Philip John

The hyperlocal blogger’s dilemma. A reader asks you to delete a post. My response. | Cwmbran Life

March 6, 2012

A really interesting post from a hyperlocal blogger discussing the feeling of responsibility many site owners feel. This particular post is about being asked to delete a post – definitely worth a read.

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8 common mistakes when writing for the web – and what to do about them

March 5, 2012

Paul Bradshaw has written an excellent pay about how to better wrote for the web that is very helpful to hyperlocals. In it, Paul covers 8 of the most common mistakes and how to avoid them. I’d add another for hyperlocals – using images. Adding a good image to your post helps to draw people [...]

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Maybe Sky will deliver hyperlocal TV…

March 16, 2011

Subscribers to Sky’s TV packages could be seeing local or even hyperlocal ads in a year or two thanks to a targeting system due to be rolled out in 2013. BSkyB is said to be able to deliver targeted ads to households based on their subscription package and location, in addition to other factors. Presumably [...]

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Chance for hyperlocals to win £5,000 in The Co-operative Revolution

March 14, 2011

The Co-operative is inviting applications from any community-focused venture to win a £5,000 grant. Applicants must be for something “revolutionary” in one of the following areas: Benefiting the community Combating climate change Inspiring young people Tackling global poverty As many hyperlocal sites are volunteer-run, not-for-profit groups who are really making a difference in their community [...]

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Hyperlocal could be the answer to BBC local radio cuts but only with partnership and the right infrastructure

March 14, 2011
6 Towns Radio is a community radio station for Stoke-on-Trent

Radio 4′s Today programme hosted a discussion on Saturday about possible cuts to local BBC radio services. Evan Davis lead the discussion with Professor Gerry Stoker and POLIS Director, Charlie Beckett. You can listen again on iPlayer with the discussion starting 22 minutes in. Beckett suggested that as more power is devolved to local authorities [...]

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Hyperlocal reporting of council meetings: Who’s doing what

February 23, 2011

As has been plastered all over the internet recently, Eric Pickles of CLG has told councils to let hyperlocal bloggers tweet as well as film council proceedings. Brilliant news! I suspect that some hyperlocal sites will still face barriers though, so I thought it a good idea to draw up a resource of those hyperlocal [...]

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How about £3,000 per month to run a hyperlocal site?

January 28, 2011

An article on Business Insider is criticising AOL’s hyperlocal offering Patch.com touting it’s lack of visitors as evidence that it’s only going to lose AOL money. Citing figures from the New York Times, it says that Patch had 3m unique visitors. In fact that was just before Christmas, and an 80x increase on the previous [...]

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How to add a Facebook like button to your hyperlocal WordPress blog

January 14, 2011

Following a post from Paul Bradshaw about prominent sites like The Independent, Read Write Web and NME adding Facebook “like” buttons to each of their articles I thought it worth sharing how you can add buttons to your hyperlocal site. It’s actually really simple for self-hosted WordPress blogs; Log in to your WordPress dashboard and [...]

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Perhaps 80 local TV stations is a good number… for now.

January 11, 2011

Last night Greg Dyke outlined a plan for 80 local TV stations, just like Jeremy Hunt had been banging on about. He dismissed Shott’s report, suggesting 12 stations could be created, to a certain extent saying that the stations would serve areas already covered well by existing regional TV. Dyke says that 80 stations could [...]

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