I submitted this to the UtahPulse.com feedback section earlier tonight. Enjoy.
As a member of the Utah tech community I hoped to find UtahPulse.com as a place to connect, learn & find fresh utah oriented content. Unfortunately that is not what I have found. I hope this feedback finds a reader who understands that this criticism may seem harsh on a beta site but without such feedback this site won’t make it out of beta.
What I have found has been a drab site with little content (forgivable as its in beta) and what content I have seen does not grab the reader in any way shape or form. What I have seen is a press release aggregator. Zions bank is a great member of the community, but the link & image at the top of the page is more than enough to advertise for them, no need to reproduce every tech related topic from them and make UtahPulse look like a shill for them. Additionally, there are no images for a story therefore making the content seem dry, newswire-like.
Integrating yourself into a community like the tech community of Utah will take much work but I don’t believe that it will be hard. You need to get people into the community not just a site. If you are to join the tech community of Utah then you must /join/ the tech community of Utah. What I mean by that is that you should be networking with the networkers & utilizing the technology talent that is readily at hand. Get local bloggers to blog about UtahPulse, get involved in the worldwide discussion. Join & use tech that excited the tech members of the state you are trying to grab the attention of. What about a fan page on Facebook? Thats pretty mainstream. How about organizing a meetup using Upcoming.org? Or how about getting really crazy and utilizing the bleeding edge that we are using like Twitter? Or how about grab a Qik account and broadcast live online from a cell phone some of the pivotal tech events that occur on a weekly basis.
The conversation is waiting for you, are you ready for it?
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July 3, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Charlie,
1) nice meeting you last night!
2) It seems to me like there are already a lot of good blogs in the Utah area focusing on tech and such. So networking, aggregating and discussing seems like it would be better suited in something like a social bookmarking or networking forum.
In Reno, I started the Reno Social Media think Tank (http://groups.diigo.com/groups/renosmtt), a Diigo group that I want to be a resource to share and discuss social media topics, tools and strategies and relate them to the Reno market. It’s going well, though there are only two of us posting to it. Something similar here focusing on Utah Generated content would work well. (http://groups.diigo.com/groups/utah-social-media)
Some people have their doubts about diigo though. We did a post on the Twelve Horses blog about diigo a while back and even interviewed Maggie Tsai and Wade Ren. Check it out. (click my link and search…)
What do you think? It’s kind of like what we were talking about last night regarding posting a twitter review and link, but you get more space. I get a lot of value from links sent to me by people I trust and respect. It’s like my own private newswire…
3) we have a pretty good forum in Reno on Ning @ renonv.ning.com. check it out. Do you have anything like that here?
-M
July 30, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Amen. I think their billboards are a waste as well. They way they are designed it looks like it’s “Hey Utah” visit pulse.com