The Value of Local Connections

As a web video series, you'd think most of our business would be conducted online. But as a Pittsburgh-based web series, there's an extra wrinkle in that plan: we're a local production with a global audience. Unlike many web properties, we make noise about where we're from and try to promote our city when we get a chance.

That means we have an odd task: how do we maximize our local connections in a way that benefits our global audience, and vice versa?

Selling adspace to local customers is tricky because, unless a client has the ability to field orders online, there's a chance that the bulk of the traffic they receive might be from individuals who can't physically engage their store / product / service.

Meanwhile, including hyperlocal elements in our show (local personalities, social issues, regional slang, etc.) might dissuade some of our non-local audience from continuing to watch if they no longer feel they can identify with the story.

So, in no particular order, here are:

Five Ways STBD Is Maximizing Their Local Pittsburgh Connection

1. Local press love an unusual story.

As more and more casual web users become familiar with web video, the concept that it could be produced in their own backyards -- and, in our case, literally is -- becomes newsworthy. Thus, our recent local love from major Pittsburgh publications like the Post-Gazette.

2. Fellow Web Media Creators Develop a Community.

PodCamp Pittsburgh was eye-opening for a lot of people -- including us, the co-organizers. Once we realized just how many people in Pittsburgh are already blogging or producing podcasts, the next question was, "How can we all work together?"

Since November, we've been developing relationships with designers, artists, journalists and businesspeople from all walks of life -- whom we met at PodCamp. These relationships are already bearing fruit, as connections lead to other connections.

For example, fellow 'burgher Jim Shireman, of the sports uber-blog Sportsocracy, recently began including an STBD banner on his site. Thanks to him, hundreds of sports fans who might not otherwise have heard of STBD will now be exposed to our unique brand of... well, whatever it is we do...

3. Giving Hope to the Hopeless -- aka the Local Twentysomethings.

Pittsburgh has long suffered from an inferiority complex, by which the young people in this town define it as a great place to escape from. Artists and other outside-the-box professionals count the days (and the pennies) until they can "make a break" for a larger city -- perhaps not realizing that a larger city inherently includes more competition. As hard as it may be to "make it" anywhere, it stands to reason that your odds of "making it" in a city where millions of other like-minded people are after the same thing are a bit imbalanced.

Interestingly, some of the most frequent kudos we've received since starting STBD have come from local young people -- frok their teens through their thirties -- who say, "It's so great to see something cool in Pittsburgh!" It's not that Pittsburgh isn't cool; it's just that Pittsburgh has a way of not believing itself to be cool. So when something new and obviously in-tune with the wave of the future (like a web video series) pops up under its nose, a lot of people who "get it" get inspired by its mere existence.

Which brings us to...

4. Local Talent Is Less Hard to Find.

Trust us, creating a venture of this size with a budget of zero doesn't exactly lead to the city's stage and screen stars banging down our door. But the local actors and aspiring filmmakers who pick up on what we're doing, and see the level of quality we're able to achieve amid such restrictions (and yes, sometimes "qualiy" deserves to be in quotes), consider STBD to be a great resource for creativity and collaboration.

Sure, they'll get paid more onstage, but their prospective audience online is much larger. And, we offer valuable on-camera experience, which can be hard to come by. But the number one reason actors who join us tend to stick around is because they enjoy the cameraderie and ownership that a guerrilla group of nomadic filmmakers allows them to have over their character and the series itself.

Larger budgets mean more restrictions and higher expectations. But when showing up to film on a weekly basis amounts to a lot of improvising and creating on the fly, it results in a kind of artistic reward that's not easily duplicated elsewhere.

5. Expatriate Pittsburghers Seek Us Out.

Actually, they don't know they're seeking us specifically. But Pittsburgh is the kind of town that its expatriates eventually realize they're proud to be from -- the history, the tradition, the Steelers -- and they start looking for news and reminders of their hometown online.

Then they find us.

Second only to the "cool in Pittsburgh" comment above is the amount of feedback we get from people who thank us for giving them a visual reminder of the city they (sometimes only now) realize they love and miss. If shots of Primanti Brothers, Mount Washington and legions of pigeons help soothe the homesick heart of a Texas or Washington transplant, so much the better.