Over several conversations I had with the president of our company of all the ways we need to market small community business districts through advertising, marketing, social media and media relations, one of the toughest obstacles we faced was getting earned media for our clients. It’s not as if coming up with newsworthy pitches was a problem; the problem was with the ever-shrinking news holes and staff to cover stories at media outlets.

So why not come up with our own online lifestyle magazine, BerkleyLive?

Crazy? No. If anything, we had the perfect storm to work with.

In the 80’s and 90’s, malls were the town squares of local communities. But as people started eschewing the generic atmosphere and  lack of character of chain stores and restaurants, they started seeking out what was in their own backyards. Plus, people of the Gen Y generation started showing preferences for living in or near downtowns where they could walk or bike to local shops, nightclubs, restaurants, farmers markets, festivals and outdoor concerts. Small downtowns have reinvented themselves as meeting places for people of all ages to see and be seen in. And with the downturn in the economy, people have taken an increasing  interest in buying local and supporting the little guy. In my role of director of new media for Dining in the D, a show about local restaurants on Detroit Public TV, it’s always exciting to hear people rally around their favorite restaurants or get excited about trying a place they never heard of before.

Coupled with the media problem, creating BerkleyLive seemed like a no-brainer.  By having a hyper local publication with regional appeal backed  a sustainable budget that we already planned for media relations coupled with advertising opportunities, We have the staff and the resources to do it.

Are we creating competition for community newspapers and hyper local news websites? Absolutely not. We want them to succeed because there is a need for people to know what’s going on at city hall and in the neighborhoods in which they live that TV, radio and daily newspapers can’t cover. By aggregating content from other media sources as well as giving them leads to interesting and newsworthy story leads alongside our own content can only be a win-win-win situation for us, the media and our readers.

We plan on adding nine more Live publications under the CommunityLive umbrella by early 2012, which will give readers even more reasons to visit and adopt other downtowns.

It’s taking every ounce of self-control not to publish the URL before our launch on Sept. 6, but follow us on Facebook and Twitter where you can get the updates — and eventually news feeds to some great reading.

Bonnie Caprara is the social media and media relations director of Community Marketing Associates and editor of BerkleyLive, which will launch on Sept. 6, 2011. She can be reached at bcaprara@commmktgassoc.com and at CommMktgAssoc on Twitter. Updates on BerkleyLive can be found on Facebook and Twitter.