Place blogging is not a new movement. It is a genre of blogging which has existed at least since 2003 with the Ecotone wiki. (after about 300 posts by 50 bloggers it closed in 2005. The Ecotone archives can be found here).
What is a place blog? A good definition is on Lisa Williams’ placeblogger.com, a just launched aggregator of place blogs:
–A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
–It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that’s open to community contribution
–It’s not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
–It’s about the lived experience of a place.
Teresa Boardman, Maureen McCabe & Brad Nix were the first placebloggers we met. If you want to know anything about St. Paul, Columbus or Atlanta, you are likely to find it on their blogs. Many more real estate bloggers have discovered the value of place blogging in attracting consumer interest and potential clients. Local content may be the future king of real estate blogging for business. If you post local content, look to syndicate it to the growing number of aggregator sites designed to attract consumers. Localized content will grow in popularity and draw more consumers. As real estate brokers and agents, don’t forget that your contribution to the local community is an expertise in buying, selling and leasing property, as well as where to get the best cup of Joe.
A small number of sites have sprung up to aggregate local content or place blogs. Here is a list of place blog sites we have found. Let us know of others we have missed. Oh, BTW, if your individual blog is primarily a place blog, add it to placeblogger.com.
New West Network (The Voice of The Rocky Mountains)
Outside.in (national) register here.
Localism (national, part of the Active Rain Network)
MyHouseKey.org (national) (Sellsius is on the steering committee)
Backfence (Bethesda, MD area) sign up here
Nashville is Talking (aggregating local blog content from blogroll)
Blognetnews.com (21 states so far) (via David Mastio)
Pghbloggers.org (Pittsburgh) (via Robert Melton)
Want to get hyperlocal. Check out Place Site, hatching in San Francisco cafes. A fantastic concept.
Further reading:
The Where Project Paper
Tim Lindgren Blogging Places
Tim’s Where Project Blog
It’ll be very interesting to watch this space over the next two or three years. It seems the idea of aggregating neighborhood blogs has been around awhile, but no one has effectively reach critical mass on a national scale. We’ll see if someone can finally crack the nut.
Interesting, I have been writing my blog since November 2005 and just learned that it is a place blog. I could write volumns based on personal experience, about how this all works. It started as an experiement and is becoming an amazing learning experience and a lead generation machine. It is hard to stay on topic because as Sellsius knows I love to have fun!
Thanks for the link love!
For once Pittsburgh may be ahead of the times on a trend. Who would have guessed it?
A great group of folks have been running http://www.pghbloggers.org for a long time and have aggregated the feeds of an impressive collection of Pittsburgh blogs.
It will be interesting to see if any of the new national sites can gain a critical mass against an already powerful local aggregation site.
For another take on local blog aggregation. Check here: www.blognetnews.com
Thanks David. We’ll update.
Thanks for the link. One minor correction. BlogNetNews.com doesn’t just cover Virginia, there are now 21 states in our network including California, New York, Texas, Florida and Ohio. We’ll be filling in all the rest in the next few months.
Best,
Dave
Thanks for the mention… I believe I very recently added my Discover Columbus blog (which used to be Columbus Best Blog) to Placebogger.com . Yesterday a Columbus Blogger, emailed me the link to placeblogger.con to add my blogs on. It looked so familiar but I did not see my blog under Columbus. I did however find Discover Columbus listed under Worthington. Worthington Ohio is wonderful but I don’t want to list blogs about Columbus called Columbus under Worthington. Tina thought I am listed as Worthington because of my zip code.
I put it on my list to deal with later. There is no time like the present though…
I just started a place blog (although I didn’t know it was going to be the next big thing…)
Anyway, I haven’t told anyone about it yet, only one post so far. You can check it out at http://stardigs.wordpress.com
It’s about Burbank, California.
We’ll check it out Maggie. Good luck. Submit it to placeblogger and outside.in