I have a family connection to Kevin Hessel, who has a nice handle on how traditional media outlets, in his case the Marin Independent Journal, can use social media to connect with their community, and secondarily, increase readership size and frequency in a way that supports the publication.

Darius Monsef of COLOURlovers puts together a great set of lessons on the trials and tribulations of building an online community (with some offline lessons as well).  His article is posted on the whimsically named siliconflorist.com.  I learned a lot of this by trial and error.   Good readin'.

Lesson: You must grow within your community, especially in the early days. Later, leaders will arise who can handle some of the day-to-day things and welcome new members. But in those first few days, weeks and months… you are the welcoming committee, janitor, house mom, judge, jury and banninator.

I am pleased to announce my latest venture, Emergencity, a community service provider that facilitates hyperlocal communications and emergency management and response.  Check out more at our new site, emergencity.com...

Planet of the Blogs

Ventura County Goes Ape Over The Blogosphere

September 8, 2005

Ojai Blog: On the other side of the county from Paul Coambs and his Simi Valley Soapbox blog, Tyler Suchman is also running a community blog for his hometown, Ojai.  His purpose is threefold: he wants to be a voice for the Ojai community, support local businesses and make connections.  The UCLA grad moved to Ojai from Venice with his longtime girlfriend a little over a year ago.

He gets his information from press releases, reader tips and plain old observation, compiling it in a form that's moderately formal and perfect for the out-of-town tourists he hopes to intrigue with his blog.

When not blogging, the 33-year-old is running his internet consulting company, Tribal Core, which helps local and L.A. businesses connect via technology with their core of supporters and potential customers.

"Inherently, I'm interested in that intersection of technology and community," said Suchman, who's been working with virtual communities and designing websites for over a decade.  "Coming to Ojai, there's very much a real, physical community here ... it's interesting to see how we can use technology to help build that community."

After running the one-person show OjaiBlog.com for a while, I started up The Ojai Post as a community experiment, looking to bring together a wide variety of voices from all corners of the Ojai community.  In the last twenty-two months, we have expanded from just a few authors to thirty, and this evening celebrated post #1000. 

The Ojai Post by the numbers:
22 - Months in existence
30 - Authors
2,000 - Percentage increase in traffic since month 1
8,000 - Population of the City of Ojai
16,961 - Current Average Weekly Circulation
804,727 - Total Daily Visitors
1,531,003 - Total Page Views