Social tools and hard work drive local audiences

Social media is increasingly local, and increasingly a major part of local news operations, be they traditional news companies or independent journalism startups. That’s the main point in Leah Betancourt’s piece on Mashable yesterday, which is a must read for anyone trying to engage a local audience. (Yes, I was interviewed for the article so I may be biased.)

Among the highlights is the ChicagoNow project by the Tribune which counts 120 blogs as part of the network. Here’s more:

ChicagoNow bloggers are paid $5 per 1,000 local page views, according to Adee, who said they focus their bloggers on Facebook and Twitter and encourage them to comment on other ChicagoNow blogs. About every month or so the site hosts a party so everyone can meet the new bloggers.

Cory Bergman of Next Door Media said “that about 80% of their stories come from their neighbors and what they post in the blogs’ forums, comments, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.” He also made it clear that personal commitment outweighs technical brilliance in the local market, saying:

Hyperlocal is a lot of work. There’s no magic formula. We’ve invested a lot of time in covering stories, attending community meetings and introducing ourselves to just about everyone. It’s about people and relationships and trust, not just code. It takes patience, which is (a) rare quality these days.

The Austin-American Statesman and WCCO-TV in Minneapolis were also featured. The key takeaway is that no matter your strategy or software, be it Wordpress, Twitter, Facebook (or yes, even Newsgarden), it takes manual effort to build engaged local audiences. That’s not the message resource-constrained local news operations want to hear — they’d prefer some magical software, for sure — but once you know that it will take a lot of work, the sooner you can start doing the work.

- Mark Briggs