Local history was one of the first things that came to mind when Chillicothe (Mo.) Constitution-Tribune News Editor Catherine Stortz Ripley when hunting for community bloggers.
WHAT THEY DID
While browsing around local Facebook pages, Catherine found a local group called “Chillicothe, Missouri, Remember When.” So she put a callout on the page to see if anyone was interested in doing a history blog.
Within a couple days, she had a proposal from two.
“They both write and provide photos, but only one does the actual post uploads,” Catherine said. “Gary, who does the posting, lives in another state, but grew up in Chillicothe. He has lots of childhood memories and a desire to keep in touch with what is going on in his hometown.”
The blog took off, and Catherine has been promoting it in numerous places, including running a front-page story when the blog launched.
“Since that time, we continually promote them in ads (sometimes standard ads or sometimes ads featuring their latest posts),” she said. “In print, we may run the promotions at the top of the front page, along the rail, or somewhere inside. We also promote them and their latest blogs on our Facebook page, usually with a photo, and always with a direct link to the blog. If there is an interesting photo in a blog, we may post it in the carousel of the newspaper's website. We often use the ads with the ‘Only Online’ logo.”
TAKEAWAY
Identifying existing local groups using Facebook is a great way to discover more about your community, and a good tool for pitching blogs to potential writers.
If you’ve run the house ads in search of bloggers, and reached out to all the groups you can think of with little or no success, Facebook can provide another host of opportunity.
Local history was one of the first things that came to mind when Chillicothe (Mo.) Constitution-Tribune News Editor Catherine Stortz Ripley when hunting for community bloggers.
WHAT THEY DID
While browsing around local Facebook pages, Catherine found a local group called “Chillicothe, Missouri, Remember When.” So she put a callout on the page to see if anyone was interested in doing a history blog.
Within a couple days, she had a proposal from two.
“They both write and provide photos, but only one does the actual post uploads,” Catherine said. “Gary, who does the posting, lives in another state, but grew up in Chillicothe. He has lots of childhood memories and a desire to keep in touch with what is going on in his hometown.”
The blog took off, and Catherine has been promoting it in numerous places, including running a front-page story when the blog launched.
“Since that time, we continually promote them in ads (sometimes standard ads or sometimes ads featuring their latest posts),” she said. “In print, we may run the promotions at the top of the front page, along the rail, or somewhere inside. We also promote them and their latest blogs on our Facebook page, usually with a photo, and always with a direct link to the blog. If there is an interesting photo in a blog, we may post it in the carousel of the newspaper's website. We often use the ads with the ‘Only Online’ logo.”
TAKEAWAY
Identifying existing local groups using Facebook is a great way to discover more about your community, and a good tool for pitching blogs to potential writers.
If you’ve run the house ads in search of bloggers, and reached out to all the groups you can think of with little or no success, Facebook can provide another host of opportunity.
