The Chester City Blog speaks at Chester Rotary

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of ‘talking blog’ at the Chester Rotary luncheon held at the Cove restaurant in Harrah’s Chester.

Assuming most in attendance knew as little about blogs as I did before I started this endeavor, I gave a brief overview of the blog format, its purpose and how readers are responding. 

I explained that the Chester City Blog is nothing more than the former Chester Spotlight paper I published for four years before it morphed into electronic form thanks to blog technology and the Daily Times for selecting to host it on their website.

Despite the fact that I lost a lot of older people who enjoyed reading the Chester Spotlight paper, I gained a much larger audience that spans the entire globe simply due to the universal nature of the internet. Chester has never had this type of far reaching exposure. 

However, the focus of the blog remains Chester related as I present local information and other material that I feel applies to Chester readers.

Finally, I confessed that I assumed that by just having a local paper or local blog that local organizations would embrace the opportunity to use it as a format to help bring community members together to share what they know about what’s going on around town. But after consulting other bloggers who develop local sites, it takes a lot of work to build a community and in some cases it could take a couple years just to get to the point  where you establish vibrant online community buy-in. 

It’s certainly not a situation where ‘I Build it and They’ll Come’. At times my frustration led me to believe that ‘I Build it and They Run’. 

But, I’ve been advised by people with a lot more experience than me that speaking to groups like Rotary is the best way to get businesses and social organizations to recognize the value of contributing to a dedicated local blog for the benefit of their organizations and the people they serve.