Local Pubs Have an Unfair Advantage When it Comes to Digital and They're Screwing it Up

What challenge does every new hyperlocal site face?

The cold start.

The cold start means no brand, no traffic, no content, no revenue - no credibility. Everything that needs to be done needs to be created without any momentum.

So, who has the advantage in this new frontier? Existing media properties. Most notably community magazines and newspapers that have lean organizations and small cost structures where incremental revenue has a significant impact on the bottom line and digital offerings aren't competitive to their print counterparts i.e. what appears in a magazine and what appears online should be related but different to take advantage of the respective mediums.

Community Publications have an established brand, they have content, they have traffic (usually not much but more than zero) and most importantly they have readers and relationships with local businesses i.e. credibility. This means that once a strategy and the appropriate technology is employed revenue and traffic can be turned on like a faucet - The Route 46 Building Community Blogger Contest at SeminoleMagazine.com is a great example. Month-over-month traffic is up nearly 400%!!! That's right, nearly 4x's the page views since implementing the Locable Approach.

Despite all of this, community magazines and newspapers are losing this advantage little by little every day that they fail to realize their business isn't about the paper it was built on. Stop thinking about Digital Editions and doing online exactly what you do in print and start thinking  about the themes, values, perspective that makes your business unique and valuable to your community. Not sure what those are or how they translate online? Locable can help and the Locable Publisher Network can ensure you're able to evolve quickly into a media business from a publishing business.