Modern websites are not just a set of pages sent between computers and consumed by passive pairs of eyes. The best websites are living, breathing communities, full of ever-changing content and lively debate, witty exchanges and with a bustling calendar of real-life events. The problem, of course, with communities, is, we hate to say… people. Putting your flag in the virtual desert of your local area and inviting everyone around you to come and hang out is risky, but the effort brings great rewards.
If you’re one of those people ploughing a lonely furrow; the only person in the village who knows where the ‘on’ switch is on the computer and how to find people’s long-lost relatives on Facebook, thereby cursing yourself to hours transcribing and sending them hastily scribbled notes ever since the Post Office closed last year, as well as running the village website after a stern command from the chair of the resident’s association who gets all her digital knowledge from the Guardian; then this corner of talkaboutlocal is for you. If you would like to suggest your own problems, or examples and solutions to any of these, please add them in the comments and we’ll add them in.
The anonymity-causes-idiocy problem
Symptoms: An idiot is posting abuse
Try these treatments:
– switch on moderation so that posts need to be approved before they appear
– add a note about acceptable behaviour at the top of the site (example)
The Control problem
Symptoms: you started off with a friendly community, but now everyone is whining and there’s a palpable air of tension in the forums and round the church tea. People start saying the site is badly designed and they can’t find anything, that the articles are too long or too short or too pompous. That it would all work a lot better if we were all working to one unified ‘vision’. Their vision.
Try these treatments:
– encourage people to take the lead on their own area of interest by creating smaller groups
– don’t be too locked in to your own vision of the site. Once you switch on a community website, it belongs to your community. Only if you’re elected can you have any claim to be speaking on behalf of your community.
The ‘we’re too small’ problem
Symptoms: nobody’s contributing and nobody knows what you’re doing.
Try these treatments:
– have patience. Everything has to start somewhere and particularly in areas where internet access is relatively low, you can expect it to take a while – at least a year to eighteen months, maybe longer – for you to establish the name of your website in the community
– talk about your site everywhere and show it to people. Printouts are handier than pulling out a full projector and web connections, so don’t get too technical. Try Vistaprint for some free cards to give to people and if local schools and organisations start to take an interest, ask them if they can print out some information sheets and posters for you as well.
– when people are talking to you about their burning passion, ask them to write, take photos or videos about it. Most people don’t just write in when you ask them but they are happy to share their interests.
– make your methods of contributing as simple as you possibly can. If you’re getting no response to email calls to contribute to your wiki, it’s almost certain nobody understood what you were talking about and possible that the link you sent them didn’t even work (I’ve been there on this one). Never mind snazzy technology, give them a beer mat to write on.
– don’t forget to ask people for help in really simple ways, don’t assume they know and just aren’t helping. People love to help, especially if helping takes the most minimal amounts of time. This is the way to draw people in to bigger amounts of time, but don’t worry – one hundred volunteers giving an hour a week is pretty much equivalent to the full time team of most modern newspapers.
– find the people who are already online in your area, they will be easier to get hold of. Pubs or local faith and community centres are your offline equivalent.
– keep in touch with small traders. They know everything that is going on and generally a bit of time to tell it to regular customers (like you).
The ‘we’re too big’ problem
Symptoms: everyone’s contributing to your site, everyone has a view on it and moderating it is going to kill your marriage. Your dog, let alone your son, hardly remembers who you are.
Try these treatments:
– remind yourself, and others if necessary, that’s you’re running the blog voluntarily. Restrict the time you spend on it.
– don’t get pulled in to lengthy wars in the comments or forums. Your excuse that you need to go to bed might just prevent someone saying something they regret.
-ask for help so you can distribute the workload – on a WordPress site you can give members different levels of editing rights.
The business-plan problem
Symptoms: having got wildly popular, everyone’s saying you should turn the website into a full time job. You formed a committee. You’ve all been bogged down in funding proposals for the last eight months. Meanwhile, people have drifted away from the site.
Try these treatments:
– carefully consider all the different funding options for your site and your time. These include advertising, grant funding, low-interest business loans if appropriate, consultancy work, again if appropriate.
– a tip I learnt from an old journalism book: just because everyone says there should be another local news outlet, doesn’t mean they will help fund yours. In my experience, it’s true.
– make a clear choice: if you want to go into business, concentrate on that. If you’re happy keeping it volunteer-led, make sure you keep it fun. Many a good community activist has burnt out, unappreciated.
– balance committee work with strong leadership. Times will come when you need to make decisions quickly and if your group doesn’t trust you to make those decisions, they probably don’t trust to you to be in charge (see the “Control” problem, above)
Updates; thanks to those who commented below.
The Get-your-blog-off-my-lawn problem
Symptoms: it’s getting like Midsomer murders round here. The Village Times (published continuously since 1742) is spitting feathers that you blew their exclusive with your Twitpics of the Spring cake competition. Although your detailed IP logs make it clear that *everyone* is glued to your blog, the elite have taken to laboriously pretending they don’t know your name.
Try these treatments:
– before you go into all out war, think twice about whether you need to be in competition at all. If your drive is just to get information out there then maybe an approach to the incumbent to work together will be well received. After all, for all their bluster, they are often volunteers themselves.
– if this isn’t well received, just carry on. Be persistently friendly, make generous references to their ‘in-depth’ (verbose) coverage of the elections and don’t worry about it. After all, there’s enough space on the internet for all of us and it’s so Old Media to fight.
The ‘I scare people’ problem
The symptoms: you’re Clarke Kent trying to hit the story, they’re just trying to make pizza.
Try these treatments:
– hold back those journalism chops. Describe, don’t interrogate. Your old instincts will soon come in handy when an election comes up. What makes many hyperlocal blogs so wonderful is that mix of hard and soft news. Not flower show pictures shoved in to make the advertising department happy (joy! you don’t have one!), but because your readers care – this is the glue that knits your community together. Reading about unknown activities on your blog might entice someone who feels scared to go outside into the community centre and become a volunteer themselves. So you’re making connections and bringing something previously hidden, because the mainstream media can’t turn it into a pithy two minute news package, into the open.
– take your time. Again, you’re not under a time limit. The first few minutes of what people say to interviewers are what they think they should say, it’s only after a while that you start to get the real conversation. If you don’t want very, very long video interviews, here are some good tips from Nick Booth.
– find the questions that work for your subjects. Funnily enough, the time-honoured questions that journalists love aren’t always the ones that real people like to answer. Much as those interminable questions in questionnaires don’t really get your real views, they just get your reflex reaction as you click on through to reach the prize. Have a look round at other techniques like the Oxford Muse or NLP, or others. Equally, if you’re not from a journalism background you can learn a lot from journalists, just maybe not, in this case, Jeremy Paxman.
So how do you get it just right? There will always be issues, but the best community web editors I’ve seen know how to keep their websites enjoyable, whether their definition of enjoyable is bloody scraps down in the comments or warm, supportive swapping of recipes. They are relaxed about what goes on the site, encouraging to contributors, patient and persistent and, perhaps most of all, brave enough to keep the thing going, post by post.
What advice can you add?
Another thing that can kill your blog might be vested interests who, for example, run local magazines that they deem successful (every household gets a copy and advertising revenue covers costs or more [tho delivery is usually via volunteers]) and feel threatened by a real time news source when they have a stable market offering a monthly/quarterly service. They will have captured content over a period of time from trusting correspondents, and will regard this as exclusive. Recipients of the magazines will either read them or not, but the universal service argument will ring true.
So what is the USP to sell a local website/blog into this market?
I’m just not entirely sure how to get conversation started .. I’m wondering whether I’m a bit too heavy handed. Got any tips about that?
Martin and Jon – both good points, thank you! I will add them in if anyone else has any thoughts.
In response to the first one – when I was setting up an alternative news source I had lots of people telling me it would be great, was just what was needed; also a lot of dire threats that the competition would try to crush me. I think when you’re working hyperlocally you can slip in under the radar; in the end I knew the big paper was finding mine useful because they could pick up stories they wouldn’t otherwise have known about. This is easier to be relaxed about if you’re not trying to sell advertising space, of course.
The USP is normally whether you are really working in an underserved market. In my area, although we have bigger media outlets, they don’t have the capacity to cover the high street or give a voice to small community groups and traders. You typed places into Google and got nothing but historical references and court reports. In other small towns, I know there are several publications and now websites. If there was a publication already serving that patch, but perhaps it had a gap (like it addressed only people over 60, say), then I might seriously think about approaching them about a collaboration before going it alone.
On Jon’s point, I know exactly what you mean. The enthusiastic blogger or ex journalist goes at a group with a carefully thought-out vision and demands to know what they can contribute, what they think, *what the truth is*… and then gets blank looks. Perhaps try and put your blog to one side (the unfamiliar terminology often puts people off, but they won’t admit it). I once tried asking a group of shy young people to say one by one what makes them angry. Then, when everyone’s worked themselves up ask them what they love about the local area. I think it’s a good conversation starter with any group. You can just listen and take notes (if you’re like me and probably a lot of other bloggers, the temptation is to jump in and say your view and this can also inhibit people, as a lot of people don’t like to feel they’re in a debate).
I think you’re on the right track with the video you’ve made (http://thoroughlygood.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/hither-green-hall/) and blog post about community. You kick off asking lots of questions and you’re probing for something ‘big’ and coherent, but actually it’s clear from the answers and the interview that people are happy to talk about what they’re doing, why they enjoy it and what they like about their community. There’s no big story there, it’s just people making pizza. This is the stuff that most people really enjoy and care about and seeing it on your blog might entice someone who feels scared to go outside into the community centre and become a volunteer themselves. So you’re making connections and bringing something previously hidden, because the mainstream media can’t turn it into a pithy two minute news package, into the open. I think that’s exactly what hyperlocal blogging’s value is.
One thing that can ruin a blog or forum in my view is people typing puerile nonsense, claptrap or baloney. One of the best antidotes are plenty of active members who can crowd out any infantile, racist or vandal elements. My own local community website is the eastdulwichforum which has been running for years and now has some 50000 regular participants. I use it mostly for buying and selling furniture and gettig recommendation for tradesmen but there are a vast
number of ways it is used. Check it out for inspiration.