4 Tips for Small Businesses with Hyperlocal Blogs
As I type this, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends is hosting an Intuit webinar called Get Fiercely Local Customers Close to You. (You can see the Twitter conversation on the #IntuitSMB hashtag.)
Anita invited me to share some tips for small business with local blogs — tips that answered this question/topic:
How to use a blog to enhance loyalty with existing local customers
That was a tough assignment because I wanted to customize my advice depending on the type of small business, and maybe even its location. But I eventually shared this list of four specific strategies/tactics that I think could apply to a lot of small businesses with hyperlocal blogs in any location.
1. Blog = Community Kiosk
Think of your business blog as the community kiosk, the place where locals go to find out what’s really happening around town — not just what’s happening at your business/store/office. You will create loyalty by becoming a trusted resource for local information.
2. Open Your Blog to Others
Don’t think of it as your blog; think of it as the community’s blog. Yes, you’ll share company news and information on occasion, but to create real local loyalty, you need to do more. You need to open up your blog to others.
Let your blog be the voice of community groups that don’t get attention from traditional media. Invite and publish guest posts from non-profits, local organizations, event organizers, etc. They’ll tell others about what you’ve done and become evangelists for you and your blog.
3. Be Visible Offline
I’ve written before about how posts on local events are some of the most popular content my wife and I write on our local blogs. What I suggest is this: Write about local events before they happen, but also attend events and then blog about them afterwards with photos. Show people what they missed. Be their eyes and ears at local parades, community concerts, etc. If you can’t blog about a big local event, find someone to be a guest blogger for you. (See #2 above.)
4. Avoid Negativity/Controversy
All this talk about being a community resource is fine and good, but it’s still a business blog that you’re running. You don’t have to blog about everything going on in town and risk alienating potential customers. I’d avoid politics on a hyperlocal business blog. I’d avoid being too critical of local groups, organizations, other businesses, and really just about anyone. You don’t have to be the town’s cheerleader who presents everything as Super-Duper Awesome, but you should skip the controversial stuff if you’re trying to build loyal local customers.
Your turn: I don’t know how many local business bloggers read this, but if you’re one, I’d love to get your thoughts on these tips — as well as your own tips for successful hyperlocal business blogging.
Hyperlocal Sports: Tapping Into Hometown Passion
(This is a guest post by David Brazeal. By day, as director of Learfield InterAction, David helps organizations figure out how social media fits into their marketing plans. By night, he produces RepublicTigerSports.com, a hyperlocal sports site focused on his hometown Republic Tigers in southwest Missouri.)
About six months ago, I decided to start a new hobby. I’ve always been a sports fan. I used to do a little sportscasting on a small radio station. And my Friday nights were free.
So I started a WordPress website, RepublicTigerSports.com, to keep track of the local high school football team. I hoped to stream some play-by-play of the football games, get a few friends to listen, and maybe snag a sponsor or two.
But coaches and parents for every sport — football, softball, volleyball, etc. — jumped on the idea. They started sending me scores and stats and photos, even when I wasn’t at their games. They spread the word among their friends and relatives. Soon, people knew they could get up-to-the minute scores and in-depth game summaries from the website, instead of waiting until the next day or the next week.
I used my iPhone to record video, and uploaded highlights while the game was still happening. I posted quick status updates to Twitter. I over-delivered for what a community this size expects for its local sports media coverage. And the community embraced it.
I should say that there are lots of places to find information on high school sports in this area. The Springfield News-Leader covers all of southwest Missouri. The Republic Monitor has excellent weekly coverage (and their sports reporter has been great to work with). A recently launched website covers high school sports for al of southwest Missouri. And yet another sports reporter has started a site that is focused on the Central Ozark Conference, the league in which Republic competes.
But I think a few key ingredients differentiate RepublicTigerSports.com from those outlets.
1. Over-kill
Six months ago, the Republic Tigers got occasional coverage in the Springfield News-Leader, weekly coverage in the Republic Monitor, and sporadic mention on one of the local TV stations. Now, local fans can get real-time scores, video highlights, audio play-by-play, mobile phone updates, high-quality photos, and more. It seems ridiculous, really — but it’s not that hard to do, if you get creative with some free online tools.
2. Hyper-hyperlocal
Even the weekly Republic Monitor must cover sports in some nearby smaller towns. It’s the nature of the newspaper business that they need to sell copies in those other communities. I had the luxury of building an audience from scratch. If it doesn’t happen in Republic, I don’t cover it. If it’s not sports, I don’t cover it. Focusing so narrowly has helped me tap into the passion of the community in a way that a regional site can’t. And it opens the door for a great fit with local business sponsors, some of whom have already signed up.
3. Free stuff
I wanted to give something to the community, because this is my hometown. And because this is a hobby, I haven’t felt like I need to monetize every single thing. If I snap a good action shot, I post it to Flickr and tell the player’s parents how to download the full-size photo, put it on a thumb drive, and take it to Wal-Mart to print it. If I get a video or play-by-play highlight, I email it around. I’ve given stuff away at every opportunity.
4. Social media
On a lark, I started a Facebook fan page for the site and emailed a few friends. Within a few weeks, it had several hundred fans. Now, that number is around 1,000. In a town of 14,000, that’s not too shabby.
In fact, the Facebook page is now the primary place where people see and interact with the content. Interaction with my audience on Facebook is off the charts. I get way more feedback on the Facebook page than on the website itself. And Facebook allows me to deliver updates right into the news feeds of fans, instead of waiting for them to come to the website.
I don’t know where this site is headed. But less than a year in, it’s far more popular than I expected. And I built it with a WordPress theme, an iPhone, a Facebook fan page, and a few free social media tools. I have a few generous sponsors who helped me buy a nice camera and pay for some bandwidth. And I’ll have enough left over for a gadget or two. All without really putting much effort into selling the site.
But the most important ingredient has been the passion of the community for local sports. Tapping into that community passion makes hyper-local sports a major opportunity for people who are willing to put in a little work and be creative.
If you have questions about how it’s worked in Republic, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at david@republictigersports.com.
Skip the Scanner – Get Emergency Audio Online
If you’re starting or already running a local news blog, there’s no doubt that a police/fire scanner is one of your must-have tools. Or is it? That may depend on your home/office setup and how you prefer to listen to emergency radio traffic.
You might be able to skip the scanner and listen online via the Radio Reference web site, a portal for all things related to emergency radio communications.
Radio Reference offers links to online feeds of hundreds of emergency radio frequencies across the U.S. and in dozens of other countries, too. You can see what’s available by starting at the site’s Live Audio page. You’ll land on a U.S. map, but there’s a “Country” dropdown on the left for folks elsewhere in the world.
In my home state of Washington, the map shows that live audio is available for most of the highly-populated areas of the state.
By the way, this is the audio source used in the Emergency Radio iPhone app that I wrote about last year here on HLB. So, whether you’re at home or out and about, you can keep up with what’s happening around town and make sure that your blog has the latest news at all times.
CouponMap: Easy Way to Add Coupons to Your Blog
It might be the recession, it might be something else. “It” is Americans growing use of coupons. The LA Times recently reported that coupon use is on the rise — a 20% gain in redemptions between 2006 and 2009.
So, if people are more interested in coupons, should your hyperlocal blog help them find what they’re looking for? If you think so, let me suggest CouponMap as probably the easiest way to add coupons to your blog. The site is primarily a coupon search engine, but it also offers a super-easy-to-embed widget that you should be able to add to your in about three minutes.
Here’s how it works…
Start on the CouponMap widget page, which looks like this:
You can center the map on any zip code, landmark, or street address. I started out by using my local zip codes, then moved the map around to see where the best concentration of coupons was. I chose an address in the center of that map and set it as my center point. You can customize height and width to fit your blog, and adjust the border of your map, too.
You’ll end up with about 10 lines of javascript code that can be embedded anywhere on your blog. I chose to make new blog pages, but you could put the map in your sidebar if you prefer. Here’s what the implementation looks like on our Kennewick real estate blog:
Each icon is a coupon; click it and the coupon detail pops up in the same way you’re familiar with from using Google Maps. The coupons I’ve found are coming from sites like Restaurant.com, Valpak.com, GoGrocery, and others. If you go to CouponMap.com, you can click “Coupon Providers” in the upper right to see more sources.
I’ve installed coupon pages on three of our four local blogs:
The fourth city, West Richland, doesn’t have enough of a retail base to justify adding the map. But these are small towns I’m dealing with. Take a look at the Seattle map I’ll embed below:
Pretty nice, isn’t it? I think adding a map like that on your blog can be a real valuable content addition.
What are your thoughts? Is this something you’d consider adding to your blog? Comments are open for your pros and/or cons.
Our Best Hyperlocal Content in 2009
In the last post here on HLB, I shared the most popular posts on this blog, Hyperlocal Blogger. What I want to talk about in this post is the most popular content on the four hyperlocal blogs that my wife and I run. Those blogs are:
Richland Real Estate Blog
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
I’ve explained this before, but if you’re a new reader, it’s worth knowing that these are not your typical, news-oriented local blogs. Among the different types of local blogs, ours exist in part to help promote my wife’s real estate business. We don’t chase ambulances around town and don’t report much hard news at all. We mostly report news about the local schools, local events, local businesses, and so forth. But, ironically, some of our most popular posts across the four blogs in 2009 were the ones that did report hard news.
Our Most Popular Content Types
I’m not going to list the exact posts that drew the most traffic to each blog, mainly because I know there are competing real estate agents (with blogs) that read this blog, and I’d rather not give them too many specific ideas for what they should be writing about. But I will share the types of posts that brought the most traffic to our hyperlocal blogs.
Methodology: I found the top five posts written in 2009 on each of the four blogs, for a total of 20 popular blog posts about Tri-Cities, Washington. And then I put those posts into categories as best I could. There’s some overlap, of course — a story about something important happening at school could go under “News” or “Schools,” so I did my best to classify according to the real intent of the post.
Results: Here’s the breakdown of the most popular content in my hometown:
- News / Hard News: 7 posts out of 20
- Events / Things to Do: 6 posts ” ”
- Schools: 3 posts ” ”
- Businesses: 3 posts ” ”
- Sights: 1 post ” ”
I’m both surprised and somewhat not surprised to see News/Hard News as the top content type. Surprised because we don’t write much content like that … but not surprised because I’m well aware of the thirst for local news online these days. (See Why Local Blogging Works and Why NOW is the Best Time to Start a Local Blog.)
Our Top Sources of Local Content
One more thing I’ll share: where the traffic to our four blogs came from. Here’s the chart…
I’m not at all surprised that search engines sent 73% of the traffic to our local blogs. Referring sites (like Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) sent 17%, and direct traffic was 9%. (The “other” category made up the final 1%.) As I mentioned in Why Local Blogging Works, local web sites are often poorly optimized and search engines love a good blog. To me, this shows the importance of knowing at least the basics of blog SEO and making sure you’re keeping search engines in mind as you create content.
(And that begs the question, would a post or two about SEO for local blogs be helpful? Please let me know.)
Final Thoughts
Even though our local blogs aren’t very traditional, I think their performance in 2009 actually helps prove some of the traditional points about hyperlocal blogging as a whole. People are looking for local news online, and hyperlocal blogs can fill a void that more and more newspapers and TV/radio stations aren’t filling (due to layoffs, lack of profits, etc.).
While I don’t see us changing the approach of our blogs, this information only piques my interest even more toward starting a local online news site, one not bound by a desire to promote Cari’s real estate business. I’m curious to see what might happen.
I’m also curious to hear from you: What types of content worked best for you in 2009? and Where did your traffic come from? Comments are open. Let’s talk.
What Hyperlocal Content Works for You?
I’m curious: On your local blog/web site, what type(s) of content work the best for you? What draws the most traffic or comments or whatever you use to measure success?
Not too long ago I was reading this Peter Krasilovsky blog post that talks about AOL and, more specifically, the hyperlocal Patch.com project that AOL is doing. In particular, these comments from Patch.com President Warren Webster caught my eye — he’s talking about the hyperlocal content they find to be most interesting to readers.
“Police and fire information is very popular,” and “government news inspires a lot of debate,” he said. Webster was surprised, however, that weddings and obituaries aren’t more popular at this point — perhaps because users aren’t yet conditioned to get that information from a local online site. School sports have been more promising.
I’m surprised to see him mention police and fire information, but that’s probably because Cari and I very rarely post content like that on our hyperlocal blogs. So, I have no evidence in our analytics to tell me whether or not it’s popular. In my experience, our most popular blog posts have mostly been about upcoming local events.
What about you? What kind of content has worked best on your local blogs?
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