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According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, only 20 percent of American adults reported using digital tools to communicate with their neighbors or stay informed about community issues at least once in the past year. Only one in 10 reported reading a community blog at least once in the past year.

There are a lot of traditional media companies riding the “hyper-local” news PR trail these days. They are rolling out new ways to get more content from their neighborhoods so they can try and remain relevant to users or get more local for advertisers. The problem with this strategy for most of these media companies is it is “Like Lipstick on a Pig”.

That probably sounds pretty harsh and it needs to be that harsh. What I mean is- If you are putting your content strategy in front of your revenue strategy you are doomed to fail. So, ride the PR trail now and get lots of good press about being innovative and trying new things but remember, if your revenue strategy is to sell more ads around that content to local advertisers, you are doomed to failure.

In today’s media world, your revenue strategy needs to be determined first. I would dare say that the leadership team of these organizations needs to be heavily comprised of top revenue people from inside and outside the industry. Your revenue strategy should not be based ONLY around the number of ad impressions you can sell to local businesses. As a matter of fact, that should be the last line item on your list. You need brand new revenue streams that don’t count on people reading content-

• Think Mobile First- Your website traffic is about to take a hit like it never has before. Between the Iphone, Android and the soon to be released Windows 7 OS, more consumers are going to have mobile devices in their hands than ever before.
• Reputation Management- If you can manage the SMB’s reputation and become their trusted adviser, you will open the door to other opportunities and have less barriers to run through.
• Social Marketing- Help your customers build and manage their brand across their developing social graph by becoming their social PR agency, creating content and teaching them how to respond in this new communicative world.
• Email Marketing- Use the consumer lists created through social marketing combined with the existing lists they already have to communicate and target deals and offers.
• Total Market Sales- Become the Agency of Record for the SMB. Stop selling your products as the solution when you know before walking in, it is a shot in the dark. Be bold, and sell your competitors too.
• Daily Deals- Use those consumer lists to begin a foray into the Daily Deals world. This is a space that is at its infant stages and has online users chasing it.  If you do this make sure you create apps for the social networks and even the local business site.

Knowing the location, habits and behaviors of your consumers is the key to success. Neighborhood content sounds necessary but being able to target information to those consumers that they desire at or near the time they are highly likely to make a purchase is much more important. Foursquare, GoWalla, Shopkick and others are out stealing advertising dollars.

According to American Journal Review these location-based players may be the biggest threat to the hyper-local news initiatives.

I’m not saying, Neighborhood News is a bad model to consider but if you are to consider it, make sure you start by building relationships with the local business owner first and let them push their trusted consumers to you.

Competing at the neighborhood level against deep pockets like AOL and Yahoo will take a better strategy than trying to engage the community to write blog posts.