How to Drive Hyperlocal Community Participation
The Outside.in and Topix model provides communities with one-size-fits-all local aggregated news content, but nobody in the community is driving participation at these sites .
Besides local news, a hyperlocal community site needs three drivers to be engaging:
1) Personal commitment by a community hub person or group (like a chamber of commerce) to drive local network participation.
2) An easy to use conversational component that attracts the community.
3) Specific features in the community site that will attract massive participation. We believe that one feature is free local advertising.
For starters, we believe the three drivers are:
1) Give a hyperlocal community site template to a community hub person or group free or at low cost, and let them own the web property with their own local domain name (say, DelMarBreakingNews.com). There's no sense of ownership participating in an "enterprise" site like Topix.
2) Make it easy to converse. The whole login procedure and setting up a profile associated with DIY social networks like Ning, and even forum registration are barriers to mass community participation. Let them Twitter! It's easy to use hashtags to categorize local conversations and everybody has a credible identity and perhaps a link to their profile.
3) Let local merchants Twitter their deals of the day free, and provide a similar service that the Thursday circulars and Penny Saver coupons now provide to local shoppers. Everybody wants a deal! And better yet, Twitter acts like a phone... consumers can reply to merchant offers via Twitter.
We've started a Breaking News Project building Twitter feed-based hyperlocal communities like Breaking SF News.com. We build each Breaking News City site by providing the site template free to community hub people - real estate professionals, chambers of commerce - and give them the instructions to build it. We expect most major cities, and many smaller cities will have Breaking News City sites by summer. You can see some of the enthusiasm at Active Rain, a real estate social network.
Related articles:
Twitter "Media Sites" require focused non-chatty Twitter feeds
What's missing from today's hyperlocal sites - Community leadership
Besides local news, a hyperlocal community site needs three drivers to be engaging:
1) Personal commitment by a community hub person or group (like a chamber of commerce) to drive local network participation.
2) An easy to use conversational component that attracts the community.
3) Specific features in the community site that will attract massive participation. We believe that one feature is free local advertising.
For starters, we believe the three drivers are:
1) Give a hyperlocal community site template to a community hub person or group free or at low cost, and let them own the web property with their own local domain name (say, DelMarBreakingNews.com). There's no sense of ownership participating in an "enterprise" site like Topix.
2) Make it easy to converse. The whole login procedure and setting up a profile associated with DIY social networks like Ning, and even forum registration are barriers to mass community participation. Let them Twitter! It's easy to use hashtags to categorize local conversations and everybody has a credible identity and perhaps a link to their profile.
3) Let local merchants Twitter their deals of the day free, and provide a similar service that the Thursday circulars and Penny Saver coupons now provide to local shoppers. Everybody wants a deal! And better yet, Twitter acts like a phone... consumers can reply to merchant offers via Twitter.
We've started a Breaking News Project building Twitter feed-based hyperlocal communities like Breaking SF News.com. We build each Breaking News City site by providing the site template free to community hub people - real estate professionals, chambers of commerce - and give them the instructions to build it. We expect most major cities, and many smaller cities will have Breaking News City sites by summer. You can see some of the enthusiasm at Active Rain, a real estate social network.
Related articles:
Twitter "Media Sites" require focused non-chatty Twitter feeds
What's missing from today's hyperlocal sites - Community leadership
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