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!
Talking Local Blogs with Justin Smith
One of the more enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done happened on Friday when Justin Smith of Searching Solutions rang me up to talk about hyperlocal blogging. What made it fun for me is that Justin is a good interviewer — very conversational and relaxed. It was like we were two guys sitting at a table shooting the breeze. The fact that he and I have similar backgrounds in working with small businesses, helping people setup and launch blogs, even working with real estate clients — that made it all the better.
Here’s the link: Podcast: Matt McGee From Small Business Search Marketing
It runs about 20 minutes (I’m Irish, what can I say? We like to talk.) and you can either listen right from the web page or look for the DOWNLOAD link and grab it that way.
If you’ve been reading HyperlocalBlogger.com all along, I’m not sure you’ll gain much from it, but I’m hopeful that Justin’s readers and listeners — who might be new to the idea of local blogging — will come away with something to think about.
Great thanks to Justin for the enjoyable conversation!
Why It’s Been So Quiet Around Here
One: Because I’ve spent most of this week at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Columbus, where I gave three presentations over two days. One of my goals for 2009 is to successfully pitch one of the marketing conferences on the idea of doing a presentation about local blogging. Cross your fingers for me.
Two: Because I’m going through some career changes. As of the beginning of this week, I’m open for business as an independent SEO and marketing consultant. (I can also provide training to folks who want to learn to do it themselves.) And next week I’ll be starting to help Search Engine Land as its new Assignment Editor.
Three: Because much of my free time has been focused on developing ideas to promote my soon-to-be-published book, U2 - A Diary.
Four: Because, with all this going on simultaneously, I just haven’t had much time to blog, either here or on our hyperlocal blogs. 
On the bright side, I began a post on the flight home from Columbus that should make an appearance in this space in the next couple days. Look for things to slowly get back to normal, and thanks for sticking around in my recent absence!
Sunday Night Maintenance…
This is almost embarrassing: This blog is only two weeks old and I’m already changing the blog theme/design. This isn’t me being indecisive; what’s happened is that only after a couple weeks of active posting and your excellent comments did I discover a handful of serious flaws in the current theme design.
So I’m going to be playing around for a little while tonight and hope to have a new theme up and running shortly. Pardon the mess.
UPDATE: Still have some things to add and tweak, but this should work for now.
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.
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