Twitter is stupid and other lessons in hyperlocal content strategy: NEast Philly at BarCamp NewsInnovation

The second annual BarCamp NewsInnovation was held last month at Temple University — see my notes here.

In addition to sharing all the failures we’ve had at Technically Philly, I spoke with founder and editor Shannon McDonald about the progress we’ve had with Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, including most prominently the breakdown of where our content was coming from.

See here the notes from our 2009 BarCamp presentation on being an online news startup in a print-heavy community.

Below find the notes and slides from this year’s BarCamp presentation entitled: Twitter is stupid…and other foundations of our content strategy.

Our notes:

Twitter is stupid…and other foundations of our content strategy.

I. Community vs. Niche: there is a difference — We’re not here just to report news, we’re here for interaction and support in the community.

II. Leave the journalism to the journalists — It’s OK to run press releases, as long you’re transparent about doing so and let the readers do the feel-good stuff. People seem most interested in the content breakdown, which I first shared in a post here.

III. “What is this Twitter thing?” — Our Twitter followers consist mostly of other news orgs, politicians and teenage girls, so go to where your readers are, not where you think you should be.

IV. Make yourself (physically) present — You better be out at as many community events as possible

V. Where it’s gotten us and Where we hope to go — Content partnerships, branding, known in communities, hoping to grow advertising (education!), merchandise and hosting more events.

Find the presentation online here or see it below.