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

TechFlash interviews Serra Media’s Mark Briggs; Local Onliner profiles TownLuxe

Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs chatted recently with TechFlash’s John Cook about hyperlocal news, the future of journalism and innovation.

BargainBabeLA.com, which uses Serra Media’s TownLuxe platform, was also covered today on the Kelsey Group blog and Local Onliner blog. In the post, blogger Peter Krasilovsky talked about some of the appealing deals he learned about thanks to BarbabeBabeLA.com.

Here are some highlights of the Techflash Q&A. Check out the full interview here:

What makes hyperlocal news a promising opportunity? “To me, it is that one untapped area especially for online advertising. I think there is still a lot of potential and opportunity within the digital local space because you have all of these small, little advertisers who maybe did yellow page advertisements and they couldn’t even afford the newspaper…. Now, with digital technology if you build that targeted audience, you can deliver super, highly-targeted ads that the audience is not going to see as interruptive.”

As a new media pundit, what do newspapers need to do to survive? “I think they would be smart — and I’ve always thought this — if they actually committed to being a Web site first. (If they) considered themselves a digital property that happens to put out a print product, they would be ahead of the game.”

Where should they invest? “If you had an Internet company called The Seattle Times, you’d be pouring massive amounts of resources into mobile right now. Massive. Because mobile is going disrupt news and information just as the Web did ten years ago. So maybe they missed on the Web, but they can still take advantage of mobile.”

On launching the TownLuxe local shopping service: “(My wife) looked at Newsgarden and said: ‘That’s great, Mark, but I think it really should be used for shopping…. BargainBabe.com launched our platform on July 1 and we’ve actually seen more contributions in one month to her, than we have in one month for any of our news platforms. So we think people may be more interested in contributing items about shopping, than they are about news. Shopping is something that everybody does … and everybody at one point or another has bragged about a great find at a store or a great deal they’ve got. That’s what we are tapping into.”

- Amy Rainey

Claim your Twitter identity –- before someone else does

This blog post was adapted from a project I did for my U.S. Digital Media Law class in UW’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program.

Twitter has quickly become a popular tool for celebrities, public agencies and businesses to share their thoughts and updates with fans and followers. But, as with most things online, there are also plenty of opportunities for people with bad motives. In recent months, a variety of people and businesses have been the victims of imposter Twitter accounts. This problem is of growing concern for those who have identities, brands and reputations to protect.

Here are a few examples of ways that celebs and businesses handled fake Twitter accounts:

• Tony La Russa, general manager for the St. Louis Cardinals, sued Twitter, alleging trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of his name. La Russa ultimately dropped the lawsuit without any settlement. This case led Twitter to launch the beta version of its verified accounts program.
• Tanner Friedman, a Michigan PR firm, sued an unknown Twitter user, “John Doe.” The firm asked the court to subpoena Twitter for identifying information about the unknown user. The court granted the motion, and “John Doe” was traced to a computer at a rival firm.
• Kanye West responded with an angry all caps blog post. Twitter then took down the fake profile.
• Shaquille O’Neal and his managers wanted to take legal action when they discovered a Twitter impersonator. But a media strategist convinced O’Neal to start his own Twitter account. Now more than 2 million people follow his constant tweets under the username The_Real_Shaq.

While La Russa chose one extreme – litigation – O’Neal went with a different strategy – reclaiming his Twitter identity. Fake accounts are often created for those who aren’t already on Twitter. But if businesses, celebrities and public figures take control and create — and use — Twitter accounts, it will make it harder for imposters. An imposter would be hard-pressed, for example, to create a fake Lance Armstrong profile now that he has a verified account with 1.8 million followers and close to 3,000 updates

Cases of Twitter impersonation demonstrate the importance of participating in social media and managing one’s identity and brand online. Businesses and public figures should monitor Twitter and other social media sites to see what’s being said about them and to find out who might be misrepresenting them. If you haven’t already, go claim your Twitter username now.

- Amy Rainey

Measuring success in Seattle

Seattle is a hotbed for technology startups. Don’t believe me? Just check out the Seattle Startup Index, which ranks 340 companies based on their Compete and Alexa web traffic numbers.

While there has been plenty of debate locally about the validity of the list or the accuracy of its name, it’s always nice to see your name on a list (Serra Media  is no. 117). Now that we’ve launched a second product at a different domain, it’s unclear whether the TownLuxe traffic will be counted toward our score.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a bit of trivia to discuss over beers or coffee at one of the many networking events for entrepreneurs and startups in town. Like the other companies mentioned, we’re measuring our progress by the success of our partners and customers, not by a ranking on a list.

- Mark Briggs