Publisher of local print and online real estate magazine, Network Communications Inc (NCI) wanted to shake up its model and increase online reach in the hyper-competitive real estate niche. The company instituted a new policy for everyone in sales and editorial to share their interactions in the community via social media — that is blogs, Twitter and Facebook. more

Advertisers and visitors love video, but local sites, especially newspaper sites, have struggled to fully employ the power of video. Here are five content areas where video is easy to add. An article by Ken Sands  posted on Poynter.org points out the problems … more

Freedom Communications used Blinder and Associates to generate $1.3 million in new local business in eight weeks. Find out what made the drive successful in Victoville, the market with the highest revenue increases. more

Find out how three television web sites penetrate the local advertising market by converting their "Best of" contest into annual programs. more

Outsidein.com has already aggregated groups of hyper-local sites for partnerships with local media groups; however the smaller sites keep the traffic that clicks through. The company creates lists of news stories from very local blogs and sites, including a total of 30,000 hyper-local feeds. Local media sites can then curate a Neighborhood News page for every town and neighborhood in their area of coverage with mapping pinpoints. Note: Outsidein.com has been purchased by Patch.com, and is now part of AOL more

What's the easiest way to get user-generated content on a local site? Emergencies bring out the cameras, as do contests. One popular way of collecting the content, is through YouNewsTV, a platform created by Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM) YouNewsTV. Unlike video platforms created strictly for contests, YouNewsTV can operate a number of news channels and still be adaptable to host video contests when neccesary. more

Konnects social network platform is a hosted private label ”software as a service,” that let’s newspapers “go live” with a social network in about 30 days. It is a low cost alternative to Pluck which powers social networking for larger media companies and is more expensive to deploy. more

The surprising longevity of the campus or coffee shop corkboard as public forums should give pause to the most wired of local media types. That look and feel is one reason Paper G's "Flyerboard" remains a popular widget. … more

Local media have a number of options for event calendars. We compare three for price and upsell opportunities. more

Boston-based Mediaspectrum reports massive cost-savings for newspapers using its Web-based platform. Building its technology over the last nine years, Mediaspectrum now powers 700 online … more