Posts Tagged "GeoToolkit"

25
Sep 09

Two new Blogger HQs and Blogger Tip #2

Posted by chrysanthe in Announcements — View Comments

We have two new o.i Blogger HQs joining the ranks with Jackson, St. Louis, and Tacoma: Charlottesville and NYC! If you use Tumblr, you can follow any one of these blogs to automatically see our posts on your dashboard, or you can visit the sites directly to see the fun video we made to highlight the blogger-outside.in-publisher ecosystem connection and the city blogroll. We’ll continually update the blogroll as new bloggers come on board–check and see if your go-to blog is featured. Let us know if it’s not there!

If you’re a local blogger in Charlottesville with your feed in our system, we’ll be syndicating your content to the Daily Progress (clicks for you!). And as you may have seen earlier, we’re now syndicating neighborhood posts from NYC bloggers to the New York Post–in all five boroughs, even! If you want to maximize the number of pages your posts show up on, be sure to follow Blogger Tip #2 (below) and geotag your feed in our system. We’re continuing the series of tips with a funny sounding but useful one. Click through to find out what it’s all about:

Blogger Tip #2: Don’t Forget geoSEO

We’re starting to feature interviews with great local bloggers using our tools on the blogger HQs, so if you’d like to be included, or if you want to recommend someone for us, hit us up here.

Get a map for your blog!

21
Sep 09

Announcing o.i Blogger HQs + Blogger Tip #1

Posted by chrysanthe in General / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Just as we’re doing in Roanoke, we’re building communities of hyperlocal bloggers in Tacoma, St. Louis, and Jackson. These sites, which we’re affectionately calling “o.i Blogger HQs” are a resource to local bloggers in those cities: to find out tips and information and connect with each other. Check out what we’re posting and join the conversation in the comments. If you’re a local blogger in any of those cities, check us out and submit your blog, and then drop us a line if you’d like to be on our blogroll.

We have a list of new cities that we’ll be rolling out, but if you want to pump your city up in the queue, write to us and let us know about the hyperlocal efforts in your city!

o.i Blogger HQ Tip #1: Go Where Traditional Media Doesn’t

As always, feel free to send us ideas, questions, or comments on local blogging!

3
Mar 09

The Real Estate Blogs

Posted by Jared in Uncategorized — View Comments

Real estate blogs were some of the fastest to catch on to the benefit of StoryMaps.  From the early days of outside.in, we always imagined that our site would be a terrific resource for people thinking about moving to a new neighborhood.  Want to know what it would be like to live in Lincoln Park, Chicago?  Go to outside.in/lincoln_park_chicago_il and see what the big news is, what people are thinking about, and if it’s a place that jives with your sensibility.  Real estate bloggers understand this too and see us as a natural partner.  Below is a sampling of some great real estate blogs that have StoryMaps.  Which do you like best and why?  Want to join the club and get a map for your real estate blog?  Go to GeoToolkit.

West Richland Real Estate Blog (West Richland, WA)

Kennewick Real Estate Blog (Kennewick, WA)

Tucson, AZ Real Estate Blog (Tucson, AZ)

MN Real Estate Update (Anoka County Lakeshore)

Phoenix Market Trends (Phoenix, AZ)

Get a map for your blog.

30
Jan 09

Atlantans Together Against Crime

Posted by Jared in Uncategorized — View Comments

AtlantansTogether.org recently put a StoryMap on their site. They introduce themselves much better than I can:

Atlantans Together Against Crime (ATAC) has been established in response to the wave of violent crime that is taking over our city. More and more we hear stories of friends and family being assaulted, robbed at gunpoint, and now, just recently, murdered. The increase in violent crime is staggering – and heartbreaking – but as these stories become more and more common, city officials are cutting back the police force and claiming crime is on the decline.

This clarity of social purpose highlights one of the most exciting aspects of working with hyperlocal bloggers, helping them grow their readership, and helping those readers find the stories that matter to them most.  Local blogs and small online publishers can certainly help plug the holes in the cost structures of major newspapers, but that is not their only utility.  Much like journalism in an ideal state, sites like ATAC commit to distributing important information to their neighbors, fulfilling a societal need.  The more Atlantans know about the crime that’s happening in their community, the more connected to it they feel and the more inclined they are to do something about it.

ATAC serves this purpose as well as anybody, and we at outside.in are committed to helping them–and all local sites–grow.

(Get a map for your blog.)

1
Dec 08

StoryMaps on Metblogs

Posted by Rob in General — View Comments

We are thrilled that the good folks over at Metblogs added our maps to their pages over the weekend, as Metblogs chief Sean Bonner reported on their blog earlier today.

Metblogs StoryMaps

When we were designing our StoryMaps a couple of months ago our main goal was to build a tool that was really useful to bloggers and publishers. In this case, by helping their users better navigate around their local content.

Metblogs is right at the heart of what hyperlocal content creation is all about, and we think the outside.in maps are a great addition to their sites.

If you are interested in getting maps for your site or blog, you can find out more here.

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20
Nov 08

Outside.in StoryMaps Help Guide

Posted by mark in General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

So, you’ve registered for GeoToolkit and you’ve generated the code to add a StoryMap to your blog. What do you do with that code? (If you don’t have your code yet, go to GeoToolkit, register your site, and get your code!) Here are the instructions for pasting the code into the sidebar of the most common blog platforms. If you don’t see your platform below or want to put your StoryMap in another part of your site but aren’t sure how, email us for instructions.

Blogger (for example any site with “blogspot” in the URL)

  1. Click the Layout tab
  2. Click Add a Gadget (if you don’t see ‘Add a Gadget,’ click on the Page Elements link at the top of the page.)
  3. Scroll down to the HTML/JavaScript gadget and click it.
  4. Give your StoryMap a title, paste the code in the ‘Content’ box, and click the Save button on the bottom right.
  5. View your blog and admire your new StoryMap!

WordPress
(Currently only non-hosted WordPress accounts are supported. WordPress.com StoryMaps are coming soon!)

Option A (The Plugin)–Go to The outside.in StoryMap WordPress Plugin and follow the instructions there.

Option B (Manual Code Paste)

  1. Click “Appearance” in the left column, then click “Editor” in the section that opens beneath Appearance
  2. Click “Sidebar” under the “Theme Files” header in the right column.
  3. This part is a little tricky—you need to figure out where you want your map to show up compared to other sidebar elements. This will usually be right after a </li> tag for another sidebar item.
  4. Once you’ve found the correct spot, type type <li id=”My StoryMap”>, paste your StoryMap code, then type </li>.
  5. Depending on your template, you may want to add a header above your StoryMap in <h2> or <h3> tags.
  6. *Note* The above instructions may differ depending on your template. Send us an email with specific questions.

Typepad
Make sure you have the option to customize your theme. Typically, it’s only available to subscribers at the Plus level and above.

Follow these instructions to add the StoryMap to your Typepad theme.

Tumblr
(We recommend you use the small map size to start and then customize it, if you need to.)

  1. Click on Customize in the top right corner
  2. Click on Info in the top left corner
  3. Paste the code into the Description field.
  4. Click on Save Changes in the top right corner.
  5. Admire your map and go to GeoToolkit to change the size if you need to.

8
Oct 08

GeoToolkit News: StoryMaps for Sidebars

Posted by Nina in General — View Comments
Great news! Today we updated StoryMaps to work better in your site’s sidebar. Instead of opening a wide bubble when you click on a place marker, maps under 300 pixels now show the stories in a list view that’s cleaner and much more user-friendly for narrow sidebars.

If you already have a StoryMap that’s 300 pixels wide or smaller, it has been automatically updated with our new release. If not, check it out! Sign up for GeoToolkit and grab the code to put a StoryMap on your site.

Want to see StoryMaps in the wild? Check out: http://www.riverwestneighborhood.org

18
Sep 08

New Navigation & Promotion Tool for Local Sites

Posted by mark in Announcements / News — View Comments

Today we launch StoryMaps, the next offering in our GeoToolkit—products to help publishers promote, optimize and monetize their local content.

Our goal is to leverage location data and the geoweb to help local publishers reach a larger audience and our StoryMaps are the first of many products designed to do that.

Local publishers write about places and things happening within a specific geography and readers live their lives the same way — “What’s going on around me?”

Until now, bloggers only had the option of displaying their stories on a chronological basis, with feeds that showed just the most recent posts and pushed the rest off the page and into oblivion.  If a local blogger wrote about a great new restaurant or about a recent town meeting and some readers didn’t visit the site that day, that post was gone and the blogger had missed the opportunity to reach those readers.

But its not just about letting readers see content that is more than a day old. It’s about letting users view content in a way that makes sense to them – organized around the places each post is written about.  So they not only see a current post about that place, but links to all previous posts about that location as well.  That translates to a better, more full reading experience for them — and to more pageviews for the blogger.

Now, with Outside.in’s StoryMaps, they can promote their content by geography and places — and use  a permanent promotion and navigation element that matches how their local readers live and want to explore content.

Placing a StoryMap on your site will drive more pageviews; and that’s what we’re trying to do.

You can see some great examples of local sites using StoryMaps to promote their content here:

How it Works

These StoryMaps are found in GeoToolkit under the “Tools” tab.  Until now, GeoToolkit members could see and edit the place data our geotagging engine finds in their content in the “Feed” tab of GeoToolkit.  They could also see the geoanalytics — the stats on places, neighborhoods and connections — in the “Stats” tab.

GeoToolkit members can now easily grab code and put a map on their page that shows where their stories are in their neighborhood.

These interactive StoryMaps highlight each post and aggregates the content around the places they are writing about.  They can be adjusted to look deeper into the archives as well.

So, come grab the code and try out a StoryMap on your site.  Please give us feedback on what you like and what you’d like to see in future updates and products.

Mark

8
Sep 08

GeoToolkit Member Roundup: Our Favorite New Sites

Posted by josh in General — View Comments

This post in a first in a series where we’ll feature exemplary GeoToolkit member sites.

One of the wonderful things about working on our GeoToolkit service is the daily report of signups.  It is exciting to see lots of wonderful new placeblogs joining every day, and I am pleasantly surprised at the volume of topic blogs, and even communities that are joining too.  Here are a few sites (in no particular order) and some of the great things they are doing:

Blogs that Don’t Consider Themselves Placeblogs (but oftentimes are)

Big Placeblogs

Both of these are  great examples of placeblogs devoted to the happenings and news around particular places:

  • My Ballard and the growing empire of Seattle sites run by Cory and Kate Bergman.
  • angelenic covering downtown LA.

Small Placeblogs

  • On the Red Line is about life around the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Stop in North Bethesda Maryland (DC).
  • Five Blocks is a hyperhyperlocal blog covering a very small area in San Clemente, CA.

Food Blogs

Food is another great way into place and two of the great food blogs that have joined are:

Groups

  • The Lintononian,  a ning community  about goings-on in Linton, Indiana, added their feed.

Look out for future “Member Roundup” posts in the weeks to come. Think your blog deserves a mention? Write to us in the comments section, and as always, thanks for supporting GeoToolkit!

15
Aug 08

The outside.in Guide to Great Local Blogging, Part II: Linking

Posted by josh in General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

Hyperlocal blogging is about connections both real and virtual. Several weeks ago Chrysanthe wrote a post with advice on how to be a great local blogger . Tip #2 on her list was:

Connect with your neighbors and other local bloggers. Share ideas with other bloggers and leave comments on their site. If someone else has the scoop, link to them. If you write a post inspired by another blogger, give them a shout out and thanks. People tend to link back, and the more links you receive, the more credible you’ll be as a source. Talk about local places and issues in our discussion boards. Remember, you are part of a larger community — the hyperlocal blogging community — so make friends out there! “

Links are a currency in blogging. If someone is linking to a story of yours it is probably because you are either breaking a story, telling them something they don’t know, or expressing yourself in a way they find interesting. They are the way information flows. Links not only tie you into your hyperlocal blogging community but help drive traffic through distribution, increase your search rankings, and give you reputation.

I thought I would spend a minute explaining how My Connections stats in GeoToolkit can help develop this currency. We show you which of your stories are linked, who is doing the linking, and who you link to (these are from posts, not linkrolls). Someone remarked to me that you can get referrer information from Google Analytics and other programs. True, but we’re going beyond traffic numbers.

GeoToolkit shows you the local ecosystem in which you blog. If people are linking to your stories — you’re ahead of the game. If other bloggers aren’t, or aren’t linking as much you’d like, you can take a look at who you are linking to in a time-based view for up to the past 6 months. You might find some interesting patterns that you can use to form connections; you could let a site know how much you dig their stuff, or if inform them that you are driving traffic and get some links back, or even reach out offline and grab some coffee. The more solid these connections are, the more you will be part of the hyperlocal mix.

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