Category Archives: Media coverage

Hyperlocal 101 interview

hyperlocal101-interview-sshotSeveral weeks ago I chatted by phone with Shields Bialasik who, among other ventures, runs a site called Hyperlocal101 which focuses on “hyperlocal marketing and monetization.”

He followed up our phone conversation with several email questions and published my answers in a column on his site titled In the Hyperlocal Trenches with Griff Wigley.

Read the interview there or here.

Continue reading Hyperlocal 101 interview

Community Blogging: The New Wave of Citizen Journalism

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ncr-sshotThe National Civic Review, the quarterly journal of the National Civic League (“Now in its 98th year of publication”), has its Winter 2008 issue out. The issue has a 6-page article by Julie Fanselow titled Community Blogging: The New Wave of Citizen Journalism (PDF).

The article includes the Northfield projects I’m involved with, Locally Grown and RepJ, as well as my work with the Northwest Area Foundation and its use of blogs (CommunityBlogs.us) as a key component of its Horizons program which I blogged about here when I started with it.

 

Citizen media in Northfield

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Today’s Star Tribune South section has a piece on me and my Locally Grown colleagues.

They’re not citizen journalists so much as “three citizens shooting our mouths off,” Wigley said.

Swearing and faux news happen on Locally Grown, and the co-hosts rarely miss a chance to make fun of their own work, or each other.

Still, civility is a byword. Locally Grown and Northfield.org, for which Wigley was chief contributor for years, have reputations as debate venues free of the bile and bad feelings inevitable in most communities as politically active as Northfield.

School principals blogging

In tomorrow’s Star Tribune:

Principals’ blogs give slice of school-day life: Some Minnesota educators are taking a techno-step forward in hopes of communicating better with parents.

McLeodS-2005.jpgNot much in the way of blogging as strategic, leadership-oriented storytelling was described by the reporter in the article. News of school events, pleas for obeying parking ordinances, essays on the differences between middle schools and junior highs, and glimpses of life in a school day are not the stuff of leadership and influence.

Blogs featured:

I’ll try to take a closer look at those blogs later this week. I’ll also try to reach the professor, Scott McLeod, in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the U of MN. Kudos to him for initiating the effort.

He’s also interested in getting superintendents blogging. I wonder if he knows Charlie Kyte, Executive Director of the MN School Administrators Association (MASA) and a blogger?

Chicago Tribune on business podcasting

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I’m briefly quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune business section in an article titled, Podcasts spread message: Audio and video broadcasts are becoming easier for small firms to use in marketing by Anne Meyer.

To keep the podcast conversational, it helps to have a second person involved in the recording, said Griff Wigley, principal of the Web log coaching firm Wigley & Associates in Northfield, Minn. “Voice is very important,” he said. Without someone else in the room to have a conversation with, “People slip into sing-songy memo speak,” he said.

I get a kick out of how major print publications still insist on making the word ‘weblog’ into two words ‘web log.’ The tyranny of the style guide, I guess.

Strib piece on business blogging

In today’s StarTribune business section: A blog can work for a business.

I’ll take a closer look and comment more when I have time but I really disagree with this statement from the attorney interviewed:

“Blogs are about having your customers talking to one another.”

Update Aug. 10: Julie Finch, an attorney with Rider Bennett law firm in Mpls, was interviewed for the piece, evidently not long after her presentation about blogging at a recent technology conference.

finch_julie.jpgThe quote above may not be accurate — I’ll check with her and the reporter, Janet Moore. But if true, it’s a startling assertion for Finch to make, and I think it’s possible that it might discourage businesses from using blogs.
I see awol academy‘s social
media as their primarily a one-way communication tool, with degrees of interaction that can be throttled up or down. I’m guessing it’s somewhat rare, at least for small business bloggers, to have their blogs become a primary means for customers interact with one another… that’s more a definition of a message board or web forum, a tool I definitely support using assuming there’s a skilled moderator in charge.

Finch cites the Strib’s blogs as good examples, but I don’t think that’s helpful. I think of those as media blogs, a subset of business blogs, distinctly different than a blog that most businesses might set up. Better examples (among my small business blogging clients) the two that have been blogging the longest: Knecht’s Nurseries and Landscaping; and Northfield Construction. And neither have comments enabled.