There seems to be a considerable amount of confusion and frustration lately over the supposed mysterious disappearance of articles being published to Localism. One minute they're there, and the next, they're gone!...Seemingly relegated to some vacuous virtual black hole in the farthest regions of the blogosphere...
Or sometimes, they don't even show up at all! We hit the 'Post Blog Entry' button, and quickly hop over to our cherished Localism community page, and we wait. And wait. But nothing.
"Where do they go?"
Is there a sudden lucrative black market for stolen articles? Is some ghost writer making a small fortune off our misfortune?
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I've covered this ground before in several previous posts, but I thought it might be helpful for some to simply rehash some of the finer points of how your content is currently being populated to Localism.
If you recall, I discussed early on some suggestions in an article entitled, "What constitutes 'approved' content for Localism?"
In addition, I touched on the processes that your articles go through after publication in the post, "Going Loco over Localism!"
Here's the process once again in a nutshell:
When you hit the 'Post Blog Entry' button for your Localism post, it can typically take 10 to 15 minutes for your article to migrate over to Localism, with the exception of those categorized as Listings or Market Reports. Currently, Listings and Market Reports are not being transferred to the relevant community pages. At some point before the Public Launch, we will be creating a 'tag/link' on the community page for 'Listings/Market Data.' This tag/link will direct you to a separate page where these articles will be populated. You can see this 'Tag/Link' concept in Jonathan Washburn's Localism Sneak Peek.
In the past, when you would categorize and publish your articles to the Old Localism, your listings would show up under 'Listings,' your market reports displayed promptly under 'Market Reports,' and depending on geographic location/topic, your posts would show up under the respective City, County, or State locations. When the site was being updated, the articles would be pushed/shifted down the page by subsequently published articles, and eventually become part of the indexed archives. Each article would also become part of the respective blog author's archives on their Localism profile.
WIth the New Localism, all articles, again with the exception of listings and market reports, will normally show up on Localism within 10 to 15 minutes. They will remain on their respective 'geo-targeted' page until the Localism editors review it. If the article is approved, it will remain on that page. The length or duration of time that an 'approved' article remains in view on that 1st page will depend on how many other subsequent articles are approved, and push/shift your article down in descending order. Eventually, your article will become part of the indexed pages at the bottom of the community page. Any articles not approved simply become part of the author's blog archive on Localism, and can be easily accessed by clicking on your 'My Blog' link.
Contrary to popular belief or urban legend, none of your Localism articles are 'removed' from Localism. Regardless of whether your article is approved or not, it will always be resident/archived on Localism.
Now visual confirmation is a big deal. I get that. After all the time and energy that goes into a well-crafted local-content post, we want to see the concrete fruits of our labor, proudly displayed for all to see!
However, the question I had posed previously still applies:
"What's more important - that YOU see your articles showing up on Localism, or that consumers find YOU through your articles?"
The window of opportunity/time for people to actually 'see' a given article as it is published is limited. The realities are that, initially, most consumers are going to be searching the Internet using relevant key search terms, and will find your articles/profiles through their searches, not by necessarily accessing/viewing the specific Localism pages. And even as Localism grows in popularity and gains traction as a destination site, I would suggest that the former way of being 'discovered' will continue to be the most predominant/common.
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