Community bloggers needed

To date, this web site has been heavily reliant on received press releases and automated syndicated news feeds for some of its content, but if there are any people who use the site and would like to contribute some individual articles for the Cheddar Village web site, whether a one-off or as a regular contributor every week or month, read on.

Based around the ethos of the Talk About Local network, which helps people find a voice on-line for their community, it would be great to have some stories on here that reflect life in and around Cheddar, written by the people who live and work here.

There are plenty of “local life” topics you might want to write about. Local events you have been to, nature and environmental issues, farming, retail, health, music, shows, walks, school, cycling, caving and climbing, gardening, business matters, local history, traditions - all sorts. It doesn’t have to be an “exclusive”, and it doesn’t even have to be “latest news” - it could be about something that happened months or years ago. It just needs to be a topic you are interested in and can write a few hundred words about, as long as it has a local “hook” that is relevant to people in the Cheddar area, and that they might find educational or informative, and a touch of humour will be great too. If you have images to accompany it (as long as you own the copyright on them or have the copyright owner’s permission for web use), these can also be incorporated. It doesn’t matter whether you are already an experienced blogger somewhere else or would like to try your hand at writing a community blog for the first time.

Whilst these articles should not be blatant promotions for a specific business, organisation, cause or charity*, the payback for supplying an article for publication is that each one can have a link to the author’s own web site at the end, as part of a short bio (see the example at the end of this one). These types of incoming link do help boost the ranking of your site in search engines and will remain visible on the web for a long period. The article will get tweeted from the site Twitter feed, and also, the discussion box will be opened on these articles so people can engage with you in the comments if they want to find out more about your topic, so further improving your local profile.

We’d adopt general Talk About Local guidelines for these articles, so:

• sensible posting and civilised discussion of locally-relevant topics with a wide appeal
• avoiding controversial topics which divide local opinion, such as politics and religion
• balanced views, not just gripes and grumbles - look for positive outcomes
• no posting of advertising material or external links (other than the bio link)
• standard non-tolerance of racist / sexist / homophobic / provocative etc. material
• keep it legal, decent, honest, and truthful
• right to refuse, hold back, or edit any article submitted for reasons of length, content, style, spelling, grammar, or due to recent volume of similar articles.

Depending on what type and how much copy is received, these guidelines will be reviewed as we go along. Length-wise this article is around 600 words, but anything from around 400 up to 1000 would be fine. These blog entries will provide Cheddar residents with the opportunity to share topics that matter to them, not just those that get picked up and promoted by local news publications. So let’s keep Cheddar talking - submit your article here.

*If you have a business to promote, go here. If you want to add an upcoming event to the village calendar, go here. Clubs and charities can have listings here.

Martin Kay runs local web services company Kaywebs and is the person behind the Cheddar Village web site.