A great way to pull in local content for your site is to do a regular search of YouTube for your postcode or area name and see if there are any relevant videos on there that you can embed into a post on your website.
I subscribe to searches for YouTube videos tagged ‘Digbeth’ (via RSS) and this comes up with some great little films that I simply wouldn’t have come across otherwise, such as this video of someone playing the organ in my local church. When I let the organist know I’d put his film onto my website by commenting, he came along to Digbeth is Good and left a nice comment on the post.
When new community website The Moretonhampstead Hub searched YouTube for local videos, they found this lovely clip of the local school choir singing.
You might also find using YouTube in this way means you’re pulling in content from young people, who often upload videos taken with their cameras or mobile phones. I loved this film of night out at the Custard Factory and the young film-makers loved that I bought it to a wider audience.
William Perrin of Kings Cross Environments found there was such an abundance of clips relating to Kings Cross, he created the dedicated website Kings Cross TV to house them – splitting them into channels such as Books, Current Affairs and Harry Potter at Kings Cross. William’s discovered some real local gems here, but my personal favourite is this one of a Flash Snog at St Pancras.
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Absolutely spot-on. Another source of “feature” ideas is to look at local listings of regular and other events and to contact the number or email provided – “choir seeks new members” “mental health group painting exhibition” etc etc – and it’s surprising how often there is an interesting story or development going on that is worth reporting and expanding. Doing this also builds networks into one’s community (increasing site visitors and future contributions),