Project Blogger Update: Community Events & Local Weather

It’s roughly mid-way through Project Blogger and I think it’s worth another brief progress update for my apprentice, Tisza Major-Posner. Tisza is aiming to make her blog, Route66 Living “the place” for local information about Claremont, CA. I’ve added two new features to the blog in an effort to get closer to that goal.

The 1st (above), which is at the top of the left sidebar, is a Claremont Weather module from iBegin.com. Note to all the real estate professionals out there — you can easily get a local weather module for your blog by visiting iBegin, navigating to your city, and clicking the “Put [Your city name] weather on your site.”

The 2nd addition (left), which shows up right underneath the weather module, is a section titled “Community Events.” It’s a calendar that displays events that Tisza has entered that may be of interest to Claremont residents. The Event Calendar plug-in for Wordpress is pretty nifty — each event is the same as a regular post, but they don’t display on the main page. Below the calendar, it displays the next 5 events that are scheduled to occur and allows the user to click the event for more detail.

Though I’m obviously biased (afterall, she is my apprentice), I really believe Tisza is doing a fantastic job of producing content relevant to her target audience — Claremont residents and those looking to move to Claremont. Building any blog audience takes time, but the long-term business benefits will be apparent to those who stick with it.