Getting Started
A Handbook for your first two weeks

A big blank page can be intimidating as any writer knows. Below is some of our best advice for your first week or two "on the job."

Overall your goal in the first couple weeks is to build a site that is full of locally relevant content. How you do that is up to you, but we have a few pointers:

  1. Don't worry about making mistakes. You can delete articles, edit them, unpublish and republish them. The important thing is to be writing.
  2. Start simple -- add Memorial Day, Labor Day, Mother's day and Father's day to your calendar; if only to put a few events in there so it doesn't feel empty and that "the lights are on."
  3. Write an Article -- even if it's about the weather for the next few days (and conveniently, you have a weather page which gives you the details).
  4. Start to think about an 'editorial calendar' -- one story for each of the days of the week, that you can fall back on if you have nothing better to write. For example, a calendar could look like this:
    • Monday - Events on the calendar coming up this week
    • Tuesday - A short profile of a local business-owner
    • Thursday - Weather outlook for the weekend
    • Friday - Weekend events and things to do
    • Saturday - Pets who need good homes
    • Sunday - The week in review

    So if nothing happens on a Thursday (and face it, sometimes small-town news is slow), write the weekend weather outlook. Of course, if there was a fire downtown, write that instead - or both!

  5. Make a list of influencers in your town: the mayor, a restaurant with a big social media following, the town police department. Think about writing stories about them that they will share to draw attention to your website; but only do that once you have a full-ish looking site. Perhaps put one of those stories on your editorial calendar.
  6. Content is always king, but in the news, so too is cadence -- try to put something out every day. No one likes going to a site and seeing yesterday's news.

So what does this look like? How much time does it take? Not a lot, as long as you are consistent.

We have a schedule that can be done in maybe a little over an hour a day. In the next articles, we break down what your first two weeks could look like.

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Next: Your first week