Farewell
In the words of our esteemed mayor, these sorts of publications soon disappear. I ain’t publishing here anymore, but others are.
Albury Wodonga Online, Dave from Albury, King Valley Watchdog, Alpine Opinion.
Email me at kieranbennett at gmail dot com to be included on this list.
Don’t hate the media, be the media.
You too can setup a local news blog.
There’s bugger all content online about our town other than the Border Mail, and the Border has never really been that interesting. I used the following strategy in creating this blog and built a readership of a couple of hundred in about three months.
1. Define a premise/scope for your publication.
Perhaps you could “Watch” development in Wodonga, or council spending. Perhaps you could provide coverage of local sporting events, community activities or crime problems. What do you have a strong opinion about that you want to share, or what do you know about that you want to inform the community on, or what is happing in our community that you want to “watch”.
You want a premise that will provide you with enough scope that you always have something to write on, but that is also defined enough, so your publication has a clear purpose. Define your premise sum it up in one or two lines.
2. Register a blog at www.wordpress.com.
Once you’ve done this it should be easy to name your planned publication. A name should be easy to spell, easy to remember, and say something about the nature of the publication.
Once you’ve registered your new blog, you will need to “brand” it a bit:
a. Pick a theme
b. post a summary of your premise as your tag line.
c. Get a new banner image. Perhaps a photo related to your subject?
d. write an about page.
The about page is where you post an explanation of your premise and a bit of information about you and your interest in your subject area. About pages are the most read pages on any blog. They are worth writing. You should aim sell the concept of your blog, and you as it’s author, to the reader.
3. Write some content.
Before you tell anyone about your new blog, aim to write four or five good posts. When people go to your blog for the first time, you want them to find something that makes them want to come back.
4. Publisize your publication
Some tips for publicising your new blog
a. Email your friends and tell them about your blog.
b. Put a link to your blog in your email signature
c. Letter box your street.
The big three are:
Post comments. When you post comments on other related blogs, you show others that you exist in this field. Post under your publications name for added exposure. Other blog authors will see your comments, and may reciprocate, providing you with valuable feedback on your new blog.
Link to other blogs. When you link to other blogs, they link to you. Publishing online is never a zero sum game, the audience always wants more, and the more a group of related blogs provides the audience, the more they come back for more.
5. Generating content
To really build a new online publication you need to publish a new article every day. I have the following tips:
a. Ask to be included on mailing lists. There are a plethora of community groups, businesses etc that use mailing lists. Get added to them, who knows when the Albury Wodonga Environment Centre, or the Hume Business Group, might publish a tidbit worth following up.
b. Trawl minutes. Council minutes are full of hidden gems, decisions they don’t publicise and plans they are contemplating.
c. Go to events, take photos, ask questions. If you’re covering council, goto the meetings, if you’re covering sports, goto training.
d. Solicit content. Ask your readers to email, leave a comment or even sms you when they know of something. Ask your friends, work colleagues and anyone interested in your area to do the same. Eventually you will get a rep as a person to take tidbits too.
e. Develop regular features. These can be as simple as a “Photo of the week” or as complicated as a regular review of a council meeting or the crime statistics.
f. If you’re really intent on building your publication, put time aside each day to write an article.
Anyone can set up a citizens journal. Anyone can report on the news. Don’t let the Border Mail own the concept of news in our town, because you too can be a citizen journalist.