Miriam Ellis: 5 Tips for Hyperlocal Bloggers

It’s a real joy to see some folks as excited as I am about hyperlocal blogging and the possibilities it offers to connect with neighbors and/or potential customers. One of those folks is a friend of mine, Miriam Ellis, who runs Solas Web Design in the Bay Area of California (well, just north of it, to be precise).

Miriam today shared five tips for local bloggers in Marin County, California, but I think the five tips really apply to any local blogger no matter where you are:

  1. Tap Into The Hometown Pride
  2. Recognize Community Concerns
  3. Be An Ambassador
  4. Get Into The Controversy – Carefully!
  5. Get Down To Business

Check out the full article for Miriam’s explanation of each point.

August 12, 2008 | Filed Under Content | 1 Comment 

Outside.in’s Guide to Local Blogging

Are you familiar with Outside.in? It’s a site I’ve recommended in the past as a way to find local bloggers. But it’s also a site that local bloggers should be aware of; it blends articles from local blogs and local media to create what amounts to a local start page for your city. Have a look at the Seattle page for an example of Outside.in at its finest, and compare it to the Richland (WA) page for something not as good.

Anyway … they also have a blog, and a couple weeks ago one of the staffers wrote The outside.in Guide to Great Local Blogging, which included these six tips:

  1. Go where big media doesn’t.
  2. Connect with your neighbors and other local bloggers.
  3. Post early and often, or at least regularly.
  4. Be timely.
  5. Tag your posts.
  6. Use your stats to your advantage.

Number two on that list has been weighing heavily on my mind lately with our local blogs. I know there are a couple other bloggers in this area, and really should make an effort to reach out and say hello. It’s on my To Do list.

Anyway, click through for an expanded explanation of those tips in the full article.

August 11, 2008 | Filed Under Content | Leave a Comment 

Our Four Hyperlocal Blogs

I’m sure some of the content that I’ll be producing will involve sharing the successes and failures of those four hyperlocal blogs my wife and I are writing. I showed screenshots of each one real quickly in the intro video I posted last night, but for the sake of introducing them to you so you know the background, here are some more details.

We live in Tri-Cities, Washington — only you won’t find Tri-Cities, Washington, on a map. The three cities are Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick. West Richland is the fourth biggest city, is attached to Richland, but isn’t technically part of the Tri-Cities (else it would be the Quad-Cities). There are other suburbs, but we decided four was enough and created these blogs:

WestRichlandRealEstateBlog.com
RichlandRealEstateBlog.com
KennewickRealEstateBlog.com
PascoRealEstateBlog.net

Missy asked a couple domain-related questions in the comments of the Welcome post, and I’ll be talking about domain selection stuff soon when I finish writing what will be a series of posts detailing our first 4-5 months of local blogging.

I won’t only be writing about those four blogs; there’ll be lots of general local blogging content here, too. But if you want to have a quick look at those blogs, it will help you understand where I’m coming from with my own experiences as a hyperlocal blogger.

August 11, 2008 | Filed Under General | 14 Comments 

Hyperlocal Blogging in the New York Times

Is hyperlocal blogging hitting the mainstream? A nice feature in Friday’s New York Times will only help make that happen. In Voices From the Suburban Blogosphere, Bob Tedeschi writes about the growth of local blogs in the Tri-State area (NY, NJ, CT):

…a few have built serious local journalism operations, while others have developed a following on certain topics and bask in the muted limelight of Internet fame. These survivors offer newly minted bloggers a pixilated blueprint for how to rise above the chaos of the blogosphere. For readers, the blogs are providing news in ways unseen in traditional local news media.

There’s an interesting correlation suggested in the article about the availability of a strong local newspaper and the success of a hyperlocal blog.

(found via outside.in)
August 10, 2008 | Filed Under Industry | 6 Comments 

Welcome to HyperlocalBlogger.com

I’ve started about a dozen blogs in my life, and the first post is always the strangest. What do you say? Who are you saying it to? How do you write it so that you don’t get embarrassed on your two-year, five-year, and 10-year anniversaries?

I don’t know if I’ll avoid that embarrassment in the future, but for now I’ll get the painful first post out of the way like this:

I believe hyperlocal blogging is a major growth area.

I believe local blogs will grow because more people will become comfortable and familiar with blogging itself, and will naturally start to write about what they know: their neighborhood, hometown, the city in which they live, and the things they see and do there.

I believe local blogs will grow because small business owners will continue to adopt blogs as a tool for connecting with customers and prospects, especially in their immediate geographic area.

And I believe local blogs will grow because online marketers will recognize that hyperlocal blogging lies at the intersection of two of the most important elements of smart marketing: local search and great content.

You can learn more about me and my goals for HyperlocalBlogger.com on the About HyperlocalBlogger.com page. The inaugural video will also help introduce you to what I hope we can accomplish over the long haul on this blog.

Thanks for reading HyperlocalBlogger.com. I hope you’ll bookmark the blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, and share your thoughts in the comments every time you’re inspired to contribute.

– Matt McGee

August 10, 2008 | Filed Under General | 10 Comments 

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