TCL WANTS YOU!
Posted on April 26th, 2010 –
Wheels are in motion.
I spent this afternoon pushing thumbtacks into all sort of surfaces around the local Universities in an attempt to lure writers, photographers, artists, and fellow bloggers to TCL. It’s time for this blog to start spreading its wings a little.
I’ll be keeping my hands as dirty as usual around here (posts / photos / etc.), but I firmly believe that the potential for TCL to grow into something more substantial is there. And I don’t think I can get there alone.
As I mention in the poster (available as a printable PDF if you want to help spread the good word), torontocitylife.com now appears to draw more visitors than torontoist.com, generally recognized as the number-two local blog. Recently, TCL’s numbers have even been high enough to approach those of blogTO.com, the reigning king of Toronto blogs.
Torontoist and blogTO have been around for over 6 years and are both well-established — Torontoist is a part of the wide-reaching and popular Gothamist.com group, and blogTO.com is into sponsoring all sorts of stuff (which implies it’s doing very well). In this context, I think that the just-over-a-year-old Toronto City Life is doing pretty good.
With Toronto being the shared topic, there are bound to be similarities between the three blogs. But blogTO and Torontoist, to me, resemble online versions of Eye Weekly and NOW Magazine: intended mostly for locals and focused heavily on entertainment / dining. Nothing wrong with that, but I have neither the inclination nor the resources to go that route.
Contributors to TCL should live in Toronto (or spend enough time here to write about it), have personality to spare, and must be able to produce 1 to 2 posts to the blog per week, minimum. More detail can be found in the PDF.
I’m also seeking an intern (for lack of a better term), to help with the day-to-day operation of the blog: promotion, comment moderation, site updates, that sort of stuff. Considerably less glamour than producing content (which needn’t be excluded), but hopefully more rewarding. Plus you’d learn all my blogging secrets. ;)
This a fantastic time to get involved with Toronto City Life, and I’m not just saying that because it’s my blog. Visitor numbers are good (and trending upwards), the audience is engaged with the content (a big THANK YOU for that, dear reader), the largest source of traffic for torontocitylife.com is direct hits (as opposed to referring sites / ads), and visitors are spending more time browsing the site than ever before. These are, in my opinion, pretty solid fundamentals for a blog.
Being a reader, however, is just as important as being a content producer. More so, even. Without your generous eyes, dear reader, there wouldn’t be much point to TCL — so keep bringing those peepers back! Hopefully there will be more for them to enjoy in the near future. :)
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
April 27th, 2010 9:40 am
Why don't you have a FaceBook page … and "share" your posts there? It would probably drive even more traffic to your site.
April 27th, 2010 2:07 pm
Thanks for the suggestion, Teena. I do have a personal Facebook page but I never use it. All my friends / family already know about TCL and my experiences with advertising on Facebook (including paid ads) — when I was using it — were dismal. Plus I really don't like using FB — I can't stand the interface, find the whole site extremely restrictive, and all the extra bells and whistles that Facebook keeps adding / allowing seem like scams.
April 29th, 2010 10:22 am
"Torontoist [is]….focused heavily on entertainment / dining."
Nope.
"torontocitylife.com now appears to draw more visitors than torontoist.com"
And, sorry: absolutely, definitely nope.
Good luck, though.
April 29th, 2010 4:48 pm
Hey, David, great to have ya (back?) on TCL!
Mr. Topping, ladies and gentlemen, is the head honcho over at Torontoist.com. He ejected me from his comment section for posting links to TCL. That's why every single visitor here gets a full-on, do-follow link when they comment, if they so choose. I'm just that much of a fucking dick.
So, listen, Dave, don't get your knickers in a bunch. I believe I mentioned I'm not gunnin' for ya, buddy. No need to feel so threatened.
And to answer your questions:
I just strolled over your main page. Five articles were news, ten were entertainment. Okay, well, art, but I think they'd put all this stuff in the entertainment section of the local paper. Maybe "heavily" is too much? Okay, let's say by a ratio of 2 to 1, is that better? I never said I hated it, if it hurt your feelings somehow. It is what is is. Oh shit, were you talking about Eye Weekly and Now Magazine?! Oops. My bad. Let's see, Eye headlines: "Glengarry Glen Ross" (fucking great play), "The Flying Dutchman", "Required Reading", yada yada. Now has a headline on "Porter" (I'd say that was news), and then sections "Hot Docs", "News and Views", "Hot Docs" (again?), "Best of the Brunch" … and then it's all brunch this and brunch that.
And about the visitor numbers, well, look, I admit that your Canadian numbers on Alexa are for sure better (2,427 at the moment), but <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2 Fwww.torontocitylife.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fedit-comments.php#” target=”_blank”>world wide, I happen to think TCL is enjoyed more. But whatever, man. You do your thing. I'll do mine. And I'll kick your ass when I'm good and ready. :)