The Push to Hyperlocal Content
At Inman News Blog today, I pointed out that the Tampa Tribune is now moving away from print and into developing "hyperlocal" sites that will cover local news and encourage user-generated community content. Since this January , no less than five real estate focused hyperlocal sites have launched.
| Newly launched hyperlocal real estate site | Mission |
| Localism | Connect consumer with real estate agent via local content publication |
| My-Currency.com (related article here ) | User-generated AVM resource |
| Street Advisor | User-generated "street"/community data |
| YourStreet | User-generated content by neighborhood - focusing on their real estate markets |
| Super Listing Site | Jim Kimmon's beta entree into user-generated content + listings services |
| Not focused on real estate, but appropriate for connecting consumers with agents | |
| Outside.in | News aggregation and user-generated content by neighborhood |
| Placeblogger (related article here ) | News aggregation by city |
YourStreet is the latest hyperlocal community entry with a real estate focus, launching today. I spoke with James Nicholson, CEO, and expressed my opinion that real estate focused sites will only attract an ephemeral readership - that subset of the population who are currently in the housing market. Consumers who just enter the housing market won't know about YourStreet, and may not find YourStreet in the broadening landscape of hyperlocal sites. In order to be effective, the site needs to be found and bookmarked by the consumer before they enter the market.
The real estate focused hyperlocal sites must prove they can attract and retain sticky readers. Sticky readers need relevant day-to-day local content and that requires positioning as a general community information source, from best pizzas to local school news. Once they have developed their standing community of readers, then hyperlocal sites become credible as real estate "lead" sources.
As Bloodhound's Greg explains:
"What’s the benefit of creating this standing community? Only a small number of people have immediate real estate needs. The rest will have needs in the future, but the Realtor who gets that business then will be the one who is engaged with them then. If, by means of a real estate weblog, we can create a community of people who remain connected by common interests over the course of years, we stand an excellent chance of representing them when their real estate needs arise.
Lightning does strike, and, when it does, we need to move at lightning speed. But for a real estate weblog to be effective in the long-run, I think it needs to engender a long-term community of users who would not even think of using another Realtor. Do this right and you’re making your own rain — “and the rain it raineth every day.”
So much attention paid to hyperlocal content development will eventually spawn a "glut" of content and make it more competitive for local voices to be heard. Search engines will become powerful arbiters for directing the consumer to localized content and the blogs and hyperlocal sites will compete for the appearance on Google's top page.
Related articles:
Local blogs locking up Google real estate
Hyperlocal sites a real estate marketing opportunity
My Currency - a social networking AVM
Placeblogger - local blog content aggregation
Transparent 2007
Technorati Tags: hyperlocal, yourstreet, mycurrency, outside.in, placeblogger, street advisor, localism, super listing site, blogging, bloodhound blog, Tampa Tribune, local content
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4/16/2007 11:15 AM
For Sale By Locals: A New Real Estate Approach wrote:
In this fourth article, we’ll focus on some user interface aspects to highlight the contextual content found through the methods outlined in the third article. We’ll need to introduce some new conceptual constructs in this article fo...
So, how do they make any money?
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Exactly... the subject of a future post...
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You make a good point about them needing to retain sticky readers with constantly updated, relevant, and engaging content. It seems like so much of that burden falls on the individual bloggers (who are by no means pros at this), so it could be difficult. People want local news and insights but realtor's may need to shift into more of a "community evangelist" role to provide good blogs that bring people back again and again.
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