I’d like to share a couple of projects I’ve launched at Belo’s KING5.com in recent weeks. The first is called Citizen Rain. It combines a standard blog with an aggregator that displays the latest blog posts from over 100 Seattle blogs divided by category. Click on “politics” for example, and you’ll see the latest blog posts from Seattle’s politics blogs. Same with news, entertainment, music, sports, outdoors and real estate.
It soft-launched a few days ago, and we’re already seeing a positive response from the Seattle blogosphere, not to mention quite a few emails asking to be added to the aggregator. KING 5’s newsroom — which has not been reading local blogs — is also beginning to use Citizen Rain to find fresh story ideas. You may notice that it is not branded with KING 5, but we’re not hiding the association, either.
The second project is a condos section on KING5.com. Seattle is in the middle of a condo building boom, and we wanted to tap into some of that revenue. So I found a local blog authored by a realtor who’s doing a terrific job covering the condo space, and we integrated it into a new section that also combines a Google Maps mashup with new condo properties springing up around the area.
We’re even experimenting with some paid placement inside the maps. So far, the response from condos marketers has been very positive, as you can tell from the ads on the section. Both Citizen Rain and the condos section reflect a urgency I feel to expand into content and revenue opportunities outside the typical comfort zone for local TV.
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so what will your pricing strategy be?
i don’t want to actually know the answer but you have the choice to do the “tiffany” method where you set the pricing so high folks will think the product must be great (and then you can afford to really make it that)
or
you can set your ad pricing so low that you in essence buy the market. your competitors will look at it and say they can’t afford to even take you on.
personally, go the first route.
Cory, great stuff. Are you pulling the blog headlines/posts from the blogs or are the blogs submitting them to you? How often do you update?
Cory,
I love the Citizen Rain idea. We just might have to rip that off.
Nice concept, can we do something like that together on mediarati?
Hot.
Like SS, I’m curious to know what you used to pull everything together. I’ve been working on something of a similar nature, but I’m always curious to know if there’s something I missed.
great work cory!
Leading the way, as always.
I saw Rex post this first, Cory, it is brilliant. I love it. How much work is it to keep up the blog along with your regular KING5 duties?
Hi Cory,
So….how did you come up with the name “Citizen Rain?”
Why is the blog NOT branded with King 5?