I cannot instruct you on how to do it. I’m sure it can be done however.

Here are the benefits as I see them.
#1. I can drink beer while I’m doing a telephone interview and no one knows what I’m doing.
#2. I can scratch myself if necessary.
#3. I can pick my nose and can’t be seen. I do not have to leave my house.
#4. Save gas. I don’t have to drive anywhere.
#5. I can…well, you get the idea.

Here is an example of how I used this on my own site. I placed a headshot photo of the person I spoke with. Yesterday I spoke with the Marketing Director of our local shopping mall and I also spoke with the Executive Director of our local Red Cross. Getting these type interviews are very easy once you have gained the trust of these people in your community. I’ll talk about trust in another article but it’s important that as you build your hyperlocal blog, you determine your mission and you gain the trust of the leaders in your community if you want to invite them to be part of your website. I doubt that many folks in your community would be willing to display themselves publicly unless you have built the trust with them.

Here are the 2 telephone interviews:
[display_podcast]

You can visit my site to view these also. Monroe Scoop.

I can tell you right now what Allyn Hane will say about this feature. He will tell me to use it for paid interviews and articles from local merchants. What if a local car dealer or store was having a blowout sale and needed the extra publicity that you could provide? An article and a telephone interview could land a few extra $$ in your account. What do you think? Who would like to hear me interview Allyn Hane by telephone and play it here?

I hope this helps and gives you some additional ideas to use on your hyperlocal blog. Be as creative with your site as possible. There are no rules. No idea is stupid unless you figure out it doesn’t work. If you have some more ideas regarding this, please share them with the readers, I’d love to hear them.

2009 Hyperlocal Blog

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