If you lived here, you’d be home by now

I borrowed this title from Lisa Williams who spoke at Tuesday night’s Ethos Roundtable. It turns out not only was this saying on a billboard, it’s also the title of a book and a TV Show. Williams’ talk was about the “hyper local” movement and how motivated bloggers try to use modern communication techniques to make the places we live feel more like home.

I often meet with nonprofit groups at Marketers Making a Difference who want to know how to get press coverage. Specifically, they usually want to know how to get into The Boston Globe. The Globe is a great publication but it’s not always the best choice. For example, one group served the Medford/Somerville/Cambridge area exclusively. They needed to focus on media that covered their service area. In addition to focusing on the traditional media that their target audience is most likely to read, I usually suggest they identify blogs that appeal to their constituents.

In the past, the best ways I knew to identify relevant blogs were Google and Technorati.com. Tuesday night, I learned some great new ways to find local content. Lisa Williams is the creator of Placeblogger, the largest searchable index of local weblogs. If you’re looking for someone who writes about your neighborhood, this is the place to look.

Local content seems to be popping up everywhere. There’s also Patch. This is a project funded by AOL that employs journalists to write local content for their “Patch.” There are currently 75 Patches in Massachusetts. Then there’s Wicked Local which is specific to Massachusetts and currently covers 162 locations. (But not Boston, Lowell, or Worcester. This is for content that might be missed by the major media outlets).

So, if you’re cause is local, you now have more tools than ever to meet your constituents where they live.