Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

What is Hyperlocal Blogging? Is it my niche?

I have struggled for a long time to find my blogging niche. I love blogging but I have felt I don’t blog about anything interesting and what I constantly am trying to do is create myself online.

So it wasn’t until I moved down to Dawson Creek did I realize I had found my niche, I just hadn’t realized it. After seeing how successful YkOnline was or could have been had I still lived in Yellowknife I thought I would try a similar thing for Dawson Creek.

I think subconsciously I like to create these types of blogs because not only does it bring community together online but it also helps me get out into the community. Meeting knew people has always been a fault of mine so by giving myself these projects to keep up with it forces me out there. Then once I start to grow the readership I continue to do it because I feel it is expected of me. Make sense?

So what type of blogs are these? Well they are referred to as Hyper Local Blogs.

Hypelocal described by Wikipedia:

Hyperlocal content, often referred to as hyperlocal news, is characterized by three major elements. Firstly, it refers to entities and events that are located within a well defined, community scale area. Secondly, it is intended primarily for consumption by residents of that area. Thirdly, it is created by a resident of the location (but this last point is discussed because for example a photo or a gov stat can be hyperlocal but not locally produced).

This type of content should be contrasted with local news which tends to be less geographically constrained.

There are other types of data which have local or hyperlocal relevance, or be of interest to residents – e.g. a government statistic on crime rates in your neighbourhood. Such data, while relevant to residents are of a qualititively different type.

I guess some would call it just a Local Blog and would say that I am trying to be a Citizen Journalist and maybe I am. Watch the quick video below describing citizen journalism and tell me if you think that is what I am doing.

Whatever it is I am doing, I enjoy it and want to peruse it with all the information I can get my hands on. Over the next couple days I am going to do some more research on this niche and will write about it so 1. I can understand it better and 2. you have a better idea of where I want to go.

I Need Your WordPress Help

My eyes are sore and I have looked over hundreds of WordPress themes but have not found one I like. The problem being, I know exactly what I am looking for and it doesn’t appear to be very common.

So this is where I need your help. I am looking for a theme with a specific header layout. I’m not quiet sure as to how to explain what I am looking for but I will give it a shot and then include some screen shots.

In the header.php I need to it be laid out in this order starting from the top of the page. 1. page navigation, horizontally aligned. 2. (directly below the page nav.) a header image with/ without the title of the blog in it. 3. (directly below image) category navigation, horizontally aligned. (preferably with drop-down child categories).

First example:

Picture 5 copy

Click to enlarge.

Second Example (ignore the fact the images is the proper size):

Picture 4

So if you have seen a WordPress site like this or know a theme that might fit the description let me know in a comment below or on twitter @kylewith.

Thanks

I Use to be Able to!

It has been sad before, that Twitter can kill a persons blog. This is because before Twitter those people would blog about how they feel, what was happing, where they were going, etc. but now that Twitter has come around there is not need to blog it. You can just tweet it and still have the same amount of people read it.

Sometimes I feel that is what is happening to my blog or I don’t want to blog about certain things anymore because people actually know who I am. If you look back you can see I wrote about some pretty personal things. Now a days 2,3,4 days can go by with out me posting anything. This could be because nowadays I spend most of my time in front of a computer and can’t come up with anything to write or it really could be because of Twitter.

Who knows maybe my adventure outside of Yellowknife starting this summer will bring my lots to write about.

Maybe some video?

I Know you Know – So Just say No

Recently we have been trying to promote a Tweetup, a gathering of local Twitter users, here in Yellowknife and it is hard to know if we are getting the message out there.

This is not a hit at anyone personally and this happens everywhere online.

I know that there are a good 50 people on Twitter in Yellowknife and we have tried to reach them all with the Twitter Invite. I don’t know them all, hell I don’t know many of them but that is the point of the tweetup. We have been promoting this particular event for over 2 weeks. There have many blog posts, tweets and ReTweets about it but only 9 people have RSVP’ed. Only 9. This doesn’t mean 9 are coming actually only 6 are coming. It bugs me when you specifically send out these invites to people and they just ignore them all together.

Let me explain how the invite works. You go to link, if you are going you click YES. If you are unsure if you will be attending you click MAYBE. If you are not coming you click NO. There is an option for everyone. So I don’t know why people think they should just ignore it as if they are better than everyone. I’m not trying to rant on anyone, but as someone who helps organize these events it is nice to have an approximate number of how many will be attending and to know that the word is getting around.

Just something I thought I would mention. No hard feeling Okay!

Lots to do, half asleep

I’m going back to work tonight which means I will be very tired as I will only be running on 3 hours worth of sleep that I tried to get this past pm. I look forward to going back to work as it means I can focus and doing some things online I generally forget to do while I am off due to being outside and about town.

Some of the things I want to get done, if I don’t fall asleep, are:

  • Write a post for this blog
  • Write a couple posts I have in mind for YkOnline
  • Set up a Links page for YkOnline. Links from Blogs to community links to Blogger Profiles.
  • And of course watch some of the season finales that have aired over the last couple days.

We will see how I make out.