Blog Local: Lifting the lid on your local community

At the Talk About Local Unconference there was a lot of talk about creating a network of hyperlocal blogs. Talk About Local are doing a superb job of getting people started in blogging for their local community – but what about those people already underway or who have bigger aspirations?

I have learned through working on Blog Preston since January 2009 that there is a real thirst for community content about the place where you live. The local media is fixated on scandal, car crashes and the like and misses the community content. There is a real space and it needs to be filled.

The Talk About Local Unconference has convinced me that Blog Local can work. Our idea is to create a network of local blogs, some of them will be created under the ‘Blog [insert location]‘ brand and we will support these centrally with technical help and guidance on creating good and interesting community content. Others will be established blogs that are already happy with their technical stuff and their content, but would like to opt in to a wider network of local blogs.

We would use the powerful Wordpress Multi-user platform to create this network, and be able to create powerful plug-ins for local blogs that deliver relevant local information. One thing we’ve learned from the failure of local media groups at trying to fit standard templates is that it doesn’t work, Blackpool is different to Preston, Preston is different to Harrogate and Harrogate is different to Southampton. Each of them has a different audience the the website for the ‘Blog [insert location]‘ site needs to reflect that and it also needs to take into account the skills of the person updating it. If they are better with a camera than they are with words, it needs to be more of a photojournalism blog. If they can’t take a good picture to save their life, it’s more of a wordy affair but with a design that compensates for this and keeps it interesting.

One of the struggles for anyone running a local blog is content. Not everyone who starts or wants to start up a community blog is a recent journalism graduate or unemployed graduate. They don’t have the legal training, they don’t know how to knock out 250 words into 10 minutes and they don’t often know where to look for stories. Often local blogs wither and die after a few months when they think there’s nothing left to write about. Wrong. There is always information, events, opinion, gossip, news, photos, in your local area – you just need to build a network and tap into it. Blog Local will support its network to do this and to keep producing good content.

Add to this that Blog Local is not-for-profit, so the content is driven by the community and not by shareholders and it creates an interesting concept. Taking the new technology and tools available to create a mix-mash of community blogs across the UK, producing local content and information.

Is there a business model in this? I’m not 100 per cent sure yet but I do know that over the next few months we’re going to be working with some very exciting new people to help create a network of local and community blogs that can help lift the lid on their local communities.

Image credit to Aishihik

Talk about Local Unconference 2009: oatcakes, community media and hope

Les Cochrane, and me, chatting with Lichfield Blog at Talk About Local 09

Went down to Stoke-on-Trent yesterday for the Talk About Local unconference. It was a gathering of local and hyper-local bloggers, some community activists, people who run community websites and people who run tools that can help community websites.

There was a great mix of people. Immediately I identified a split between people like myself who had some journalism training and were setting up, or have set up, a community blog/website for their area to act as an alternative to the local media. Others had just set it up because they wanted something different.

An unconference is a great format. You arrive, eat some Staffordshire oatcakes (amazing) and put post-its on a board about sessions you’d either like to run or see be run. These sessions are then moved around, some are merged together until a session schedule becomes clear. There’s another board to put post-its about who you would like to meet at the event and another one to put URLs of your site or others you feel are relevant.

I put a post-it up offering to run a session about Blog Preston and Blog Local, explaining how we wanted to expand the Blog Local idea with other blogs. We got mashed into a session about social media surgeries and using social media to empower communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Preston Blog is number 1 on Google

It’s taken three months, but I’ve finally got above that damn Robert Peston. Preston Blog is now coming up as number one on Google. No tricks, just damn good content:

Preston Blog number one on Google

How I set up a community journalism blog for where I live

In January 2009 I decided as a new year’s resolution to set up a blog for where I live. Inspired by St Albans Blog, run by Robin Hamman, I boldy registered Preston Blog. I decided to go with a wordpress.com account as I wasn’t sure how much time I could commit and I was also a little short of cash so a domain and hosting were out of the question.

Since January 2009 I’ve been amazed at what the blog has achieved. It’s now just a few unique visitors away from having 10,000 in three months. No mean feat for something that I try to update as and when.

What’s the point in having a community journalism blog for Preston, Lancashire? Well, simple really: people want it. The sheer number of emails I’ve had and twitter messages saying “thanks for the blog/post, keep it up”.

I thought I’d take the chance, just over three months on since launch, to reflect on how the blog is going and pass on some advice for anyone thinking of doing something similar for where they live.

It will take up your time, a lot of your time

I started off just posting here and there. I thought no one would read what I wrote, then I saw the stats. 100 unique visitors a day, holy shit, people are reading what I write and they are commenting too. I started pulling hours getting content. You need to be prepared for the commitment of it, for talking about it, going to random events, getting lost down dead-end roads because Google Maps told you that’s where the venue was.

You will get involved in your community

People love publicity, they like to let you know they are doing stuff. Make sure you’ve got your optimistic people-loving mindset on as you’ll meet some weird, amazing and wonderful people. I’ve already met a Subbuteo enthusiast, a man who loves Open Street Maps and a bunch of rather kooky authors at a live literature night. But I love that, I love the diversity of it all.

Twitter is your friend

Twitter has been brilliant. Without it then I don’t think I’d have found half of the content I currently have on my blog. I post all my content to it, I thank guest writers, I debate things with people. Twitter is my living breathing news feed from the people of Preston. I use a great little application called Twitter Local, or the ’stalking thing’ as it was referred to by my ex-girlfriend, to find anyone who is twittering in Preston, Lancashire. I follow them to see what they are saying, and if they like what I’m about they can follow me back.

Other people will write far better than you

I have a wide and far-reaching network of guest writers. They are great and without them the blog wouldn’t work. I have someone who is an expert on the built environment, so whenever there’s a story about a ‘new development’ in Preston he knows what is actually going on. I have students climbing over each other to write stuff and get it in their published portfolios, although whether I’m a ‘real’ media outlet will be up to their tutors to decide. I want the blog to be a variety of voices writing about what they are passionate about, people will always read passionate writing. It’d be boring if it was just me all the time. One of the best and most viewed pages on the blog is ‘Get Involved‘. I count getting involved as anything from subscribing by RSS, commenting on a post to writing a guest post.

Look online and you will find

I’ve found some great content on Flickr, I have a feed of photos that comes in and is updated nearly daily with people snapping ‘Preston’ on flickr. Some of the shots are incredible. I don’t need a photo crew, I’ve got a whole photo community. The same with video, there’s plenty out there.

Don’t just sit online

Because my phone bill would be huge, I have to get off my laptop and go and speak to people. I phone people and arrange to meet them face-to-face. It’s great, the interview is so much better and you learn so much more about what’s going on. Preston Blog also inspired the Preston Tweetup that was fantastic. Just over 40 people came together, with a live-twitter feed, and discussed how the web could be used for Preston Guild in 2012. Local council’s should be doing this stuff, but they don’t, so we will instead. The ideas were ace, the people were ace and we’ll do it again sometime soon. But it was offline, it was great publicity for the blog and it made for some great content.

There’s a few thoughts about the blog and how it’s gone. I’m enjoying it and now it’s the time to get serious with it. The local newspaper has no rival, and it’s getting a bit lazy. Preston Blog has shown there is a demand for quality, local, community reporting. Preston has no newspaper, and I’d never open a newspaper, but it can have a great and virbant community journalism resource.

Over the coming months we’ll hopefully be shifting Preston Blog to a domain name, getting a new design with a proper Wordpress template. We’ll be bidding for some funding, registering as a nonprofit, and building some great content. We’ve got plans to live-cover some events over the summer, with full multimedia coverage. But, although we’ll get bigger, we will never forget what the blog is about. It’s about Preston, it’s about the people that live there, the places you can go, the things you can do, and the stories that it all holds.

Thank you to everyone who has read, writter for, commented on, twittered about or spoken about Preston Blog. We appreciate your support.