Blogging a Local Blog

Probably the single most import thing in making a local community blog work is the fact that you and/or the people who write and/or contribute to the local blog care about the community that is being blogged about.

Blogs started out as personal diaries, and the most effect local community blogs are written from a personal point of view by people who care deeply about the place and people that are the subject of their blog.

This usually means that as a blogger you know the issues involved, the politics involved on personal and human level. And also, that you know and care about the people in the community; you know their stories, their concerns, their worries, their history--all of that matters to you as a blogger, and to you as a human being.

Your style could be combative and strident or your style could be more muted. What is important is that you care. The more passionately you care, the more effective your local blog would be.

And readers can sense this immediately.

It is one of the reasons, in my opinion, why trained journalist have such a difficult time blogging. Journalist have been trained to be impartial, and tell both sides of the story.

Local blogging is not like that at all. A local blog is your own personal and often passionate diary about the place and people that inhabit that place.

And what makes your personal local blog compelling, is that people can sense right away that you are personally involved in the place that you are blogging about; it is not a job, it is not for the money, it is not so that you can sell more newspapers, it is not so that you can rank well in the search engines. It is because the place and the people that you are blogging about are important to you; that the place and the people matter. And that gives meaning to the lives of the people who read your blog.

And if your care about the place that you blog about, people could well start caring about you. And that could win you some very loyal readers for your local blog.

Mary Baker Eaton 2007

Mary Baker Eaton is the editor of the Newburyport Blog a local blog covering a variety of subjects about the small seacoast city of Newburyport, MA. Newburyport, Massachusetts is full of interesting people and compelling stories. The Newburyport Blog is universal enough to be of interest to any reader. Written up in the Boston Globe.

Mary Baker Eaton is also an artist. Mary paints under the name of Mary Baker. You can visit her art website at Mary Baker Art as well as visit Mary's Art Blog

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