Posts Tagged "google"

8
Jun 10

Bloggers We Love: Natasha ‘Tasha’ Ball (Part 2 of 2)

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

BLOGGER: Natasha ‘Tasha’ Ball

FEATURED BLOG(S): Tasha Does Tulsa

TWITTER: @TashaDoesTulsa (Tasha Does Twitter)

FACEBOOK: Tasha Does Facebook

FLICKR: Tasha Does Tulsa on Flickr

TASHA’S TOP TIPS FOR BLOGGERS

Last week we introduced you to another local Blogger We Love, Tasha Ball of Tasha Does Tulsa. This week, we’re bringing you her top tips for local bloggers!

1. FOCUS GROUPS.

“My advice would be: before setting up a blog of any kind, spend a couple of weeks writing, thinking and talking about your blog idea. Talk to people who would care about what you’d be writing about and ask them: ‘what do people want to know’? You can get an idea about what your site should look like that way.”

2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

“As I was starting out, I read The Pioneer Woman a lot. Her site is pretty and I admire her, really—the way she’s so lighthearted. If you visit her blog, it’s guaranteed that you’re probably going to smile, at least a little bit. In the middle of a lonely day,  you can go to The Pioneer Woman and get that goofy, funny thing. I’ve enjoyed watching her photography improve and I aspire to that myself. I like to think I’m teaching myself photography, like Ree Drummond. I do a lot of reading of Oklahoma blogs—that’s something I’m passionate about.”

3. LOOKING TO GO PRO? DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY.

“I do make some money off of my blog – but it’s just like writing: your money comes from a lot of little different places. Some of my income comes from local ads, some of it comes from internet ads, and some of it comes from freelance blogging projects: for instance, I contribute to a local TV station that has a mom site. When you’re a writer, you very rarely have one income source—that’s something I always remind bloggers of when they start out: they should diversify.

It’s really tough to make it happen any one way—and, as a blogger, you have to straddle the editorial/advertising divide, which are usually separate in traditional media. It’s a full-time job in and of itself to sell ads.”

4. ESTABLISH A ROUTINE.

“I think it’s pretty important to post something every day, or at least to establish a consistent posting schedule so readers can rely on that and know when to check back on your blog.”

5. OFFER INSIDER TIPS.

“If you’re a local blogger, you want your readers to be that guy at the water cooler who knows everything that’s going on in town– especially the underground stuff—because he read it on your blog.”

6. LISTEN TO YOUR READERSHIP (& DON’T FORGET THE ‘BURBS!)

“I use Twitter and Facebook to connect with my audience, but I see a lot of people who don’t use them as an interactive tool but rather for SOAPBOXING, which doesn’t work. Oh my gosh, I don’t think I would have gotten to meet half of the interesting people I’ve met through blogging if it weren’t for Twitter. I love to ask all kinds of questions, like: ‘what’s the best make-out spot in Tulsa?’

(It turns out Woodward Park is a top spot for romance in Tulsa)

I also have a lot of readers in Tulsa’s suburbs [and I'm careful not to neglect them]. I figure if an area is in the metropolitan statistical area, they deserve coverage. There are really cool, unique, independent businesses in the 6-7 surrounding counties.”

7. TRY NEW THINGS.

“I just want to be able to continue to offer readers inside information into what makes this city interesting. And whatever enables me to do that— whether it’s reader submitted content, an events calendar, an exclusive calendar, different types of media such as a podcast or video—I’m looking into all of those things.”

8. GIVE YOUR READERS A TASTE OF THE REAL THING.

“Make your local blog a one-stop shop for your town or city. Tell your readers the best place to eat – just don’t tell me it’s Ruby Tuesday or Red Robin! Give them the night life, a true taste of your city and what makes it special. Write about it and publicize it not just for visitors, but also for locals that live there, too.”

9.  BE PREPARED FOR SKEPTICS & STRIVE TO ENROLL THEM.

“I still get the ‘what is a blog?’ question here in Tulsa. I STILL get that question! Or, ‘What’s Facebook? What’s Twitter?’ People will say ‘I don’t do those things.’ The internet freaks them out. I tell people I run a website and they look at me kinda like I have leprosy or something. I have this challenge to not only tell these people about the technology but I also have to say ‘Did you know that Tulsa is this really cool place and you should let me tell you about it? Oh, and I post 4-5 times a day!” Those two things are kind of tough.

10. VISIT TULSA!

“I do think we’re the greatest city in the world! For instance, in what other city…
- Could you find an art and food scene to make the snooty snoots take notice?
- Find two world-class museums (one of them has the largest collection of Western American Art IN THE WORLD)?
- Find one of the largest collections of Art Deco buildings in the world?
- Visit ‘America’s Favorite Zoo,’ (and hang out with a rhino and his keeper on Rhino Awareness Day)?
- Go to one of the largest BBQs in the state?
- Go to a gunshow and a rodeo IN THE SAME WEEKEND?”

Like we said last week: Tulsa, OK is, well, kind of a big deal — and so is Tasha Ball.

P. S. Local bloggers, don’t forget to register your blog here. It’s quick, simple, and will help drive traffic to your blog.

P.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@outside.in

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3
Jun 10

Bloggers We Love: Natasha ‘Tasha’ Ball (Part 1 of 2)

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

BLOGGER: Natasha ‘Tasha’ Ball

FEATURED BLOG(S): Tasha Does Tulsa

TWITTER: @TashaDoesTulsa (Tasha Does Twitter)

FACEBOOK: Tasha Does Facebook

FLICKR: Tasha Does Tulsa on Flickr

TASHA DOES TULSA

Natasha Ball thinks Tulsa, OK is, well, kind of a big deal, to use the parlance of our times.

Actually, more accurately, Natasha Ball – or, simply Tasha, as her readers know her – thinks Tulsa, OK is the GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD!

Tasha in Downtown Tulsa, OK

While that may sound pretty audacious to some of us big city dwellers, after reading Tasha Does Tulsa and having a wonderful telephone conversation with Tasha last week, I can honestly say that I have a newfound desire to visit Tulsa, and I’m confident that when I do, I will have an awesome time (and an amazing tour guide!).

TASHA LOVES TULSA

Seriously, though– I don’t think I’ve spoken to many people who are as enthusiastic and genuine in their love for their town or city as Tasha Ball. As a Tulsa native, her love for the city is contagious, exciting, and completely authentic:

“I’ve lived in Tulsa my whole life, except for when I went away to school and a few months here and there that don’t really count. My family has been here since before Oklahoma was a state, before Tulsa was a city.  It’s this huge thing in my life: there is nowhere else.  I have this huge sense of place.  It’s my whole life.”

Ball says she got her first job fresh out of college, right after she moved back to Tulsa and fell in love with the city all over again. She simply walked into the local news office of the Tulsa Business Journal, handed her resume to the editor and said something to the effect of “hire me, please!”

The editor liked her approach so much that he hired her on the spot (get this: she still freelances for the publication today). One of her beats at the paper was tourism, but because the Tulsa Business Journal is a B2B publication, Ball felt she wasn’t getting to proselytize her love for Tulsa in the way that she wanted:

“There’s something about downtown Tulsa right now that’s just magical. There’s a big time revitalization that’s been underway for a while, and there are always new things going on. It’s really easy if you work downtown every day to get on fire about everything that’s happening and to get really excited about it, which is what happened to me.  I would go home and hear my grandmother talk about how she used to ride the trolley to downtown Tulsa to do her Christmas shopping in the snow – I could see the historic aspects of it coming into play and I wanted to tell EVERYBODY about it, but the paper wasn’t really the right platform.”

TASHA BLOGS TULSA

The right platform, it turns out, would be a blog – which is how Tasha Does Tulsa was born:

“I’d just heard this refrain throughout my whole teenage life: ‘Tulsa is a boring, Mid-western city — Tulsa is Fly-over country — anywhere-but-here,’ – and that always kind of teed me off. I never understood why everyone wanted to leave. I wanted to challenge that refrain. I say: if you say Tulsa is boring then you’re probably not looking very closely at what the city has to offer. A couple of coworkers and I were at a bar downtown one night, trying to think of ways I could talk to people about this passion I have for Tulsa and I thought, wow, this would be funny, I’ll start a blog – let’s call it ‘Tasha Does Tulsa,’ – and then everyone agreed and encouraged me to do it.”

She started slowly, but when she got pregnant with her first child, Ball found the time to get serious about blogging. Today she spends approximately 20 hours per week on blog-related activities.

TASHA KNOWS TULSA

When she’s not blogging, Ball is a full-time mom as well as a freelance writer. She writes regularly for both the Tulsa Business Journal (as their food and entertainment writer), as well as for Oklahoma Magazine (FACT: she landed that gig after meeting the magazine’s publisher at a social media panel where she was speaking on behalf of her blog).

Clearly, Ball’s love for Tulsa is not an unrequited one – not only is she an award-winning blogger and regular freelance writer, but she’s also a weekly staple on KRMG talk radio each Friday morning. Keeping busy is just one of the by-products of being a successful blogger and freelancer, Ball says, adding that meeting interesting Oklahomans and Tulsans is one of the highlights of hyperlocal blogging:

“The people I have met because of blogging—that part has been absolutely incredible. I love getting to know people who are passionate about our city. Since it has improved – I hate to say ‘improved,’ because Tulsa has always been a really cool, weird little place anyway— people want to make it their own by starting new projects and putting their stamp on the city. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people like that.”

For instance, Ball recently helped to found the Tulsa Blogger Meet-Up, which is in its fourth month. She says they usually invite a speaker, and then she and the rest of Tulsa’s top bloggers meet at an independently-owned Tulsa restaurant to drink beer and talk blogging:

“When you write a local blog, it tends to get you out of the house a lot. Naturally, I normally like to sit at home on my butt, but blogging makes me practice what I preach: getting out and about in Tulsa. I’ve discovered all kinds of really neat, on-the-inside-track things. Things my parents and grandparents didn’t know about – and I get to share it with people. Then someone writes to me and says: ‘I saw something on your blog and I went and tried it – your memories are with me.’ People are taking time to do the things I suggest: that’s pretty huge, and that’s what keeps me blogging. There’s no higher compliment than that for me as a blogger.”

Just another day in the life of a fabulously cosmopolitan, unabashedly Midwestern, enthusiastically hyperlocal Blogger We Love.

Check back next week to read Tasha’s Top Tips for Bloggers!

P. S. Local bloggers, don’t forget to register your blog here. It’s quick, simple, and will help drive traffic to your blog.

P.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@outside.in

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27
May 10

Bloggers We Love: Lee Frank and Rachel Anderson

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

BLOGGERS: Lee Frank (Managing Editor) & Rachel Anderson (Senior Correspondent)

FEATURED BLOG(S): NachosNY

TWITTER:

@NachosNY

@LeeMFrank

FACEBOOK: NachosNY on Facebook

FLICKR: NachosNY on Flickr

12 Steps To Building a Better Blog

(or a Delicious Plate of Nachos)

Rachel, Esther and Lee at Outside.in

This week we sat down with roommates Lee Frank and Rachel Anderson of the hyperlocal blog NachosNY. We took the liberty of using the knowledge and experience they shared with us to create a 12-step program for building a better blog as if you were building a plate of delicious nachos. Buen provecho!


1. CHIPS : CONTENT

Ultimately, the test of a great plate of nachos comes down to the chips: are the chips high quality (good enough to get noticed and keep people coming back for more)? Are they fresh and plentiful? Do the chips hold up under all the toppings, or do they get soggy? Just as all of these factors matter with chips, they matter with blog content. Are your posts innovative, interesting, compelling? Do you post often enough to keep your blog fresh? These are all questions you should ask yourself as a blogger (and especially as a local blogger). NachosNY, for example, finds that their blogging niche — the quest for the best nachos in New York City — provides them with a deep well (a veritable all-you-can-eat nacho buffet!) of quality story ideas to draw from :

LEE: My favorite spot is El Maguey y La Tuna, it’s on East Houston and Attorney. They have like 8 different kinds of nachos, even nachos with broccoli, which are awesome. They also have a really awesome jalapeno margarita. Nobody else likes it, because it’s a little painful – but that’s why I like it. But we’ve also eaten these bad nachos so you don’t have to go and eat them. New York is NOT known for its Mexican food by any means, but in New York you can still find all kinds of great food all over the place. I know there are places that we haven’t uncovered that that probably have really great nachos that we just haven’t gotten to yet.

RACHEL: After a nacho crawl we’ll stop for a couple of days – but we’ll never be finished.

2. MEAT & BEANS : PASSION

Meat and beans (think ground beef, grilled chicken, black beans or refried pintos) are what make nachos into a meal: the protein packs a real energy punch. The same is true of passion and blogging – passion is what gives bloggers their initial jolt of energy, as well as the fortitude and staying power to keep on bloggin’:

LEE: I love nachos. I used to talk about nachos so much that the girl I was dating at the time made me a ‘I <3 Nachos,’ T-shirt. I wasn’t even in New York yet. I was living in China, and I was blogging there about the city I was in. When I came back I wanted to start another blog because I really enjoyed it – and my friend was telling me how it had to be niche, how I had to find something I knew and liked. Nachos was, like, the first thing I could think of – I love nachos.

RACHEL: Learn to be confident in what you’re doing, whether it’s nachos or a cause or something – you have to be able to talk about it and be proud of what you’re doing.

3. SOUR CREAM : MERCHANDISE & SIGNATURE EVENTS

Sour cream can only make nachos cooler, right? The same goes with signature events and merchandise sold on your blog, particularly if they’re conceived and branded just for your blog and its audience (making some extra money on the side? Super cool, especially if you can spend it on… more nachos!):

LEE: We have the merchandise, we have three T-shirts that we sell. They do pretty well, especially at the events – we’ll do nacho crawls and then we just had the Guactacular, which was completely sold out – 370 people showed up. This year’s Guactacular was our first successful event, money-wise.

4. CHEESE & SALSA : COMMUNITY

Salsa and cheese are the elements on your nachos that really tie the whole nacho experience together. The same can be said of your blog’s readership: nearly every blogger we’ve spoken to has said their blog’s community is what ties the whole blogging experience together for them and gives it meaning. Blog communities are as varied and diverse as types of salsa, but the best of them are always fresh, lively and full of local flavor — though of course there’s also nothing like a blog community that has ripened and matured, like a beautifully aged cheddar:

LEE: We like how it’s a shareable thing: there are so many people we can meet and so many people we can talk to about nachos. I actually really like getting emails from people where they’re like, ‘um, my family, like, really likes nachos that are made with Doritos. Do you know where we can find some of those in New York?’ and at first I’m, like, flinching, because, you know, that sounds gross— but then I try to figure it out. I like getting emails like that, or tweets about things like that.

RACHEL: I want more people to feel more comfortable commenting and being more involved in the process. We’re really interested in seeing what other people have to say and getting formal nacho reviews from other people, or just interacting with others on Twitter, trying to get more of a solid community.

LEE: … You should come eat nachos with us.

5. GUACAMOLE : CORPORATE SPONSORSHIPS

Guacamole: the luscious, buttery dip made from avocados, joy, and a few other ingredients (usually onions, tomatoes, lime juice, salt and perhaps some spices). We think guacamole is mostly joy, though — and the same can be said of corporate sponsorships for your blog and/or blogging-related events. NachosNY was certainly joyful upon securing an amazing corporate sponsorship for this year’s Guactacular:

LEE: There’s a company called Avocados From Mexico. One of the people that was competing [in the Guactacular] works at Ketchum PR, and they represent Avocados From Mexico, and they were really interested in the event, so they approached us and gave us all 720 avocados. Every avocado used in the event was from them. So it really came in handy.

6. CHILI: NEW SKILLS

Chili is a magical dish: you find it all over the culinary map: beans, no beans, meat, no meat, red, white, you name it. You can make chili however you like it, and when you do you may notice that your particular chili recipe is pretty special — kinda like the new skills you’ll learn as a blogger. Not every blogger will learn the same skills — whether you’re mastering HTML, video blogging, podcasting or photography, you’re making your own unique brand of chili, and it will only improve your blog, and ultimately your skill set as an individual. Plus, even if you’re not crazy about chili on your nachos, if you eat ‘em often enough you’ll find that chili can’t always be avoided — just as every blogger will inevitably pick up new skills, whether they were intending to or not:

RACHEL: I have my undergrad in Gender Studies, so it’s kind of not really focused on any sort of career path, but now I work at a women’s non-profit and I do web design and IT and I’m in charge of all of their social media. I’ve been able to kind of tailor my blog experience to my job now.

7. PEPPERS & HOT SAUCE : THE HUMAN CONNECTION

Just as chili peppers and hot sauce add heat to your nachos, human connections made via blogging adventures will add heat to your life and fuel your passion for blogging. In fact, the effect can be life-changing. Real friendships, business contacts, even romantic relationships are forged every day via blogging adventures:

LEE: I met my girlfriend at the last Guactactular, a year ago. The night of the event she was there, and we were closing down the event, and we, like, just made eye contact and it’s been a fairytale ever since.

8. ONIONS : SOCIAL MEDIA

Ah, onions. Some of us almost can’t live without them – they’re in the base of so many cuisines (mirepoix, sofrito – it seems like every holy trinity has ‘em). I won’t go so far as to say that every great dish of nachos must contain onions, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that many of the best nachos wouldn’t be nearly as delicious if they weren’t flavored by onions in some way. Whether they’re found in the salsa, in the seasoning of the meat, or as a simple topping, onions of all types can be found in nachos the world over. The same can be said of social media tools: not all of the best bloggers use them, but most do – and for most, they’re indispensable:

RACHEL: Twitter has been really great for us – we love interacting with readers on Twitter.

LEE: I have a Google Alert that I have for ‘nachos’ that I get every day and I’m like, “oh, that’s a funny tweet to send out.”

9. OLIVES : MOBILE BLOGGING

Not everyone loves olives on their nachos, but those of us that do also know that they’re a pretty great snack in a pinch. You’ll often find them in a martini or as a snack at the bar, plus you can always pack them up for a picnic. They may not be the MOST portable snack, but they’re pretty good — a lot like mobile blogging tools (such as the iPad, cleverly compared to nachos here). Blogging on-the-go isn’t ideal, but for some of us, it’s really useful:

RACHEL: The WordPress iPhone App is actually kind of awesome. I use that now, whenever I eat at a restaurant, I try to do it on the subway on the way home, because you can just do it and save the draft to your iPhone, and then I publish it later.

10. CILANTRO & LETTUCE: CONTROVERSIAL CONTENT

Some of us love cilantro with an undying passion, while for others, cilantro is as repulsive as a mouthful of soap (literally). The same kind of gulf exists between the lettuce/no lettuce schools of thought in the nacho world. That said, it must be pointed out that even if some of your readers may disagree with you vehemently, one sure way to engage your readership is to experiment with controversial content. NachosNY does this annually on St. Patrick’s Day with their Irish Nachos. Sometimes it works and others… not so much:

RACHEL: [Irish Nachos are] supposed to be some sort of potato product, cheese and bacon. The first year was actually thick slices of potato – it wasn’t even fries or anything, you had to eat it with a knife – and it was gouda and bacon and sour cream.

LEE: It was delicious.

RACHEL: And then this year was really kind of gross – it was loaded cheese fries.

LEE: Disgusting.

11. LIME JUICE : INNOVATIVE EVENTS

The acidity of lime juice balances the richness of the cheese, sour cream, meat and other delicious ingredients that give your nachos heft. Think of new, innovative events as the thing that can give your blog that extra squeeze of freshness that it needs from time to time. NachosNY peppers their calendar with events throughout the year, and they’re always trying zesty new things:

RACHEL: July 19, 2010 is actually our first Guactac Boat Cruise. We’re doing a boat cruise through Rocks Off Concert Cruises. We just finalized that last week, so we’re making plans and booking bands for that right now. We’re hoping to put on a great concert and have good food on a fun boat cruise. We’re also going to hopefully do a Salsa Slam competition in September.

12. BACON : BLOG + TUMBLR

Bacon is that little something extra on your nachos that might seem counter-intuitive to some of us, but when we finally give it a try, we realize it’s actually a pretty nice addition (as bacon tends to be). NachosNY‘s is thinking of creating a Tumblr to supplement their already-popular WordPress blog [JULY 2010 UPDATE: Nachos Nation is here!]. The idea sounds overindulgent, but — like bacon on barbacoa nachos — it could turn out to be a welcome topping:

LEE: We like hearing from people, so one of the things I want to start is a Tumblr to go along with the blog that would be more of a nationwide thing so people could send us a picture of the nachos they just ate and what was on it or why they liked it, or whatever. We never wanted to say that we’re the best people to be doing this: everybody can be eating nachos and telling us about it. If more people were talking about it, everybody would find the best ones even quicker.

P.S.: Local bloggers, don’t forget to register your blog here. It’s quick, simple, and will help drive traffic to your blog.

P.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@outside.in

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5
May 10

Bloggers We Love: Steve Sherron

Posted by Esther Brown in Bloggers We Love / General — View Comments

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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16
Sep 09

Google Fast Flip Misses the Point

Posted by lauren in Industry Notes & Commentary — View Comments

fast flip logo

Tech blogs were buzzing yesterday about Google Fast Flip.

The new experimental service allows users to flip through screenshots of web articles from “three dozen top publishers,” according to the announcement on The Official Google Blog. You can choose to sift through latest articles or specify a vertical or source publication—typical filtering mechanisms also available in the more traditional interface of Google News.

Fast Flip aims to speed up news consumption by eliminating the need for end users to load an entire page (including the publisher’s template, navigation, ads, and analytics tags) to read an article.

To make up for showing more than the accepted fair use summary of articles, Google will share an undisclosed percentage of revenue on the ads shown next to the screenshots.

fast flip section thumbnails

The product concept is interesting, but its execution misses the mark in two major ways:

Aggregation

As a high-touch opt-in service for publishers, Fast Flip faces an uphill battle to gain breadth and diversity of source articles. Its baseline content providers show a heavy bias toward major national and international media companies.

Under this model, users never see content from small hyperlocal or niche vertical publishers who may have innovative coverage in their area of expertise. And smaller publishers can’t easily opt-in through a form on the Fast Flip site—presumably they must contact Google via email and prove reach or name recognition to warrant the time Google would spend setting up a rev share deal and what seem to be screenshots at a custom size for each publisher (screenshots for Salon.com are 995px wide, whereas those for Fast Company are 640px wide and those for BBC are 655px wide).

fast flip section thumbnails

Improving the UX of News Consumption

Does Fast Flip fulfill its lofty goal of saving users from the sometimes-painful load times of media sites?

microfiche reader by Mosman Library on Flickr

New microfiche/film reader by Mosman Library on Flickr

The product claims to bring the experience of reading a magazine online, but the interface more closely resembles that of a microfiche machine (hat tip to Outiside.in Biz Dev VP Camilla Cho for the observation) and provides neither the physical immediacy of print nor standard web conventions to guide users through content.

By sticking screenshots of articles into a bulky wrapper, Google breaks the page layout and UI choices of each original site design. By centering publishers’ templates within the Fast Flip interface, Fast Flip often pushes the content out of prime locations where we’re used to focusing our eyes.

The screenshots also kill accessibility and interactivity. Without HTML, no one can click on links within the article, play embedded video, or enlarge photos. Users with screen readers are hosed and the weak of sight can’t use their browser settings to resize fonts.

For all those normal features of web browsing, you have to visit the original article, complete with long download time and a jarring experience of adjusting from the Fast Flip-wrapped screenshot to the original site.

We love to see innovative interfaces for news consumption, but this one doesn’t seem up to snuff. Publishers, what do you think? Is Fast Flip the kind of interface you’d like to see your readers using?

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