A geoToolkit member who runs a site called Hyperlocalblogger.com has started a very helpful series of posts called Starting a Hyperlocal Blog based on his experience building out four real estate and hyperlocal focused blogs with his wife.  For real estate pros good blogging isn’t just about their listings but about what is going on in their neighborhoods. They raise their profiles, establish their expertise and convey the sense of place to prospective buyers. As he writes “You’re Now a Local Journalist, and Local Events are a Great Source of Content” so if you are thinking of starting or improving you hyperlocal site check out his posts.

The New York Times has a great story about placebloggers in suburbs and smaller urban areas.  It speaks to the role they play in providing voice and local coverage in their towns especially in areas that are underserved by their local papers.

It also speaks to who we at Outside.in are trying to help and is a great opportunity to explain a bit more about what we are trying to do:

We help placebloggers optimize, promote and monetize their content.

It starts when these sites sign up to use our free GeoTookit.  We process and geotag their feeds and create a rich GeoRSS feed.  We then create pretty cool applications (i.e. embeddable maps) and geoanalytics that help optimize, promote and monetize their content.  We’ll have more about all of these in the next few weeks as we roll out more tools via GeoToolkit.

But, back to the NYT article.  We see such a big opportunity for this model of high quality independent content creators.  We see a very clear trend among consumers to demand more “me-centric” content — very discrete bits of content about exactly what they want — keyword alerts, discrete content feeds, email newsletters, etc.  The problem (and thus, the opportunity!) is that most existing traditional media are not able to provide local content at the “me-centric” or hyperlocal level.  Their business model lets them get to the zip code or town level, and even still they are facing some real challenges.  And, just because you live in a town or zip code, doesn’t mean you are the same as everyone else in that town or zip.

This is where placebloggers come in.  They can, and do, cover news and info at the neighborhood level.  The ease of the publishing platform (blogs) and the acceleration of monetization via networks and targeted ad sales are making this a much more viable way to spend time (as the NYT describes).

We track thousands of these sites and are witnessing first-hand how successful they are and how fast this segment is growing.

So, thank you NYT for shining a little more light on placebloggers and the good work they do.

If you have any thoughts on things we can do to help better support these bloggers, please post in the comments and we’ll respond.

Our next monthly RHH (Ruby Happy Hour) is this coming Wednesday evening. As usual, free beer to the best singer at Rock Band. (Just kidding, beer and pizza for everyone.) Hope to see you there!

See pics from our previous Ruby event here.

Where: outside.in, 20 Jay St Suite 1019 (10th Fl), Brooklyn, NY
When: 7-9pm, August 13th
Who: if you’re a developer who uses Ruby and would like to meet some other Ruby folks, toss around ideas, or just have a few beers, we welcome you with open arms!