Since working on a city-specific website with Chris and Alex, I’ve been occasionally wondering about the best way to create websites that showcase local content. Now that I’m here in Japan, it’s kind of natural to ponder what could be made here (in English).

Here are a few points that I think any good local (Tokyo? Japan?) website should include:

1. Geo-tag your Content

There’s a ton of Japan-related websites and portals on the web right now. I think any of them could grab a significant edge over the others by geo-tagging their content and displaying it on a single map. Of course, most of these sites are going to be restricted by legacy content management systems and might not have the flexibility to integrate something like this.

See a great example of how this can be done well over on the DalianDalian map. I’ve also set up something similar on OldNewfoundland.com. Drupal is great for this sort of thing. Potentially you could set up a travel blogging platform (or a blog network) for all Japan, and allow bloggers to plot their blog posts on a single map. Easy peasy.

Revenue Potential: The possibilities for geo-specific advertising is pretty mind boggling here too. For example, an advertiser based in Yokohama would be far more willing to advertise on a page that only has Yokohama-related content.

2. Use Microformats

When Alex first told me about microformats and Open Calais I had no idea what he was talking about. For those of you in the same boat, Wikipedia explains that microformats allow “information intended for end-users (such as contact information, geographic coordinates, calendar events, and the like) to also be automatically processed by software.”

Long story short microformats are more semantic, and since Google has gotten behind them that means that you should too. This, in combination with emerging social search and social network traffic sources means that SEO is (thankfully) becoming far less important. Writing content for machines instead of human readers is a douchebag approach anyway, and I’m super glad to see that this change is happening.

3. Build an Events Calendar

I’m a big fan of Google Calendar (see my Twitter-powered events calendar), because it allows users to subscribe and be notified of events via automatic email. This is far better than simply a static page listing local events. It’s a valuable service.  For sites that use Drupal, you can take it a step further and import each event as a content node that would be published automatically on your site.

Revenue Potential: For sites that are looking for an extra revenue stream, you could potentially charge businesses to have their events listed in the calendar.

4. Do Video!

Has anyone done this well in Japan yet? It seems to be a big vacuum that someone could step into pretty easily.  A few cheap little HD video cameras would do the trick. Then get a few beer-sippin’ guys to do a simple Diggnation-style weekly discussion of the latest Japan news (i.e. headlines on your site), and you’re all sorted. Film in a restaurant willing to sponsor you and you have another source of revenue, in addition to any other sponsors you can enlist (think beer companies, or the brand of camera you use to film, etc). iTunes is another great content distribution channel, and I think it’s wise to build a presence there.

We made a feeble attempt at this back in Dalian, though our cameras were pretty bad (especially the laughable camera 2). But at least we tried, and learned something in the process.

5. Integrate Facebook and Twitter

This is kind of obvious these days, but any site that is trying to promote its content should try to distribute via Facebook and Twitter. These are the most widely used social networks and if you plan to organize off-line events, Facebook and Twitter (along with email lists maybe) are your best tools for mobilizing the troops.

Users who are active on social networks are especially valuable as they are the subset of users that can help spread your content the most. It beats the hell out of paying for advertisers, right? A penny saved is a penny earned.

6. Adjust to Web Writing

Writing for the web is not the same as writing for newspapers or magazines. I’m no expert on this, but I think that sites like mashable.com who recognize that readers’ content consumption patterns have changed are getting it right. They typically go with a short, three paragraph news style: 1) Tell what happened, 2) Tell why this is important, 3) Tell what you think of this. This style is great for the reader, and it’s easy on your writers too. Keep an eye to the pace of content emerging from your RSS feed as well, because too much content could be overpowering your regular readers.

Other content types that work well on the web are lists (like this post) and ‘flagship’ posts (super in depth posts that require lots of thought and research; see some of mine here)

7. Build a ‘Useful Resources’ Page

I’ve done something like this on 2JPN.com, by asking readers to submit useful links so that I can categorize them and put the out there for others to use.  The beauty of something like this is that I can then provide bloggers with a “Featured on 2JPN” badge that they can post on their blog. Essentially it’s a link exchange, though I never require that people post it on their blog. I just ask nicely, and they invariably do. But basically, this tactic helps get word out about the site without me having to actively promote it.

Revenue Potential: Inventorspot.com (who I blog for occasionally) has gone a step further and by creating a services directory. It’s a directory of useful links related to invention and innovation, but they have featured STAR service providers which appear to be another source of revenue to the site. This is smart.

Bonus: Implement Revenue Sharing

For sites that are for-profit, it would be wise to share some of your revenue with your writers. Even if your site is not very profitable, at the very least you can still allow writers to include their own ads on your site.  I’ve outlined how to set up revenue sharing on a wordpress blog, as I’ve already implemented such a system on DSninja.com. This is a great way to attract and encourage collaborators.

Asking people to contribute to your site with no promise of any compensation can potentially backfire, so be careful if you tread that path.

Other Suggestions:

There are lots of other things that a local site should/could do:

• Job listings and classified ads are all essential too, but I think most Japan-related sites are already doing ok in that space.
• Overcoming reluctance to link out from your site is important, as is linking within your site.
• Aggregating important content.
• Vote up/down capability, or displaying the most popular content in a prominent position.