Seth G. loves hyperlocal!
Oh, sweet irony. Seth Godin just wrote this weekend about the hyperlocal movement again, and this time he suggests that “not-so-busy real estate brokers” should start a local newspaper. Only, his definition of a newspaper is actually more like a local mailing list, or maybe a local blog.
It will cost you nothing. It will become your gift to the community. And it will be a long lasting asset that belongs to you, not to the competition. (And yes, you can do this if you’re a plumber or a chiropractor. And yes, you can do this if ‘local’ isn’t geographic for you, but vertical).
The sweet irony, of course, is that my wife is a real estate agent … and we just spent the past 3-4 days covering the hell out of our town’s flooding on our West Richland Real Estate Blog. We’ve seen 3-4 consecutive days of record traffic on that blog, another testament to the power of breaking news on a local blog.
And, best of all, my wife’s actually kinda busy at the moment with three listings and, I think, a couple other clients on the “buy” side. She took some photos and blogged one of those flood articles while on the way to a meeting.
This is the second time Seth G. has written about hyperlocal; he did it in November, too.
Blogger supports Geotagging blog posts
Google recently announced that their Blogger platform now offers built-in geotagging of blog posts. As you’d expect, the feature lets bloggers indicate the location they’re writing about in a particular post.
This is something I’d love to see WordPress offer by default, too. I don’t know if any of the other blogging platforms offer built-in geotagging like this. (Anyone? Anyone?)
Last year, Rob O’Daniel explained on Problogger how to geotag your blog via meta tags in the header, but Blogger is offering geotagging at the post level. Yes, things like outside.in’s StoryMaps offer the same end result, and there are 3rd-party WordPress plugins for local bloggers, but I’m ready for a built-in geotagging tool right in the WordPress interface.
The instructions for Blogger’s tool look pretty simple:
Log into draft.blogger.com, open the post editor, and click the add location link below the main text field.
Use the location editor to search, drag, click and zoom on a map to choose and save a location. We’ll try to label the location you choose using our reverse geocoder, which looks up a name for a point on the map. You can also edit the location name by clicking the blue location name text below the search field.
And Blogger also added a widget that will show your local blog posts on a map, which is precisely what StoryMaps does.
Content Idea: The Power of Breaking News
The Tri-Cities is relatively small, so “breaking news” is a term that we sometimes use pretty loosely. Still, two recent episodes involving our local blogs showed me the power of breaking news content when it comes to driving traffic.
Episode #1: Pasco Winter Storms
In mid-December, we had a series of winter storms one after the other. One of those storms was particularly bad; our local airport suffered through cancelled flights, regional bus service was cancelled, mountain passes were closed, etc. This was right before Christmas, so you can imagine what a headache this was for locals and out-of-towners trying to travel in or out of the area.
The problems began on Sunday, December 20. When I realized things would continue to be bad the next day, I wrote a blog post:
Pasco Airport Weather Delays to Continue on Monday
I published that late Sunday night. Notice that I used a primary keyword (Pasco Airport Weather Delays) in the headline. If you read the post, you’ll see that I mention Pasco Airport a couple more times, and even use the 3-letter airport code (PSC), in case people searched with that instead of the full name.
How’d it work? Have a look:
Sure enough, lots of people were searching for information about the airport delays, and our Pasco blog saw that big spike in traffic. The traffic even stayed higher than normal for several days after the worst day of weather problems.
Episode #2: Local Fire
Early one morning last week, a fire destroyed the clubhouse at the West Richland Golf Course. Fortunately, no one was hurt; but the facility was a total loss. Cari heard about the news and blogged about it when she got to the office that morning.
Here’s what blog traffic looked like that day:
The traffic jump isn’t as dramatic as in the Pasco example, but it’s obvious. The search engines found the post quickly, and it showed up when locals were looking for news about the fire.
Conclusion
In that second example, I don’t mean to come across as though I’m happy that we benefited from someone else’s tragedy, but the point is clear: People get a lot of their news online these days, and when local news breaks, they’re likely to turn to Google, Yahoo, etc., to find out anything they can.
Hyperlocal bloggers should be prepared to take advantage of that, and give local neighbors the news they want whenever possible.
Top 5 Hyperlocal Blogger Posts of 2008
I was just working on year-in-review post over at my primary blog, Small Business Search Marketing, and decided to take a quick look at what Google Analytics says are the most popular posts here on Hyperlocal Blogger since the August 10, 2008, launch date. If you’re curious, here are the top five:
1.) MapQuest Wants Your Local Content
2.) Planning A Hyperlocal Blog Strategy
3.) Starting a Hyperlocal Blog: The Series
4.) 8 Wordpress Plugins for Hyperlocal Bloggers
5.) Setting Up a Hyperlocal Blog (or Four)
Can’t say I’m surprised that three of the five posts are from the 5-part “starting a hyperlocal blog” series; they have the benefit of age and a lot of promotion on my part to get some eyeballs when the blog was new.
Feel free to share your most popular blog posts in the comments, or if you have a similar post on your blog, just link to it so we can check it out.
An Invite to Guest Bloggers
I was just reading and replying to a couple greeat comments that were left today (from Scott Hastings and Steve Sherron), and a light bulb came off over my head:
It’s time to invite other local bloggers to write posts here on Hyperlocal Blogger.
I’ve said all along that I’m here to learn from others as much as to share what I’ve learned, so it makes sense to open the door to guest bloggers. I’d be interested in publishing just about anything that falls under the tagline/motto of this blog: “Tips and discussion for local bloggers.” As I said in my reply to Steve, a guest post could be about “your experiences starting a local blog, successes, failures, tips, you name it.”
If you’re interested in writing a guest post for this blog, please use the brand new Contact Me page, just created today for this purpose. 
Happy New Year to all local bloggers!
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