Chris Brogan Pimps Hyperlocal
Last night I posted about Seth Godin pimping hyperlocal, and today it’s Chris Brogan’s turn. Only Chris uses the term “small news” to describe what sounds to me like hyperlocal reporting:
“…YOU, without much training, can report small news. Maybe it’s not meant for your very specific blog, but a side blog, a side project, with a few other reporters. I think realtors are actually figuring this out from a slightly different perspective.
It’s not too tricky. We have the cameraphones. We have the Flips. We have the distribution. This is as simple as putting up a blog, adding media to it, and reporting on small news that matters to you.”
You tell me … is Chris talking about hyperlocal? I think so. Perhaps it’s just one subset of hyperlocal — the hyperlocal news angle. Hyperlocal blogs can be more than just news reporting; they can be random thoughts/opinions on your neighborhood, pretty photos that you take while walking through the park, and much more. It doesn’t have to be news reporting, but that’s certainly part of it.
Seth Pimps Hyperlocal
I missed this a week or so ago (because I’m no longer subscribed to his blog, but might have to re-subscribe), so apologies if it’s old news to you … but Seth Godin pimped hyperlocal (blogs, web sites, content, you name it) in a recent post that outlines 10 ways to make money online.
One of his 10: Connect people who are proximate geographically.
That’s pretty much the hyperlocal manifesto in one sentence, isn’t it? Here’s his entire description of a hyperlocal business model:
We all know that newspapers are tanking. Yet news, it appears, is on the rise. This paradox is an opportunity. Who is connecting the 10,000 people in your little community/suburb/town/zip code to each other? One person who spends all day at school board meetings, breaking stories about a dumping scandal, profiling a local business person or teacher? If you did that, and built an audience of thousands by RSS and email… do you think you’d have any trouble selling out the monthly cocktail party/mixer? Any trouble finding sponsors among local businesses for a media property that actually and truly reaches everyone?
That’s not exactly the model Cari and I are going for on our four hyperlocal blogs — I couldn’t imagine selling ads on the Kennewick Real Estate Blog, or any of the others, for that matter. But it is the right attitude to take into the start of any hyperlocal blog — it’s about connecting people and connecting with people. And I like the idea of starting a hyperlocal mailing list. That’s good stuff.
Promoting Local Blogs Offline: MOO Cards
One thing that separates us local bloggers from many other bloggers is that we absolutely must promote our local blogs offline, in our local communities. If you expect to grow a local blog with nothing but online promotions, I think you’ll be disappointed with your growth rate.
In part five of my Starting A Hyperlocal Blog series, I mentioned that one of our failures was the local of offline promotion of our four hyperlocal blogs. Now, a couple months later, we’ve finally taken the first step toward changing that:
These are MOO Business Cards, made from a selection of my own Tri-Cities photos already posted on Flickr. Awesome.
(They’re printed by Moo.com over in England. We ordered them nine days ago and they arrived today. I’m such a fan that the link in the previous paragraph is an affiliate link. The printing is top-notch and the card paper stock is higher quality than any business card I’ve ever touched. I ordered 50 cards for $22; you can get 200 for $70.)
When Cari and I attend local events going forward, we’ll have these cards with us to give out to people we meet. I’d like to think the local photography will catch someone’s eye and hold their interest; these cards should be conversation pieces. And the local blog promotion happens on the back side of each card:
We made the decision to promote all four local blogs on each card. I don’t know yet if that’s the right way to do it. Part of me wonders if we should promote each blog on the back of separate cards; i.e., show the West Richland Real Estate Blog URL only on the back of cards with photos of West Richland. Maybe we’ll do that with the next batch of MOO business cards. I think having all four on each card will be okay because the Tri-Cities is small enough that what happens in Pasco is also interesting to people in Kennewick, and so forth.
Those details aside, I’m excited to start sharing these cards with others in our area and seeing if it helps promote our local blogs. I’ll report any good stories in future blog posts.
Your Turn: How do you promote your local blog offline? Do you have business cards, or do you use other methods?
Going Hyperlocal on Facebook
Last month on my Small Business Search Marketing blog, I included Facebook in a post about social sites for local networking … but William Perrin, a hyperlocal publisher over in England, takes the idea a lot further with concrete examples of how to use Facebook to build hyperlocal communities:
These Facebook groups can work powerfully with hyper or ultra local sites to cross over content and messages. I set up I Love Kings Cross as an experimental sideline to my Kings Cross community site. The 160 odd people in the Facebook group are about 75% different to the 140-odd people who sign up to my Feedburner emails from the community site.
That’s an interesting idea to me. I’ve joined the requisite local network groups on Facebook, and have installed the “Neighborhoods” app to try to find other locals (hasn’t worked), but I’ve never given any thought to setting up Facebook groups to cross-promote my hyperlocal blogs. That may be a better way to connect with local people than to wait for them to install the right Facebook apps.
William’s article is a good read. Here’s the link: Facebook and hyperlocal voice.
Content Idea: Local Flu Shot Information
This is one of those I totally didn’t expect this, but it’s cool! kind of discoveries, and I think it’s worth passing along at this time of year.
About a month ago, I wrote almost identical blog posts about flu shots on three of our four hyperlocal blogs. You can see them here:
- Richland flu shots, which currently ranks #1 on Google
- Kennewick flu shots, which also ranks #1 on Google
- Pasco flu shots, which currently ranks #3
I didn’t think much of those posts at the time, especially since there’s almost no substance there — just some date, cost, and location information. So you can imagine my surprise when I was looking at Google Analytics for those three blogs and saw all kinds of flu-related keywords bringing search engine traffic to the blogs. Have a look:
(click for larger version)
These posts didn’t bring in a ton of new traffic, but I’m not gonna complain about any unexpected new visitors we get. Are you? I guess the lesson here, which should’ve been obvious before I looked at our analytics, is that people are searching for local health information on the web. As a local blogger, you’re in position to give it to them.
What to do: Check your local County Health Department web site, or call them, to find out if there are any planned flu shots coming up in your area. Blog about it. And, if you get some new search engine traffic, leave me a note in the comments. 
outside.in Having a Good 2008
In a blog post designed more to talk about finding a new CTO, the folks at outside.in also managed to share a couple stats about their growth:
- “Our audience is up 400% year to date and growing.” (
I assume “audience” means unique visitors or some similar metric.As CEO Mark Josephson says down below in the comments, “audience” refers to Unique Users per Month. Thx Mark.) - Their products are “being used already by more than 1,200 local content creators.” (This refers to products like StoryMaps and the GeoToolkit.)
Let’s keep an eye out for similar stats from others in the hyperlocal industry so we can see just how quickly this industry is growing.
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