BLOGGER: Steve Sherron
FEATURED BLOG(S):
The Monroe Scoop
OTHER BLOG:
Blogger Lens
OTHER WEBSITE:
Echelon Media
TWITTER:
@SteveSherron
@EchelonMedia
FACEBOOK:
The Monroe Scoop on Facebook
Echelon Media on Facebook

Click ‘PLAY’ to listen to Steve discuss video, hyperlocal, the Networked Journalism Project, community engagement, and out-of-town Facebook Fans!

THE MONROE SCOOP

One fantastic example of hyperlocal done well is The Monroe Scoop, published by Steve Sherron, a native of Monroe, North Carolina. Started in December 2008, The Monroe Scoop now enjoys a healthy following in the Charlotte suburb– and, in 2009, the Monroe Scoop was selected by the Charlotte Observer to be part of the Networked Journalism Project, a one-year project funded by the Knight foundation, in collaboration with American University’s J-Lab: the Institute for Interactive Journalism (more on that project in a minute).

A PROFESSIONAL HOBBYIST?

While his success has been notable, Sherron started The Monroe Scoop in much the same way that most hyperlocal bloggers do: as a personal hobby.

Sherron says he was inspired to launch The Monroe Scoop when he moved back to Monroe after working in real estate development in coastal North Carolina. As the real estate market cooled, Sherron found himself with extra time on his hands and began searching for something to do with it. He quickly found inspiration through his hobby of videography, as well as through HyperlocalBlogger, a website published by Matt McGee, another blogger who uses Outside.in.

“Just as a – on a lark, I started the Monroe Scoop, and started publishing about, you know, our local community news. I had been searching for a – something to do online because I was interested in that – and I want to say that one of the people that inspired me was Matt McGee at HyperlocalBlogger.com, [...] and I’ve always told Matt that he’s a whole lot responsible for me getting into what I’m doing, because I used to read his website a lot, and I still do – he’s got probably the number one hyperlocal resource website on the internet.”

What began as outlet where he could write and continue to practice shooting and editing video quickly took on a life of its own, however. Pretty soon, Sherron found himself working on the blog on an almost full-time basis.

“Hobbies are supposed to be something that you just go out and do for fun, but [...] I probably treat it more like a job than a hobby– that’s one way that I know to describe it. It’s still – overall, it’s still a fun hobby for me, although I treat it [...] more like a full-time job,” Sherron says. “It’s like a small child– you just about can’t take your eyes off it, and it needs constant attention. [...] I have to spend time on it and tend to it all the time, daily.”

Sherron’s affection for video content also calls for a lot of his time, something he says not many people understand: what ends up running as a 3 minute video on the site may have involved several hours on location plus and additional 4-5 hours to edit, render and upload the video. Still, in spite of the time-investment that video requires, Sherron finds that video boosts engagement more than any other kind of content. “Video stands head and shoulders above the rest, as far as views,” he says.

COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTIONS

Sherron’s readership is clearly active and engaged. One way that that Sherron encourages this is by soliciting and accepting guest contributions:

“I have a few [contributors] that are regular, and I think it’s important,” Sherron says. “I allow anybody to submit a story, and I don’t care who you are. I may not publish every story, because some people are better writers than others – but I have a form that makes it really easy to submit a story or upload a tip. A lot of local people want exposure, and when you have a site like mine that garners a good bit of traffic and has a pretty high community profile, [contributing to it] really boosts [someone's] profile in the community.”

THE NETWORKED JOURNALISM PROJECT & WHY EVERY BLOGGER NEEDS TO KNOW SEO

Just as Sherron’s readership may get a boost in the community from having their contributions appear on his site, Sherron himself has felt a real boost from his involvement in the Networked Journalism Project, which we mentioned earlier. He says the partnership has involved a lot of teaching and learning on both sides – the Charlotte Observer will teach Sherron and the other hyperlocal sites (namely: DavidsonNews.net, QCityMetro.com, TegaCayTalk, and Villa Heights Voice) who are part of the experiment about the media business– and the hyperlocalists, in turn, will share with the Charlotte Observer about their communities and experiences.

“They have been awesome,” Sherron says. “They’re ask us, ‘OK, what do you want to know?’ — and we’ll say, ‘we want to learn more about journalism,’ or ‘we want to learn about advertising,’ and they’ll schedule a specific class with industry experts, just for us. That’s one of the great things about this partnership.”

Sherron says he would like to learn to be better at journalism, and hopes the Networked Journalism Project will help him in that quest. He also adds that he thinks all hyperlocal bloggers could stand to learn a thing or two about SEO if they don’t know about it already. The reason? Even hyperlocal bloggers need to kick back and go on vacation every once in a while, but they may neglect this because they feel they can’t be away from the blog, not even for a day– a misconception Sherron feels can be resolved through a little SEO:

“Once you reach a certain phase in your blog, I think that parts of it are out of your control. In other words, I think that I could not post for a couple weeks, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that traffic would continue to flow. I’ve done a lot of SEO on my site, and a lot of people find it through organic Google searches. Fast breaking articles are great, and if you posted a timely article, you’re going to get a lot of traffic TODAY, and basically NONE two weeks from now. But if you’ve written about your local high schools or city government, these are searches that go on forever in Google and you’ll be sitting there on top of the search engines and you’ll get that traffic. After you get established, you can take a two-week vacation, and I don’t think your traffic will take a serious hit.”

SOCIAL MEDIA & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Community contributions aren’t the only way Sherron works to build community around his site — certain social media tools have also proven invaluable to him in terms of engagement. Video content uploaded to Facebook, for instance, fosters loyalty and drives traffic, Sherron finds, even though he’s not simply pushing blog content onto his Facebook page.

“You don’t always have to put what you’re doing on the site in your Facebook,” Sherron says. “You don’t want to double up the content. Now, if I have interesting stories, I’ll post a link [...] but some of the other things I like to do– I like to take a Flip cameras, and when I’m out and about in the community, I might shoot little 1 minute videos – sometimes I call those the ‘Monroe Minute’ – [...] the people appreciate that.”

Appreciation converts into engagement– which is why Sherron says that in his particular market, Facebook is king amongst all the social media tools.

“The number one thing that I do to engage the community is a strong Facebook presence. Facebook – you can drive tremendous amounts of traffic to your website through Facebook. [...] If you engage with your Facebook fans and you treat [...] your Facebook page like an extension of yourself and your site, your Facebook fans will [...] definitely climb in numbers every week, they will support your site, they will send your site traffic. So, I think Facebook is one of the most important things that you can do.”

While Sherron does use Twitter, he finds that much of his audience doesn’t.

“I use Twitter, but Twitter – there is literally no comparison [to Facebook]. [Your referrals] will tell you where you need to concentrate. I enjoy Twitter — it’s quick, it’s simple — but most of my users don’t use it. We’re basically a suburb of Charlotte, and Charlotte is extremely big on Twitter. I’m more rural, and I can see it out here – we’re more of a Facebook community than a Twitter community. As you get closer in to Charlotte, the Twitter community picks up [in a huge way]. It definitely depends on your community and the geographic area you’re in.”

BUT THE BEST PART ABOUT BEING A HYPERLOCAL BLOGGER?

In the end, the biggest benefit Sherron has seen from the blogging has been through the community he has built via the blog and the doors that this community-building has opened for him:

“I think when you start a local, community site, you’re going to have more doors open to you and more new connections to people in your community than you would have ever realized. I have more access to community players, big shots, your local city government, the police force, the fire department. If you start a community site and you are fair in your reporting and people realize that they can trust you, they will open their doors to you. I have community players on my speed dial and I’ll just call them and say, ‘This is Steve, I need to come over and interview you,’ — and it has created a totally new network for me. They will look at you as a hyperlocal blogger, but they consider you the media. I get the same attention as a TV reporter or a local news reporter. When I show up with my video camera, I get the same interviews.”

P.S.: If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to esther[at]outside[dot]in.

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