Everyone’s Getting the Hyperlocal Religion
The decline of traditional media is one of my four reasons why hyperlocal blogging works. As TV stations and newspapers cut back on staff and production, the opportunity gets even bigger for us local bloggers.
But let’s not count the other guys out just yet. It seems hyperlocal religion is spreading far and wide. To wit:
In the UK, Trinity Mirror has re-launched 22 hyperlocal sites and the top stories from those sites will appear on the Evening Gazette’s home page. And yes, there’s a blogging element in play, too. According to the MediaWeek article, the new hyperlocal sites “are designed to make it easier for readers to access news about their locality and contribute their own stories.” (emphasis mine)
The Los Angeles Times has recently launched a new project called Mapping L.A., an ambitious project that lets readers help map neighborhoods across the entire “Southland” region. This isn’t a blogging project, but it is an interesting dive into hyperlocal in one of the more challenging cities to do so. In his post about Mapping L.A., Peter Krasilovsky says the Times intends to someday put “hyperlocal marketing, advertising and blogging efforts” on these neighborhood maps. (emphasis mine)
I dare say that my Search Engine Land colleague Greg Sterling thinks the Times should do something like that. He recently wrote about the San Francisco Chronicle’s poor attempt at creating neighborhood pages, and compared them to some much more effective geo-pages on TurnHere and Flickr. Assessing the opportunity for newspapers, Greg says:
Done right these new neighborhood sites or pages would rank highly in search results and drive thousands of new pages views. And in so doing would attract new/additional advertisers across a range of categories.
Meanwhile, the purely online HelloMetro network of web sites isn’t stopping at just being a collection of city guides with business listings. Peter Krasilovsky’s also wrote about them recently — and we learn that they’re hiring writers to cover their local markets with extra content related to local attractions, restaurants, events, and nightclubs. HelloMetro already fairly well in Google for some local terms I watch in my area, and additional local content will only help them with that.
What’s It All Mean To You
If you’re blogging locally for business purposes, no one said that this was going to be an easy, bump-free ride. You should expect other business people and media outlets to see the same opportunity you do. Your job is to stay ahead and provide a unique local voice that attracts and keeps an audience.
If you’re not blogging for business purposes, some of this should be welcome news. If traditional media does the job of informing people and getting them interested in hyperlocal information, you may find yourself with a new, growing audience of readers interested in your hyperlocal blog.
5 Ways to Grow a Local Blog
This is a guest post by Koka Sexton, a hyperlocal blogger in Concord, California. Koka recently launched the Mayor of Concord, a local blog focusing on his city and surrounding area.
I have been blogging for a long time and about six months ago was struck with the HyperLocal Blog bug. I wanted to use my talent to write about the news and events in my area that seemed to be missing from mainstream news. Traditional media like newspapers have so many restrictions placed on them by management that many stories that should be published never see the light of day. A local blog helps fill that gap and I am happy to share some of my tips on promoting and growing a local blog.
1. Using Twitter To Spread the Word
After the initial launch of the site, I set up a special Twitter account just for the blog. I use this Twitter account to announce new posts on my site as well as feed news from around my immediate area to my followers. At first I had one follower (thanks, Dad) but after a few weeks I saw my numbers growing in mass and this is how I helped kickstart that growth.
Follow the people in your area
I used a Twitter application called Monitter to see anyone in my area that was using Twitter. Depending on where you have a local blog there may be 20 people or 2000, but whatever the number, start following them. Get to know the people in your area and ask them for story ideas. It was surprising to me how many of the people I initially followed had something they wanted to say through my local blog.
I then turned to another Twitter application called Twollo. This service auto-follows people based on keywords you specify. For some people this may seem excessive, but I used it to track keywords like my city’s name, surrounding cities’ names and other keywords that were specific to my area — for example, “oakland riot” or “BART Police”. I found that many of the people I started following also started following me in turn and then started re-tweeting my stories to their friends. All of this created a snowball effect and my exposure to people in the area grew quickly.
The key to using Twitter is to stay connected to your followers. Take the time to thank people for following your local updates. Ask them for input and let them know if there is something they want attention called to, that you are available. All of this will help you connect with your followers on a deeper level and push more readers to your local blog.
2. Using Craigslist for Traffic
I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out for me but it turned out to be great. I went to the local section of Craigslist and posted a couple snippets in the “rants and raves” section talking about a local blog post I had just written. Within an hour I saw that people were visiting my site from the rant and people were leaving comments. I did this for a couple weeks when I wrote a post that I wanted to draw some new readers to and it hasn’t seemed to fail me yet. You can get even more creative and write a long story in the rants and raves section as a standalone post and leave the last sentence as, “If you want to know more about what’s happening in your city check out www.yourlocalblog.com.”
3. Let Your Readers Know You Care
Not always but more often than not, when people leave a comment on my site, I will either comment after them in response answering a question or just saying thanks for the comment. I have also emailed the people directly if they leave an email address, letting them know how much I appreciate their readership. People want to know that they are heard, and by connecting with your local blog readers, they are more likely to return regularly and turn your site into a community.
4. Local Content is King
You should write about things going on in your community. Some of these stories will come from your readers. (Make sure you have an easy way for them to contact you.) I know a local blogger that has a police scanner in their house and they post on police and fire activity in the area almostin real time. All of these are things that a local reader community wants. Some stories I pull from the newspapers and give my thoughts and opinions in ways traditional reporters are not allowed. The idea is to start a discussion about your city or neighborhood and let those discussions carry the post to a new level.
If there is a new mall being built or the streets are flooding in an area, grab a picture and put something up about it. These are things most news agencies could care less about, but your readers will be thankful. You will see the comments come in and your local blog will take on a life of its own.
5. Local Advertising
Currently I do not charge for an ad on my site. I have taken a donation or two but nothing I would consider advertising dollars. Start with the places you frequent most. What’s your favorite restaurant? Write something up about them and next time you go in, let them know about it. They will appreciate it and, in the times I’ve done it, they have told their family friends and other businesses about your website. All of which could get other businesses interested in exposure through your local blog.
Final Thoughts
I have enjoyed getting to know the other local blogs in my area and have talked with the local newspaper about my site, as well. The best thing you can do if there are other local blogs in the area is start a dialog with them and see if there are things you could do together. Sometimes this doesn’t work and they see you as a threat, but don’t let that discourage you. Blog on and keep writing about your area.
(Here’s more information about guest blogging for Hyperlocal Blogger.)
Hyperlocal News Roundup
My presentation on Hyperlocal Blogging at SMX West this past Tuesday was well received, I think. The session was full, with about 75-100 people in the room. I spoke afterward with one gentleman who’s already doing some local blogging, and one woman — a former newspaper journalist — who’s interested in getting started.
While I was gone all week, there was some other stuff going on in the hyperlocal world:
CyberJournalist pointed to this January article from Steve Yelkington that outlines the three primary roles your local website should play:
- Town crier
- Town square
- Town expert
Steve is writing this primarily for folks who have a local news-based site (or blog):
Journalists tend to gravitate to only one of these roles: the town crier, the quaint colonial-era village character who walks around ringing a bell telling you what’s happening. It comes naturally. This is why 24×7 coverage teams and the “continuous news desk” concept take root so quickly when newsrooms suddenly awaken to the urgency of taking the Internet seriously. But the other roles aren’t secondary. They’re coequal, and they’re grossly neglected by most local news websites.
On Hyperlocal 101, Shields Bialasik shares a list of Five Vital Elements For Hyperlocal Success:
- Community Based – User Generated Content
- Sales Mobility & Automation
- Virtual & Remote Office & Networks
- Online Domination
- Strong Mobile Phone Capacity
And finally, an interesting move from EveryBlock — they’re adding local deals and coupons to the already deep city data in their system. The deals and coupons come from ValPak and are updated on a daily basis.
Welcome SMX West attendees
If you’re reading this at the SMX West conference, a big welcome to you. Thanks for visiting HyperlocalBlogger.com. In my presentation, I mention the four real estate blogs that my wife and I co-author, but I don’t provide the URLs. If you’re looking for those and want to check them out after the session, here are the links:
Richland Real Estate Blog
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
The individual blog posts I referenced in the presentation are these (in order):
Richland Circuit City = A Zoo
Leann Rimes coming to TRAC
George Prout Pool Closing Soon for the Summer
Richland Concert Series at John Dam Park
If you have any questions or feedback about my presentation or the session in general, there’s a Contact button at the top of the page. I’d love to hear from you!
Why Local Blogging Works
Does local blogging really work?
If you’re a small/local business owner, that question may be on your mind. It’s a smart question to ask if you’re thinking about using a local blog as a marketing tool. (Business bloggers are one of the five types of local bloggers.)
When it’s done right, local blogging can be a great marketing tool. The Big Picture reasons why have to do with the way blogs help start conversations and foster connections with people, the way blogs are very SEO-friendly, and so forth. When I speak at SMX West next week, I’m going to share four more detailed reasons why local blogging works:
1. The Growing Interest in Local “Stuff” Online
One of the most surprising things I’ve learned since we started blogging last year is that people search for everything on the web. In my presentation next week, I’ll show a couple of our blog posts that attracted search traffic over an extended period of time thanks to people searching online for information they couldn’t get from the newspaper or TV. I’m constantly amazed at the ultra-long tail queries that bring traffic to our blogs. People are looking for local content more and more, and that’s one reason local blogging works.
2. The Decline of Traditional Media
TV stations are cutting newscasts and cutting staff. Newspapers are losing subscribers, shutting down altogether, or cutting back from daily print delivery to three days or five days a week. Traditional media didn’t cover much hyperlocal news and information when they were at full strength; they’re certainly not going to be doing it now. This opens up an even bigger opportunity for local bloggers to step in and fill that void as a provider of local news and information.
3. Local Web Sites are Often Lacking
This may be mostly a small town blogger thing, but local business, government, and organization web sites are often in pretty bad shape where SEO is concerned. In our area, it’s often pretty easy to pick a business we want to rank for, write about them on our local blogs, and be at or near the top of the search results for their business name. Likewise, you can take information that’s buried in a city web site somewhere, rewrite it and get traffic when local people search for that information.
4. Search Engines Love a Good Blog
A good blog has frequently updated content. It correctly uses categories and tags to create topical associations; i.e., a local blog’s categories might be cityname News, cityname Business, cityname Events, and so forth — that’s a vey SEO-friendly structure. A good blog links out regularly and receives inbound links regularly. These are some reasons why search engines love blogs. We use WordPress, which is fairly SEO-friendly right out of the box. Add in a few different plugins, and you’ve got an SEO machine on your hands — in many cases, a machine that’s more powerful than a typical small/local business web site.
Conclusion
More people looking online for local information. Traditional media not providing it. Local web sites not optimized for online visibility. Good blogs are SEO machines.
Add these four ideas together and you have OPPORTUNITY. That’s why hyperlocal blogging, if it’s done right, really does work.
Your turn: What reasons did I miss? If someone asked you why local blogging works, what would you say?
Comments are wide open, as always.
A Hyperlocal ‘He Said, She Said’
Is hyperlocal content a boom, or will it bust? You can guess how I’d answer that question, but not everyone is in our camp.
Duncan Riley of Inquisitr actually is in our camp, and explained why in his recent post, Hyperlocal Websites will Boom in 2009 as Community Newspapers Fold:
The void left by community newspapers won’t be filled by a one size fits all hyperlocal news product. The very reason community newspapers will fold applies to hyperlocal sites (advertising, scale), although to a lesser extent due to lower overheads.
What we will see is different models in different places. Some of these have been described elsewhere; the labels are mine, so apologies if the terminology doesn’t sit with what others are saying.
Blogs
Blogs and bloggers are already starting to fill the void of community news. Local bloggers are increasing as the community turns online for news. Small scale local blogs that exclusively cater to local content will increase in 2009.
Yes, they will … and they are. I’ve no doubt about that. But a recent Forrester report is less excited about the hyperlocal industry as a business venture:
“…local TV and radio stations, newspapers, and telecom providers, as well as online giants like Google and Yahoo! make a play for the hyperlocal space. Web sites like Citysearch.com and newspaper companies like Gannett are staking their future on hyperlocal, but Forrester’s data suggests that some basic assumptions about hyperlocal need to be reexamined. To start with, Forrester data shows that more consumers care about what’s happening in their country than what’s happening in their neighborhood.
That sounds down on hyperlocal, but I actually think it supports what hyperlocal blogging is all about. Yes, it will be difficult for those big media companies to succeed in the hyperlocal space. But folks like you and I, the ones who are down here on the streets keeping up with what our neighbors are doing, what’s going on at the local schools, etc., we can make it work where the Big Guys can’t.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Still, interesting to see such apparently disparate takes on hyperlocal as a whole.
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