10 lessons on hyperlocal, from ONA

Great roundup of “10 lessons” from the ONA conference last week by Pekka Pekkala .

Here are a few snips to give you a taste of the great lessons in this piece:

Mike Orren, Pegasusnews.com publisher, reminded that advertisers don’t care how big you are if they don’t know you. It takes a long time to build a brand in advertising community and it matters, because ad buying decisions are not made rationally.

Read J-Lab report New Voices: What Works and learn how much work it requires to keep the contributors active. Less than 1 in 10 of those you train will stick around to be regular contributors.

Founder Susan Mernit from Oakland Local said that they thought people would read normal feature-like news stories. It turned out that the really simple stories about a new coffee shop or the heavy, investigative pieces were the most read. So they stopped doing features.

Bottom line: Run it like a business from Day 1. If you’re running a hyperlocal site or just thinking about it, print out The top 10 key lessons for hyperlocal journalism startups from ONA10
and stick it on your refrigerator.

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November 10, 2010 - Posted by joemichaud | Uncategorized

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About Local Interactive Strategies

Local Interactive Strategies consultancy helps turn interactive media into a business – a challenge facing both legacy media companies and entrepreneurial startups.

Often local media companies are hobbled by:

Too many ideas
Not enough action
Too much unfocused action
Competing priorities
Lack of data about best practices
Organizational misalignment

Local news startups often face:

Limited resources
Limited business background
Little knowledge about advertiser needs
Few contacts among similarly focused efforts

The solutions for legacy media and startups are obviously quite different. In the case of existing media, the solutions often involve clarity of vision, organizational alignment, some training and coaching. For startups, it might take some basic training, business planning, network-building and product focus.

This blog is intended raise up those topics, share ideas and hopefully provoke some discussion — whether here or in your organization.

It’s written from the perspective of those in leadership positions in local media whether publishers, newspaper editors or startup solo journalists. The idea is to share information and ideas that are actionable right now, with not a lot of blue-skying.

Local Interactive Strategies LLC is headed by Joe Michaud (more about Joe) and is part of a network of experts in recruiting, design, technology, multimedia journalism, product development and sales training.

contact: joe (at) joemichaud.com

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