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.

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 in and demonstrate what the story is about, even if it’s a simple as a stock image of a rugby ball or police tape.

What would you add?

When you write an article for your hyperlocal site your first thought should always be with the reader. Is the article interesting? Does it contain all the details and facts needed? Have you included an interesting image? Is it appropriate for the people you are targeting? Have you encouraged discussion using your comment tool?

All reader needs considered? Ok, your next thought should be with the search engines. Will the search engines love your content as much as your readers? Writing content that your readers will love is paramount, but you are going to need some readers first!

The search engines, along with social media like Facebook and Twitter (thanks to you adding blogs share links) will usually be your main source of visitors.

In order of priority, here is how I review new content to ensure I’ve done all I can to help it do well in search engines without needing much technical knowhow:

Decided on a phrase / words to focus on

If you hadn’t written the article, but you were looking for the information it contained using a search engine, what words or phrase would you use and expect it to appear as a result?

For this article the main focus is writing search engine friendly content. That’s called a key-phrase, which contains all the words I think people will use to search for the information this article contains. A few examples of hyperlocal focuses might be:

• New Tesco in Didsbury
• Didsbury under 16′s win cup
• Wilmslow Road closed May 2011

Once you have picked your focus you can then ensure you include those words, and phrases that contain them several times. This is called keyword (or phrase) density and without going into too much detail, more is good. Here is where and how to include it:

Page Title

The Page Title is the text that appears at the very top of a web browser (Internet Explorer / Firefox etc) when you are viewing a web page and more importantly it is used by search engines as the link text you click to view the page when it appears in their results. Here is an image of a Fetch Didsbury result in Google with the page title highlighted:

Imagine your Page Title to be a few words which explains the update. You want to explain, using the most relevant words, what people will find if they view the page. Try and keep it short (70 characters or less) else search engines won’t show it all.

Main Heading

The main heading of your update is special to search engines and your visitors alike. Think of it as a description of what people will find further down the page. Introduce the whole article with it. Similar to the Page Title it should contain all the most relevant words to describe the article. It can be longer than 70 characters but keep it concise. WordPress often includes the article title automatically here.

Article URL (address / permalink)

The address, or url of your article is next on the list. It should also contain a few relevant words in a nice clean lowercase format. A good example would be http://journallocal.co.uk/2011/04/27/adding-share-links-to-your-blog-posts/ which is short, relevant and clean.

Image file names alt attributes and title attributes

When you add an image to any article you should always include title and alt (or alternative) text. WordPress and many other blog platforms offer you the option to include it, always do! Make the alternative text a description of what you can actually see in the image. The title should be additional information that the image does not explain like the people in it or the location. The file name of the image should ideally follow the same rules as your articles url, very clean but including words relevant to what the image is showing. For example google-result-for-fetch-didsbury.jpg

Content

Make sure your content is readable to a human, but that it is obvious what the page is about even when choosing a paragraph of the article at random. Use your focus words and phrase for the article in bold somewhere. Use your focus words and phrase for the article in the first and last paragraph of the page.

Practice makes perfect

Once you get used to considering both your audience and the search engines you will begin to write articles in a way which is of interest to your visitors and that search engines will love without even thinking about it.

Feel free to share your opinion or things not included above using the comments below…

About the Author

Harry Bailey is the founder of Fetch Didsbury, a hyperlocal site servicing the Didsbury area of South Manchester. To pay the bills he works as a freelance php developer and is a Director of Manchester’s Tariff Street Limited web agency.

So far we’ve spoken a couple of hyperlocals. Now we’ve spoken to another Birmingham based blog; The Cultural Bible.

Whether entrusting your hyperlocal website to wordpress.com or using your own wordpress installation, allowing the people who read your posts to share them with their network of friends and collegues using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter should be high on your list of priorities.

There are many plugins available to make this just a 5 minute job. For this article I will be using the official wordpress.com share option as my example, helpfully it is also available as a plugin for those not using wordpress.com and should be installed and available to those using journal local by the time you read this article.

If you are not on wordpress.com then your first step is to add the plugin Sharedaddy to your site. I won’t go into how to install a plugin here, but you can find plenty of help with that on Google.

From this point on, whatever type of wordpress blog you run, the steps are the same.

In your wordpress admin area, under the settings area on the left you should find a sharing option. Click it.

You are now shown various sharing options. You can ignore the first part of the page about connecting to you networks, and look at the next block of options called Share Button:

If you would like a particular share option to show, then drag it to ‘services here’ and if you would like to offer a share service, but hide it behind a small neat share button, then drag it to the grey box on the right.

Unless you like to keep your blog super clean I would suggest dragging Facebook and Twitter to the left, and any other options you would like to offer to the right. There is a handy live preview just below the drag zones which shows you exactly how your share buttons will look at the bottom of each blog update.

The only other change I would suggest is to make the Facebook share button show as a Like button. People recognise this immediately and understand what will happen when it is clicked.

Have a look at the other settings, you may want to make changes depending on the look and feel of your blog, and then click save at the bottom.

When you now visit your blogs home and posts pages, you should see the share options you’ve just chosen available under each of your blog posts above the comments section:

Now you have share links in place, keep an eye on your visitor statistics and you will hopefully begin to see more traffic coming in from Twitter and Facebook, and when browsing your site you can view how many people have shared on Twitter and Liked on Facebook.

About the Author

Harry Bailey is the founder of Fetch Didsbury, a hyperlocal site servicing the Didsbury area of South Manchester. To pay the bills he works as a freelance php developer and is a Director of Manchester’s Tariff Street Limited web agency.

Nothing beats a scapegoat – and for newspapers, the internet has long been the direction fingers have been pointed in when sales figures hurtle downwards.

So it was with some surprise that a discussion around the future of the media at Leeds University yesterday saw newspaper decision makers admit that the internet wasn’t the big, bad wolf it was so often made out to be. Instead, a range of social factors were likely to have more of an impact on sales.

The point was highlighted by Yorkshire Evening Post editor Paul Napier,who looked at the decline in industry, revealing that the loss of factories closing at the same time every day meant the mass audience was no longer there. It was, he continued, the same as the loss of local newsagents. So the real problem was the method of getting news under the noses of their readers.

It does seem that old habits die hard, however, and right from the outset the boot was put into those of us trying to provide content online. Most shocking was that the slyest dig of them all came from a representative of an organisation who will benefit most from a sustainable model being found to employ journalists online – the NUJ.

‘Perspective’

Adam Christie’s opening speech for the entire discussion focused on how news on mobile phones was a passing phase and that 75 word portions of a story gave no wider perspective on an issue and therefore had little value. Then another cutting edge comment revealed how he had no intention of being one of those twats on Twitter, not bad from a man who in 2003 wrote about doing “some new media work” – clearly not enough. Mind you, in 2009 he added: “You must work whatever network you have got – whether it is unconventional, technological or beer-related.”

The article which Adam Christie was unhappy with

But then he saved his low blow for my own efforts on The Lichfield Blog. By selecting a random headline he outlined how SEO meant a lack of ‘serendipity’ that essentially meant readers got a stale experience.

There are a few things that got to me about Adam’s observations. Firstly, was the fact that he had decided to single out one person in a discussion that was meant to be finding answers and discussing options. Secondly, was the fact he got his dig in before needing to catch a flight meant I was given no chance to respond to his criticisms (clearly, right of reply no longer exists in the utopian world he was pining for). So in lieu of a chance to air my views in the public forum he had chosen to air his in, I figured I’d reply here to an audience he clearly feels are not deserving of journalism.

His point about headlines was particularly interesting. SEO doesn’t make for sexy headlines, granted, but it doesn’t make for bad ones too. The example he chose did the job and certainly did it better than a headline I read in my local paper on my arrival home where I was informed ‘Four men held over pub assault’. But by the time we got to the intro these four had undergone a gender-swap as they were four women. See, we can all play the one example game. Forget serendipity, Adam, I’ll take accuracy instead.

But it’s not about comparisons, it’s about reaching your audience. SEO is the modern day equivalent of the newspaper billboard. It’s a way of ensuring people can find the content. The internet by its nature features serendipity – it’s built on finding the weird and wonderful. And in the same way as the newspaper billboard tries to entice readers in, so the web headline does the same job.

‘Sustainable’

Sly digs aside, the most galling of all is the impact his ill-informed rant could have on the many NUJ members who will be earning a living working with some of this new media that he clearly thinks so little of. To my mind the NUJ should have a remit to work for journalists today and to secure a sustainable future for them tomorrow. The views expressed yesterday show that this member, at least, is instead choosing to focus his efforts on returning to a bygone era where we all buy our daily newspaper, say our prayers before bed and watch World in Action. Sorry, Adam, this ain’t Kansas anymore. The kids aren’t playing hopscotch in the street, they’re engaging in social media and becoming a technologically savvy generation. The subject of knowing your audience cropped up a number of times after Adam’s early departure. It’s a shame, he really could have learned something.

Thankfully, not all print journalists were calling for a return to the Caxton press. It seems there were some concessions, even if there is a long road to go before we found ourselves in a truly sustainable media environment for a digital age. However, while there were plenty of good words, there were still a number of points where the internet-bashing was a hard habit to kick.

Take, for example, the suggestion that, by grabbing audience, “hobby journalists” were taking the jobs of paid journalists. Surely this is more a case of making your bed and lying in it? Centralise, pull out of local communities and stop serving them and someone else will.

I can only speak on behalf of The Lichfield Blog and I’m sure other independent site owners will have their own take on the issue, but for me I can’t see how me doing what I do is taking jobs. The site has been created because there was a gap left behind by print media’s desire to cut costs and drive up profits in my city. No-one was regularly updating online, so why shouldn’t I?  I’ve always made the point that I do not have the finances or business acumen to compete with a big media group. So if someone was doing what we do then there would be no gap for me to exist in. It’s the same reason why I’ve said The Lichfield Blog would disappear if someone did decide they wanted to cover the city for a digital audience.

‘Audience’

I take issue with the hobby journalist terminology too. If I wanted a hobby, I’d find one that didn’t take up quite so much time and cause quite so much stress. I do it because I love the industry I chose to make my career in and I’m lucky that I have a supportive family and a job that means I don’t need to be striving for the profit. I’m also the audience in Lichfield and I wanted a regular source of news and information – and the audience figures we achieve suggest there’s a number of other people who do too.

There was a fair share of despair from newspaper folk yesterday too. There was an admission that the internet for some media groups was nothing more than a promotional vehicle for their print products, hence the fact online readers in Aberdeen have to wait a day for a full story, unless they want a snippet and a ‘read the full story in the paper’ line. Now, it’s worth saying that Aberdeen is one of the better performing areas for print journalism, and because of this they are keen to focus on their golden goose (even if, like many other titles, the goose is losing its fertility a little). But with no desire to actually understand or investigate ways to make online pay, why bother operating a website?

The answer was simple: “To stop other people doing it.”

And therein lies, for me, the simple problem journalism faces in print terms. It is a protection business. It’s not about finding innovative ways to expand and diversify, it’s about circling the wagons and hoping the outside world goes away. It’s Amish theory applied to business – pretend the outside world isn’t happening. Yes, that sort of thinking might sustain as a niche idea, but if you want to be the all-consuming media beast, you can’t have it both ways.

Surely it’s time for print journalism to go on the offensive instead of continually being defensive? And if the industry is accepting it can’t make money from the internet then why not work with people who may not fit your journalism model and perhaps see if there’s not more than one way to skin a cat?

Unless, that is, we’re happy to keep burying our heads in the sand and utilising the services of whichever scapegoat is in fashion. Either way, you can’t move forward when you’re always looking backwards.

Ross Hawkes is a university lecturer and the founder of The Lichfield Blog. Prior to moving into academia, he enjoyed a 12-year-career in regional journalism.

Following on from our interview with Kellie Maddox of Hednesford News, we asked News Waves to talk to Jess Dutton who runs B36Blogger.

Sorry about the squidgedness (that’s a new word, by the way).

Here’s something that hyperlocal site owners might want to take part in.

Spring Online is a national campaign that aims to get older people using computers and online, although not restricted to older people.

Anyone is invited to set up their own event as part of the campaign to get folks online and there’s a prize of £1,000 up for grabs too!

For more details and to set up an event in your area, head over the the Spring Online web site.

The NewsWaves team spoke to new hyper-local blogger Kellie Maddox about her new project, the Hednesford News .

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 the same technology can be used to deliver local TV.

It makes Jeremy Hunt’s plans for local TV seem a little behind the times when you consider the new “local” service probably won’t even be able to walk by then.

BSkyBs targeted ad system is ready – Brand Republic News.